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Jaxkr
Why? And why only Macs and not iPhones? Is this currently a major privacy issue?
throwaway2048
Likely to prevent gleaning of production amounts from serial numbers.
rasz
Its a business issue.
Nextgrid
I wonder if it’s to prevent “Hackintosh” machines from connecting to Apple services? Services such as iCloud and iMessage require the machine to have a valid serial, and given the format of them is well-known it’s easy to make a valid serial.
mofosyne
Assuming base 32 and we have 8char initially. That gives us around 32^8 = 1.099e12 of serial numbers. Might be enough for a while.
ziml77
Is the number still serial if it's random?
ksec
Still not seen any convincing argument as to why this is a good thing.