These anti-theft systems are one of the big reasons that so few users have their phones & laptops stolen from them.

I don't know how old you were in the 2000's, but even in restricted access college libraries, laptops were stolen constantly. In the first few years after iPhones came around, phone theft started becoming super common, and was eventually a constant source of news.

Back then the thieves weren't limited to professionals who had access to a fence who has contacts with shady factories overseas. Every single hard up person could benefit from grabbing a device, and doing a DFU reset or wiping the hard drive. The market and opportunity for thievery was soooo much bigger.