> I had to put my password in during Apple's preinstall environment screen

Did you also have to enter your user name?

Note that you’re getting a strong response because you concluded intent from N = 1 anecdote.

>Did you also have to enter your user name?

No, it was prefilled.

You sound like a grandmother :)

If this is reproducible, then do it and show us. Otherwise, we can only assume you misinterpreted the iCloud login screen as being the Activation Lock gate.

It’s your word vs. my experience and Apple’s docs. If I’m wrong, it’s really easy for you to demonstrate this.

I think the entire point is that the process is confusing and easy to mess up. Even if there is a way to successfully do it, that doesn't take away from the point being made that the OP commenter tried to do this and failed. Telling them they did it wrong doesn't change that argument.

I mean, you can't really get much simpler than the process, I've got to be honest.

Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iphone. It's the first google search result from "how do I reset my iphone". It works 100% of the time and is so simple my mom figured it out on her own.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/108931

> the entire point is that the process is confusing and easy to mess up

That's a fair point! It isn't the only one that was made.

OP concluded that the activation lock "only exists to create ewaste and pad the bottom line" [1]. That's the contentious part.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41536804

The icloud login for a non locked device happens after hello. In my locked device case it listed my icloud email and prompted for the password. It also said something about being locked.

I'm not going to repro this because it takes a while to set up my dev env.