Okay, let's say it's now true. So if you forget your lock screen password, that's it, you're SOL. You bring it to the Genius bar at an Apple store. They inform you that you're SOL and you'll need to pay $600 for a new one. Yes, this would happen, so it's a terrible idea.
Okay, so relent a little, and let the people at the Genius bar send a special override command that enables them to unlock the device. This would be special in the sense that you couldn't do this at home with iTunes.
But eventually someone would reverse engineer what, exactly, that special command is, and then regular users would be able to unlock devices on their own. We're no longer everything-but-screwdriver-proof, but we're more secure than before.
My question: is it worth it? I don't think so. We're still in a situation where this is only going to be a concern when you lose your device - either because you left it somewhere or it was stolen. But we've now introduced lots of potential headaches for the user, for very little practical gain.
And those codes could leak, at which point we're back to the beginning.
But let's assume it doesn't leak. Is it worth it? Consider the enormous cost that would be required for this: every new iPad that is manufactured would need to be recorded in this central database. Secure access to it needs to be set up and maintained from all Apple stores around the world. Is that worth it for a rarely needed feature that most people don't care about?
If you instead try to do a secure hash of, say, the serial number, that's much less cost to maintain, but that hash will almost certainly leak. (Think DeCSS.)
Okay, let's say it's now true. So if you forget your lock screen password, that's it, you're SOL. You bring it to the Genius bar at an Apple store. They inform you that you're SOL and you'll need to pay $600 for a new one. Yes, this would happen, so it's a terrible idea.
Okay, so relent a little, and let the people at the Genius bar send a special override command that enables them to unlock the device. This would be special in the sense that you couldn't do this at home with iTunes.
But eventually someone would reverse engineer what, exactly, that special command is, and then regular users would be able to unlock devices on their own. We're no longer everything-but-screwdriver-proof, but we're more secure than before.
My question: is it worth it? I don't think so. We're still in a situation where this is only going to be a concern when you lose your device - either because you left it somewhere or it was stolen. But we've now introduced lots of potential headaches for the user, for very little practical gain.