Transcription
There's a silent killer sending millions of electronic devices to their untimely deaths every single year. And you probably haven't heard all that much about it.
Over the past decade, the right to repair movement has revolutionized the way that we look at our used electronics. Companies like John Deere have faced significant lawsuits for locking people out of repairing their equipment. Apple opened a self-service repair store to allow users to buy parts to fix their own devices at home. And the battle to ensure that we can repair our own devices is far from over.
Consumers today are more aware than they've ever been about the upgradability and repairability of their devices. But the right to repair movement has left a couple of crucial holes in consumer awareness about what happens to used electronic devices. Right to repair is a consumer-oriented advocacy movement. It is designed to make you and me able to advocate for ourselves. But we consumers are not the only people that use electronic devices. Large organizations like schools, businesses, and government institutions have a massive consumption of devices. And that's where a silent killer is lurking that sends millions of these devices to their death for no reason. I'm talking about MDM, multi-device management. You may have heard of it, you might not have, but today we're going to get to the bottom of why this is such a big issue and what can be done about it. Right after a word from today's video sponsor.
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And now, let's get back to the video. Now, when we talk about e-waste, what most people probably imagine is a big warehouse full of scrap electronics. A big bin full of iPhones or iPads or something like that. But there's actually a bit of an iceberg to how electronics end up in these scrap piles. The top of the iceberg that most people, I think, would be familiar with is non-functionality. Maybe there's physical damage, liquid damage, or a hardware fault that renders a device unusable. And that is what manufacturers and recyclers would like you to think the story is about.
But as we dive below the surface, there's another silent killer that wipes out millions of these devices. iCloud locks. This is something that you've probably heard of. Devices that end up given away, donated, put into one of those bins in the mall, but the owner didn't sign out of their iCloud account. Which means even though the device might be perfectly good, maybe it just needs a new battery or screen because it's tied to that account, it is no longer usable. This is a huge issue and it is one that I have talked about many different times.
But even below the iCloud lock, there's a third tier of devices and these are the devices with MDM or management software. Basically, the way that this works is a device is registered. When the IT department sets it up, it connects to the management server that would be set up inside the school or office building or government building or what have you and it would basically automate the setup process, giving the computer everything that it needs to operate within that organization. But much like the activation lock that comes with signing into your Apple ID, these devices are now permanently tied by their serial number to that organization. The only way to get rid of it is for the organization to remove the device from their list just like you would do with your old iPhone. But the difference is the MDM software is not an anti-theft tool. It is management software. In fact, in Apple's own platform services agreement for their business features, it says that the organization will not resell any authorized devices with device enrollment settings enabled and agrees to remove these devices from their services before reselling or transferring them to third parties in any way. But despite the fact that Apple themselves considers this a business tool rather than a form of security, it has a lot of the same side effects when it comes to device reuse.
Let's say that I'm an electronics recycler and I just received a shipment of 250 MacBook Airs from a business that just bought new computers for their employees. These MacBook Airs might at first seem to be completely functional. You can turn them on, you can reinstall the operating system, and you can even start going through the setup process. But the second that those computers connect to a Wi-Fi network, the entire process is halted by this screen activating it through the organization's remote management system.
Now, if I happen to be an individual consumer that bought one of these devices, there are a couple of ways around it because like I mentioned, this isn't an activation lock. It is not a complete system lockout in the same way that an Apple ID password would be. So, there are tools that you can use to either skip the setup screen completely, which puts you straight onto the desktop, or there are even tools that allow you to input a different serial number to your device, which wouldn't be registered with that management system and would allow you to proceed as normal. Now, neither of those are fully permanent solutions. So, it would make selling that computer a very tricky process, but there are ways that you could restore functionality. The problem is that doesn't work at scale. And the entire purpose of these remote management systems is to control a large amount of devices.
So, if I'm an electronics recycler and I get 250 MacBook Airs from this organization, there's really only one thing that I can do. First, I'm going to need a list of the 250 serial numbers for each of these devices. Then, I send a request to the organization that managed them asking that each one be removed. And depending on the IT system that that organization was using, that often times needs to be removed one at a time. And then I'm going to have to go through every single one of those 250 laptops and wipe the drive and reinstall macOS from scratch. That's because the MDM lock is encoded on a software level, which means just removing it from the database isn't enough. You need a fresh install of macOS.
Now, that alone would probably be cost and time prohibitive for most electronic recycling operations, but it actually gets even worse than that because most recyclers don't try to fix stuff. By the time that this gets to an electronics refurbisher, it could have changed hands a number of times, and it makes it a lot harder to get in contact with the organization when you're like the fourth person to have chain of custody over this. And that's also assuming that the devices all stay together. You might end up with a grab bag of laptops managed by different organizations and have to go through each one of them. Even if you could get them all unlocked, it is an economically unfeasible task to do so. And so we end up in this weird scenario where these could be perfectly functional devices that get economically totaled. Not because they were stolen, not because they're locked for security reasons, but just because the effort that it takes to make them usable again doesn't make financial sense.
And this is something that the right to repair movement just hasn't been able to tackle because there's no repair needed. In many cases, these are perfectly good functional devices that could be like 3 or 4 years old depending on the lifespan cycle of the institution they came from. My high school used the remote management system. At the beginning of freshman year, we were all given a school computer with a school login and all of the applications that we would need for class. And at the end of senior year, we had the option to buy the computer and continue using it, bring it off to college or whatever, or they just went back to the school district. Who knows what happened then, but every year there would be a new batch of like 400 four-year-old MacBook Airs that would go somewhere. I have no idea where they went. Who knows if they were correctly released from their management system and then sold off or donated or maybe just sent for scrap. There's really no way of knowing because these are large organizations dealing with a large amount of devices.
But there is a silver lining to this issue and that is that theoretically anyway it's a lot easier to solve. Cuz the problem with activation lock is while it's extremely secure and can brick a lot of perfectly good devices. That's kind of by design. The whole point of activation lock is to disincentivize theft because a thief would theoretically be aware that if they steal this laptop, it will never ever be usable as a laptop. The best that they will be able to do is take parts out of it. And that makes it less valuable and therefore less likely to be a target for theft. But with these remote management computers, they're intentionally being discarded. Hell, Apple themselves says in the terms of service for this software that you have to remove it before you sell or transfer it. So why don't they make that process a little bit easier? And the same goes for the software that manages these devices in the first place. If there was just an easier way to remove these devices from management, I guarantee you more places would do it. It's just a matter of time and effort.
So to me, this issue is like a big blinking red light that's just screaming, "Hey, fix me." Very, very easily. Because with just a couple of lines of code, we could be saving millions of devices from going to waste for no reason. And unlike, you know, consumer recycled electronics, these are typically not old devices. So why not take that little tiny step up front to make the process a little bit smoother?
So, while I unquestionably agree with the right to repair movement's goals of making each of our devices more repairable, we can't stop with individuals. Is it better for individuals to be able to have repair options? Is it better for individuals to reduce, reuse, and recycle? Absolutely. But corporations, organizations, schools, businesses, governments, they contribute a lot to this problem. And right now there's really no attention on that. So let's change it one step at a time. If you work in IT, make sure that your devices are free and clear when it's time to move on. If you work at Apple and you're watching this video, talk to your manager. There is something that can be done about this. It's not an unsolvable problem.
But there is one other problem that you could solve right away, and that is not being subscribed. Hit that button, leave a like down below, and don't forget about remote management software. That's a really exciting, compelling call to action there. Don't forget about remote management software. And I'll see you in the next one.