Apple’s Activation Lock can now be unlocked in Business Manager

Activation Lock came in for a bit of a kicking once Apple  put M-series chips inside Macs, as the essential protection meant that if a Mac got sold and the security had not been switched off, it became bricked. This has changed.

Now you can unlock with Business Manager

This also meant that a Mac sold or otherwise passed on with Activation Lock on cannot be activated even if it is erased. It can’t be used until unlocked. Getting Activation Lock unlocked afterwards demanded all kinds of things, and while Apple can do it the company required proof of purchase and more.

All of this is as you’d expect, given that Activation Lock is meant to protect your Mac against theft. But it did mean that perfectly legitimate and perfectly good machines became useless and had to be scrapped.

Coming soon in macOS Sequoia admins will be able to turn off Activation Lock for organization owned devices using Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager. The former can also remove user-base locks, which means a personal Mac that has been enrolled onto a company MDM system can be unlocked by IT.

What this (hopefully) should mean is that if a Mac is sold legitimately but someone forgets to disable Activation Lock, it will now be possible for IT to disable the lock remotely, which means those perfectly good Macs won’t turn into bricks anymore – or the device can be reprovisioned for use elsewhere across the company,

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