3 ms·

I feel there have been plenty of stories about smash and grab stuff in apple stores but surely the trucks carrying shipping container of new apple products must

by olliej 3y ago

I feel there have been plenty of stories about smash and grab stuff in apple stores but surely the trucks carrying shipping container of new apple products must be valuable targets

gumby 3y ago
I thought smash and grab at apple had almost vanished because the valuable stuff won't operate if stolen. I know the display units won't work, and ones already set up have varying (but generally pretty high) levels of resuse security (which has made them less likely to be stolen on the street). I assume apple can prevent an uninitialized phone stolen in its box from being initialized. You can walk into an apple store and walk out with a $100 power supply. I assume that happens so infrequently that they just don't care.
bequanna 3y ago
Can’t Apple just remote brick stolen items? I thought they were doing this with stolen merchandise.
- RegnisGnaw 3y ago
  How? The $100 power supply? The $150 dock?
  - olliej 3y ago
    My original comment was thinking of the things that have high resale value - e.g. the actual computers, phones, etc but from other comments it sounds like they've got sufficient methods in place to make such devices worthless (I guess they could treat them like gift cards are nowadays where until the sale is registered the initial activation fails but if were in charge of such a system I'd be incredibly worried about accidentally screwing up for paying customers)
    - RegnisGnaw 3y ago
      The $100 charger and $150 docks are way easier to sell. At the local flea market, you can see people selling stolen stuff from the local pharmacy. There are obvious 4 or 8 packs of razor blades that are stolen (with the sticker that says "For sale at Shoppers Drug Mart only" on them).
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Smash and grabbers that work apple stores simply aren't very smart, since Apple locks down their hardware from thievery pretty well at the software level (to the chagrin of the OSS community). The smash and grabs that can make money and catch attention these days happen at luxury bag shops.

by olliej 3y ago

I feel there have been plenty of stories about smash and grab stuff in apple stores but surely the trucks carrying shipping container of new apple products must be valuable targets

gumby 3y ago

I thought smash and grab at apple had almost vanished because the valuable stuff won't operate if stolen. I know the display units won't work, and ones already set up have varying (but generally pretty high) levels of resuse security (which has made them less likely to be stolen on the street). I assume apple can prevent an uninitialized phone stolen in its box from being initialized. You can walk into an apple store and walk out with a $100 power supply. I assume that happens so infrequently that they just don't care.

bequanna 3y ago

Can’t Apple just remote brick stolen items? I thought they were doing this with stolen merchandise.

RegnisGnaw 3y ago
How? The $100 power supply? The $150 dock?
- olliej 3y ago
  My original comment was thinking of the things that have high resale value - e.g. the actual computers, phones, etc but from other comments it sounds like they've got sufficient methods in place to make such devices worthless (I guess they could treat them like gift cards are nowadays where until the sale is registered the initial activation fails but if were in charge of such a system I'd be incredibly worried about accidentally screwing up for paying customers)
  - RegnisGnaw 3y ago
    The $100 charger and $150 docks are way easier to sell. At the local flea market, you can see people selling stolen stuff from the local pharmacy. There are obvious 4 or 8 packs of razor blades that are stolen (with the sticker that says "For sale at Shoppers Drug Mart only" on them).

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

Smash and grabbers that work apple stores simply aren't very smart, since Apple locks down their hardware from thievery pretty well at the software level (to the chagrin of the OSS community). The smash and grabs that can make money and catch attention these days happen at luxury bag shops.