In both cases, the location tracking functions only if you’ve enabled the device’s location services. But what should you do while you wait for law enforcement?Īpple’s solution is the “Find My Mac” or “Find My iPhone” service. When a thief absconds with your phone, tablet, or computer, naturally you call the police. I later learned that in the course of just three days, thieves had picked off unsuspecting Apple users in at least 24 Starbucks locations around the region known as the Inland Empire. The phenomenon is called “Apple picking,” and it’s an epidemic in major cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York-as well as in Southern California suburbs, as it turned out. I was a regular patron of the place, it was three o’clock in the afternoon, and plenty of witnesses were around. The crime itself was brazen: I was in the middle of typing an email when a young man snatched my laptop from beneath my fingertips, ran out the door of the Starbucks where I was seated, and jumped into a waiting car.įrankly, I had let my guard down. I was content to labor blissfully away in the belief that laptop thefts happen to other people-until, in January, I became one of those other people. According to the FBI, 97 percent of them are never recovered. You hear the statistic all the time-so often, in fact, that it becomes noise: A laptop is stolen every 53 seconds.
