Ask HN: Using Apple devices without being signed in iCloud?
Does anyone do this? What first made me do it was when my freshly created iCloud on a brand new MacBook was mysteriously “deleted” on their backend despite still being signed in on System Settings(you need to sign in, in order to sign out, even if factory reset). Everything was fine at first but then next day..iOS was prompting me constantly to enter my login credentials, for which I was entirely sure was correct (I even wrote it down) but was failing?! Saying my email/password was incorrect. but I was confident it was correct. So my $2400 laptop was essentially bricked. the 1-800 got me a good American English speaking support lady who at first said no such @icloud exists.(I checked and the name was taken for new acts lol) and insisting my password was correct and that I copy pasted it directly, but after pleading she was finally able to dig up my account (good thing I added my phone number when I setup the acc Thank god) and she explained my account was in some disabled state where it looked like accounts that had been manually deleted(which is rare and should never happen automatically within 24h barring extraordinary circumstances) after some hold time, she spoke with “Marketing” who was involved in getting my account reinstated. I immediately turned off Find My, removed Acc from my System, and factory reset. I used my old one instead upon next setup, The next day, attempting to sign in on iCloud.com in browser on a different device yielded a sign in fail message, indicative that my iCloud account was again fucked up.
So thankfully they saved my laptop but that iCloud account is still inoperable. That was the first time this happened, but not the last. The second was 2 months ago I bought a brand new prepaid iPhone 11, activated, never connected to wifi and, created a fresh iCloud account. Using the same fucking password as always. Everything worked fine for a day, The next morning, same thing. iOS is prompting me to re-login, and it won’t fucking work. It’s failing in the same way as before, like I’m entering an invalid username or password. In iPhones you can override the signed in iCloud password in settings but only if you have a device pin(I didn’t) This time I called the 1-800 again but got a less knowledgeable lady from an overseas Asian call center. and she wouldn’t take my claim seriously that my account might be in some obscure semi-deleted condition for reasons unknown and probably just thought I forgot my password. I certainly did not. Despite that she directed me to iforgot.apple.com where I filed a forgotten password attempt. I gave them my other phone tel as a contact and they claimed I’d hear back in around 12-15 days(can’t remember exactly) regarding my account recovery. Well that never happened, I never got any text or call from apple. I left the phone alone and after 2 weeks I try again to enter my password and it magically works??!. I never set any new password or had any further correspondence with apple. My account just spontaneously came back to life. If this happened to me twice with devices from major retailers then I wonder how many others it’s happening to - scaring the shit out of them - gaslighting them into thinking they forgot their new password meanwhile leaving their new device iCloud-firm-Bricked.
Tl;dr is you’re signed in with any iCloud account on iPhone or Mac, if Apple feels like it they can delete your account for mysterious reasons on a whim, pulling the rug from under you, leaving you unable to sign out / reset any device associated with the account (as you need to log in, to log out Lol) (the generic message indicating it’s a incorrect user/password really adds insult to injury. Made me feel like I was losing my mind when I was 100% sure the password)