Clear Activation Lock not working

Just emailed Jamfsupport because I have a ticket in already about this. I stated why hasn't this been fixed yet. Hoping for a better reply this time.

If Apple EDU Support has Activation Lock issues on their MAIN support tree, and they also have a mass activation lock clearing system built into their Apple Care OS Preferred Support Plan, you might be barking up the wrong tree.

I was randomly able to clear activation lock on an iPad 5th gen running 10.2.5 last week. I immediately tried again on another device - same vintage, same OS - and it failed. We are cloud hosted running 10.1.1-t1513360285...

I'm told that iOS 11.4 fixes this problem, but I'm not sure how that's going to work. If a device is upgraded to 11.4, will it somehow actively refresh the bypass code stored in Jamf Pro? Or will a device need to enrolled in Jamf Pro after being upgraded, in order for this "fix" to stick?

And yes, I also note that I'm still having problems with older devices running 10.3.3 that don't have a valid bypass code stored. That suggests that this issue isn't exclusive to iOS 11.

Seeing this more and more often. We're on JSS 9.101.0 and various versions of iOS 11. Hope this gets fixed soon.

@mbeckett , I can confirm that just updating the device to iOS 11.4.1 doesn't fix the issue. I'm guessing it would need to have been on 11.4 when activation lock was enabled. Total PITA.

We are also getting back a lot of iPads with Activation Lock enabled and are not able to use the Bypass Code (404 - Device not found or activation lock bypass is invalid.). Thats pretty bad atm with the new school year starting and all. Hope for a quick fix soon. Thinking about setting up even 1:1 iPads as shared iPads.

Hey Rich, that's pretty much been our experience as well. I'm filing my third activation lock bypass request with Apple right now, and something tells me this won't be the last one. On the bright side, the folks in Apple Education Support are amongst the nicest you'll find anywhere. They've been very easy to deal with.

Many of these affected devices are running pre-iOS 11, so it's clearly not just an iOS 11 issue, but hopefully once the newer devices are restored with the latest iOS, things will settle down.

I called JAMF about this last week because the activation lock bypass code rarely works for me. They told me it's a known issue and they're working on it.

Just wondering, of those of you who send Apple the spreadsheets: do you have to call them each time to get a spreadsheet or can you use one without a case number? I hate having to call each time I need a new spreadsheet.

I wish Apple would provide a workaround for 2FA as well – at least for devices that are in our DEP. We can't use Apple Managed IDs because of how our kids need to use the iPads. Now that all new accounts don't give you the option to disable 2FA, it's become more of a hassle.

Our engineer gave me a template to follow for these requests. I don't have the spreadsheet on this computer, but I change the affected serial numbers then send it to pv_inst_amr at apple dot com (broken up just in case so web crawlers don't grab it). It still takes a few days for them to get back to me but when the JAMF commands/bypass codes don't work I just send it to get my iPads cleared.

One other thing that drives me nuts about this situation - when you wipe devices one by one you get the warning that Activation Lock cannot be cleared and asked if you want to proceed anyway. When you wipe devices en masse, no such luck. I did a search and took action based on the results to wipe a group of iPads, and didn't get the heads up that activation lock wouldn't be cleared. It said that the command was successful and the devices erased all contents and settings...except for the fact that when trying to go through the setup assistant I was prompted for that Apple ID password. That is definitely a jamf issue...

I encountered this today with multiple devices.

How is this still an issue??

This was the official Jamf response I got last time I put in a ticket about this (getting the error about half the time) -

"After talking to a few experts on our end, it seems like finding root cause for this is beyond difficult. All we can really suggest is to take these devices to Apple and have the lock cleared. We know this isn't the answer that you were looking for, but unfortunately it seems to be the only answer we have."

@rebelati

Fortunately, Apple is willing to do this, but it can take some time.

Activation lock removal failed on 25 out of 27 of our iPhones in the past two weeks.

Say, "Goodbye!" to our ability to insta-wipe and re-issue devices.

I hope JAMF is working with Apple to address this issue ASAP.