>Physical access should always trump any remotely installed policies

so if you steal something and therefore have physical access to it, that should trump the original owner who no longer has it because you stole it even if they have the receipt with the serial number on it?

Yeah. Techbros aren't the new police.

> It's unethical and frankly evil. Physical access should always trump any remotely installed policies,

Isn’t that what happened here? The thief and not the owner reported it as “stolen” and thus bricked. The thief could’ve as well just thrown an actual brick on it with similar effects

> The anti theft stuff is just a marketing strategy you fell for.

Also it works. Both for deincentivizing theft and allows you to recover the device had you actually enabled the feature (so not this case)

> Isn’t that what happened here? The thief and not the owner reported it as “stolen” and thus bricked. The thief could’ve as well just thrown an actual brick on it with similar effects

I see your point, but if it were me in OP’s shoes, I’d be annoyed by the fact that even though I chose not to enable the anti-theft stuff, Apple presumes that the laptop is “unowned” and can still be enrolled into the anti-theft service. I would much rather have the laptop ship with a physical copy of the private key that will unlock the device (paper with a QR code on it would be sufficient), that way I retain ownership of the device regardless of what the thief does. Everything else could stay the same.

Edit: also, reporting as stolen is not the same as a thief smashing the laptop with a brick — the crucial difference is that by reporting as stolen, the thief retains access to the device while locking out anyone else. The post even speculates that the shop involved used this technique to extort the person who brought the laptop to them.