He simply does not have control of it.
In any case, Apple can't be blamed here. Apple does not know what really happened.
Here is a great example of why Apple takes the position they do:
Sim card takeovers. Remember when most of tech thought tying accounts to phone numbers was a good idea?
Remember the people saying that was a very bad idea?
People can get their digital lives taken, or very seriously impacted just by someone knowing a phone number!
The same social engineering and or permissive policy being advocated for in this laptop case gets used all the time to swap a user's sim card!
Once that has been done, the attacker can do password swaps and cause all sorts of grief.
The question is: “how are people apologising for the fact that Apple are refusing to support individuals who are locked out of their own devices?”
The question you are answering is an irrelevant hypothetical whereas question being asked is a very legitimate consumer request.
It’s like dismissing a mugging by saying “it’s ok because they didn’t stab you”. Both are legitimately wrong but only one of those scenarios is being discussed.
That didn't happen.
> or just not responded to the request to send it back
That didn't happen either.
If you fail to register your purchase (harder to do with a car, but stick with me) and go to the dealership, you won't get the activation code. This is literally what happened to OP.
The funny thing is that for this particular car, removing the radio (really the full navigation head unit) would have been a major undertaking, requiring specialized tools and quite a bit of time. If a thief has that much time and expertise, losing the radio is the least of my worries.
It's no different than say....keys
Next time you might try a different dealer, or a locksmith.
As a Macbook user I'm not at all concerned about this happening to me since I have find my set up and my mac has stickers on it so I can clearly identify it as mine and avoid this mixup.
And I also benefit from the theft resistance features.