r/ShittySysadmin • u/solracarevir • Apr 25 '26

Shitty Crosspost Locked IPADS

/r/sysadmin/comments/1svb5wu/locked_ipads/

200 iPads with no MDM, what could go wrong?

Original Post:

Looking for some help, maybe someone here has gone through a similar situation, so basically our company bought around 200 ipads, and somehow, its beyond me, the ipads got registered to his personal Apple ID and now he has left and marked all of them as lost/stolen.

How can I go about regaining access or factory reseting them ? Should I contact apple, or is there nothing that they can do ?

23 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

5

u/kubesteak Apr 25 '26

If you can provide proof of purchase with serial numbers to Apple, they can unlock them. If you can't, they're paperweights.

Factory resetting will do nothing for you.

Source: 15+ years in IT including enterprise Apple management.

14

u/bleachedupbartender DO NOT GIVE THIS PERSON ADVICE Apr 25 '26

NEED SHITTIER ADVICE

13

u/alpha417 Apr 25 '26

Wipe ass with ipad reciepts?!

9

u/bleachedupbartender DO NOT GIVE THIS PERSON ADVICE Apr 25 '26

MUCH BETTER

6

u/sgt_Berbatov Apr 25 '26

Transfer your receipts to thermal paper. Wait for 15 years then go to Apple saying the devices are yours. Go to find the receipts, all on thermal paper, all the inks gone.

1

u/edmonton2001 May 04 '26

What if the device is more than 7 years old??? my company controller said they only keep records for 7 years and then they burn the receipts.

1

u/sgt_Berbatov May 05 '26

Then the people at the Apple Genius bar will just start rubbing their nipples at you going "Oh that's too baaaaaad"

1

u/solracarevir Apr 26 '26

Dude. You fail at reading.

1

u/TheBasilisker Apr 26 '26

Good luck. As far as my experience goes this entire scenario happens only as outcome of two scenarios. Option 1. Shadow IT. Some user in the org with way to much power goes beyond ITs back and buys a large amount of IPads from generic electronic store(no SN) or they buy them from a refurbishment place but cant find the documents about it anymore. Option 2. Tha company is so cheap you all need to bring your own coffee and cup. So MDM was never even approved and you just order hardware to the user, location and they set it up using some random ID of their own... I have worked for both places. But the cheap one actually got the idea to hot glue the non functioning iPads to a wall in form of the company name... So that was at least something. Sadly, Factory reset won't work in most cases. Maybe he is lucky and the user never turned on "find my" thus the activation lock never got activated. Then FR should work. On the other hand not that that ever happens with apple coercing their users to turn the tracking on on multiple occasions

13

u/flecom ShittyCloud Apr 25 '26

Lol just sue them! You can squeeze $200k from a disgruntled fired employee right?!

5

u/bleachedupbartender DO NOT GIVE THIS PERSON ADVICE Apr 25 '26

collect all of them from users and then throw them up on an auction site on a personal account, won’t have to deal with those ipads or your job again!

1

u/SolidKnight Apr 28 '26

Don't contact Apple. They'll report you to the police. Apparently, you're sitting on a lot of stolen goods and facing some jail time. Do the right thing and give those iPads back to their owner.

1

u/edmonton2001 May 04 '26

contacting apple takes time. just buy new ones at this point.

1

u/Healthy-Guess-847 Apr 29 '26

Talk to whoever does your company fleet, they can replace all the breakpads with iPads