Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and I have no recourse. Can you help? Email paris AT paris.id.au (and read on for the details). ❤️ Update 14 December 2025: Someone from Executive Relations at Apple says they’re looking into it.

Comments

  • U7826391786239@lemmy.zipEnglish
    261·
    1 month ago

    you don’t hear these horror stories often, but often enough to reinforce my conviction to never ever ever fucking ever buy a single apple product

    • Mihies@programming.devEnglish
      21·
      1 month ago

      Also if you don’t have your date data under your control, you are at the mercy of some company.

    • ji59@hilariouschaos.comEnglish
      11·
      1 month ago

      But Google or Amazon isn’t better. I feel like people aren’t informed enough of these cases at all.

      • U7826391786239@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        1 month ago

        i’m not saying non-apple platforms are “good.” but they don’t have the same closed-circuit ecosystem business model that apple has. apple controls all their hardware and core proprietary software, which not only limits your third party options to whatever apple chooses to allow, but now you’ve got the “all your eggs in one basket” issue, which, if i were that person who’s been a loyal apple customer for 20+ years, having purchased tens of thousands of dollars of hardware to become deeply entrenched in this cultish…thing… only to lose it all for some stupid clerical bullshit…then, to me, yes–that’s objectively worse than google or anything else–even though those other options are fucking terrible also

        edit: let’s not forget to mention how stupidly overpriced apple crap is, while doing absolutely nothing that other platforms can’t do

        • ji59@hilariouschaos.comEnglish
          5·
          1 month ago

          I just wanted to say that switching to another big company isn’t solution. And even though they do not have such huge proportion of hardware devices, many people use Google or Amazon (or similar) to sign into many services or devices like security cameras, smart locks. And this really huge problem, when one company could lock you out of everything for no real reason. It should be much more regulated.

          • U7826391786239@lemmy.zipEnglish
            2·
            1 month ago

            i mean now you’re talking about trusting big tech (any big tech) with things like your home cameras and door locks. which to my mind is dumb to begin with. there are cameras that record to a hard drive and don’t touch the internet. and while a plain old deadbolt lock on your door isn’t 100% guaranteed security, how tf does tying it to a big tech company improve…anything?

            i was talking about personal computing and data storage/access solutions. which, again, apple is a no-go. for any of that

    • ikt@aussie.zoneEnglish
      71·
      1 month ago

      I have an apple iphone but I back my photos up with Immich and passwords with firefox, Spotify instead of Apple music, Telegram, etc and I’m essentially isolated from the Apple ecosystem, if they lock me out of my account I lose pretty much nothing except the value of the phone