If it’s not a registered machine, it will move on to the fourth screen, but if it is, you will see this: The recycler told me that in order to check for “registered” computers, it’s necessary to step through the startup wizard to the third screen, where you are asked to log into WIFI. They’ve proven many times they want all their older machines put out of commission, so this is nothing new.īut I started thinking - how exactly does a laptop, simply by having a “registered” serial number, start receiving these alerts? It must have something to do with the OS as well, since a serial number does not have a mind of its own, and computers do not automatically broadcast serial numbers. Yet another way that thousands of perfectly good devices will end up destroyed and recycled instead of re-used, and as usual Apple fails to help. Without being de-registered from DEP, the logic board of the laptop is effectively bricked and can’t be sold. I’ve since gotten confirmation of this reality from other recyclers as well. The recycler explained to me that his many requests to de-register machines were unanswered, and that Apple also failed to help. Perfectly good laptops that deserve a second life are plagued with pop-ups suggesting ownership - essentially a scarlet letter giving any reasonable person the impression that their laptop was stolen. Handy and sort of cool, right?Īs I already witnessed, one problem occurs when the organization offloads computers to recyclers without de-registering them first.
This way organizations can issue a new computer to someone, perhaps in a remote location, and simply by virtue of that serial number being registered, the user can be assured a full deployment of the company software. The user is also informed of this while stepping through the initial setup wizard.
Apparently some schools and other organizations use an Internet-wide software deployment solution from Apple called DEP (Device Enrollment Program) - they register serial numbers with a management tool, and when a serial is detected on the Internet, the user gets a pop-up asking if they want the organization's software dumped to their machine. I called the recycler I bought this laptop from to ask what was going on, and he was familiar with the issue. These computers are donated/sold to recyclers by academia, corporations, and government. He sent me a screenshot:Īs a refurbisher, I buy thousands of broken MacBooks from recyclers every year, fix them, and sell them. A customer emailed to say he loved the computer I sold him, but he also asked why he was getting constant popups stating that “Device Enrollment XXX can automatically configure your Mac”? I wasn’t sure.