Can an iPad never purchased/registered be used for anything?

[arminius256]

Given the looting in Charlotte last night, which is reported to have sucked up a lot of iPads, my friends and I were having a debate on whether or not an iPad that has never been legitimately purchased and registered can be used for anything.

I know that for Amazon tablets, for example, all content on the tablet comes from Amazon so if you don't register with them correctly you don't get so much as a calculator, and if they decide to cut off the tablet for any reason at any time it becomes a dead paperweight instantly.

But I thought of iPads as more a real OS on a hardware device, so they could boot up and connect to wifi, etc. Or does the iPad setup reach back to the mother ship and check its legitimacy in a non-bypassable way that blocks any further action with them if a purchase record isn't found?

I hope it is the latter, because that would be hilarious to have them sitting there with 10s of thousands of dollars worth of iPads and they not be worth anything more than slick place-mats. I was surprised that the information on this is not readily available online, there is a lot of info on the fate of personal stolen iPads but nothing about them being stolen en masse from the vendor. Thanks for helping us resolve our debate!

 

[Jupiter7]

That's an interesting thought - like stopping a cheque. It would be a good thing if Apple could freeze stolen devices remotely, but they would need to know the all devices' serial numbers.