Find My iPhone 5
Quickly! The thief is in a gas station on top of the Houston skyscraper over there! :P
Thefts of iPhones and iPads in New York City have increased at a rate ten times higher than other crime during this year – and the police are offering help to protect your Apple kit. New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne told Bloomberg that iPads and iPhones are a "magnet for crime, including robberies, driving the …
No matter what the daily mail wants you to believe there isn't actually that much real crime on a day to day basis.
Secondly, no every cop is cut out for fighting rreal crime. That's why they've even been known to be handing out bike lights at my local train station.
I know your nerdy fanboy senses are tingling but no need to get yourself worked up over this. The police aren't in apple's back pocket.
I can assure you that I was not suggesting that they were and furthermore my "nerdy fanboy senses" are at all times fully under control. :P
I was referring to the desire of the police to be seen to be doing something when the crime concerned is attracting public attention and (implicitly) how more serious offences don't get the attention they should.
It may surprise you, but many of the people who commit "petty larceny" are also involved in other bigger crimes. Once the cops have an excuse to search a flat on the grounds that there's a stolen phone in it, they can find all sorts of other things.No smoke without fire, and all that.
Same thing applies to cars. I'm told that UK police often check out supermarket car parks looking for cars with expired tax discs, bald tyres, etc. The owners who display no regard for the little laws are often mixed up in bigger things.
my satnav was satnabbed earlier this year (for various reasons the car was unlocked on the drive when it was nicked). Didn't report it as no damage done and it was an old model anyway (I'd have bough another within a few weeks). I just informed Garmin it was stolen, in case the scrotes tried to unlock it.
Imaging my jaw-dropping surprise to get a call from the police a few weeks ago telling me they had recovered the satnav (along with 20 others !) after a local towrag got arrested for something completely unconnected. They searched his house and lo and behold.
The most intriguing thing the copper dealing it told me was that most people don't lock or register their satnavs. So the other recovered ones are going to sit in the evidence room.
If the dumb crim had thrown my satnav away when he realised it was locked, he would probably have skated.
by a copper, because the car I was driving was missing the tax disc (I was working for a garage and had trade plates). When I asked him why the police were involved in a revenue matter, he just smiled and said that almost invariably people who didn't pay their road tax almost always didn't have an MOT, or insurance, and it would be a evens bet they would either be banned or just not have a license - 5 crimes from one stop. And these people are many times more likely to be involved in hit and runs.
Don't be daft. The cost of the tax disc is trivial by comparison to that of maintaining the car to a standard where it'll pass the MOT and insuring it.
If the driver's skimped on the tax disc, it's highly likely that he won't have some of the more expensive bits required to get one.
........of their customer base for whom a great deal of the point of the exercise is that everybody should know that they own a product from A Certain Famously Cool Mobile Phone Producer. The fact that after dark in certain areas of the average major city this is equivalent to walking around wearing a large billboard saying "please mug me" does present them with something of a conundrum. I will admit that the mental image of a couple shadowy figures lurking in a doorway watching their mark strolling down the street and the one saying to the other "me first with the barista" is irresistible.
Nothing to do with thieves:
Sensible person finally cracking under lack of expected activity: Why haven't your cornered me and shown me all the amazing new facilities of that iPhone you spent all night queueing for?
Fanbois:(thinks: my chihuahua is too small to have swallowed this massive disappointment) I was mugged and it was stolen (uses PC to locate 'Will it blend').
Surely as soon as the handset is stolen you just deactivate it via the IMEI number and it becomes a paperweight? Also the tracking stuff will lead to cops straight to it.
Additionally, I do tend to see a lot of iDevice users walking around with them on show in one hand at arms length in a kind of 'look at me' style. I even saw some guy the other day walking down the street listening to music on his iPad, which he was carrying out in front of him.
For reasons best known to themselves US operators don't use the IMEI blacklist, so your nicked iPhone is fully-functional in the 'States. Except for the Maps, of course.
To be fair, I believe they are just about to start enforcing the blacklist, like operators in most of the world have been doing for years.
> "thefts of Apple products increased this year as the theft of electronics by other manufacturers declined."
So does the number of "thefts" bear any relationship to the release of new models? Given that a phone is so easy to brick once nicked, as the reduction in thefts of "other manufacturers" goods indicates, you've got to wonder what's really going on.
Ahh Semtex, wonderful stuff, produced in the Soviet Bloc, and exported to the IRA via Libya using kindly donated money collected in American pubs (Noraid) to blow up UK civilians, and indeed the UK Goverment Cabinet in a hotel in Brighton in 1984.
Somehow, this suddenly became unacceptable behaviour after 9/11, can you imagine why? :P
For much the same reason that they like sportswear tat with the most famous logos all over it like Nike, i.e. advertising-susceptible types :P
On a side issue, I tried explaining my Eastern European other half about the "no-logo" movement.....
got just a blank stare! For now, they just want company branded stuff, Japanese, South Korean or German, or Swedish, but maybe that will change.
No, she doesn''t rob iPhones, as far as I know..... ;)
I always thought the Americans were 10 year ahead of the UK (or so people say)?
Then why are they chasing after tech thats just OLD? Being seen with a mullet wouldn't make people think "wow, he's on trend". Being seen with iPhone isn't a status symbol anymore, quite the opposite in fact!
Owners clearly don not know that it is 2012 and what tech is available out there.
Its akin to your granny thinking the VCR is great!
Id bet most middle class people have between $1k and $5k of "stuff" either on their person or in their vehicle at any given point in time. Whether phones, jewelry, watches, tablets or what have you.
Where I'm at we have signs everywhere saying "take, lock and hide" trying to remind people not to leave crap out in their car. So I applaud the New York police for being visible in reminding people that they are now walking around with a target on their back. Are their "more important" crimes they could be working on? Possibly, but this is certainly one that is easy to stop if people just paid attention and takes no more than a simple reminder every so often.