Apple is demanding a Canadian woman get a court order before it retrieves her dead husband’s password.
All Peggy Bush wants to do is play card games on her late hubby’s iPad — but the widow says she’s been dealt a bad hand by the tech giant.
“I thought it was ridiculous. I could get the pensions, I could get benefits, I could get all kinds of things from the federal government and the other government. But from Apple, I couldn’t even get a silly password. It’s nonsense,” Bush told CBC News.
David Bush died of lung cancer in August, and the couple owned both an iPad and an Apple computer.
Bush, 72, said she knows the iPad’s log-in code, but doesn’t know the Apple ID password.
“I just had the iPad. I didn’t touch his computer, it was too confusing to me … I didn’t realize he had a specific password I should have known about … it just never crossed my mind,” she said.
But when the tablet’s card game app stopped working, she tried to reload it, but realized it couldn’t be done without the password.
Bush’s daughter Donna said the company said her mom could get a new account — but that would mean paying for everything again.
“I just called Apple thinking it would be a fairly simple thing to take care of, and the person on the phone said, ‘Sure, no problem. We just need the will and the death certificate and to talk to Mom,'” she told CBC.
Donna said that despite providing the iPad serial number, a notarized death certificate and his will, Apple wouldn’t budge.
“I finally got someone who said, ‘You need a court order,’” Donna said. “I was just completely flummoxed.”
“What do you mean a court order?” she shot back. “I said that was ridiculous because we’ve been able to transfer the title of the house, we’ve been able to transfer the car, all these things just using a notarized death certificate and the will.”
Donna Bush even wrote a letter to Apple’s CEO Tim Cook about their “ridiculous” situation.