You'll have to wait

I needed to factory reset a phone, and imagine my surprise when I entered the Apple ID password and it didn't work. I tried password recovery and was greeted with a wonderful thing — a security delay, or however you'd translate it.

This year Apple introduced a feature where if someone wants to reset their Apple ID password, they have to wait an hour. There's nothing they can do with the phone during that time — it just keeps showing the prompt. Which, if you're a user who's lost their phone, gives you time to react — remote wipe, marking the device as lost, etc.

That wasn't my case though. I legitimately wanted to do a factory reset… but there was nothing I could do except wait. An hour. You can try Apple Support through another Apple device, but you'll end up at the same screen counting down the timer.

The lesson is clear — I'll double-check the password I'm saving before I end up confused later.