Apple Heist Empties Store in Just 31 Seconds | Hacker News Reader

Apple Heist Empties Store in Just 31 Seconds

wired.com

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The commentary makes it seem like ESPN meets a game show.

In Miami, people steal laptops and they just shrug it off, turn the alarms off, and go back to work. Saw two get stolen while waiting for a repair a few months ago. Eventually they called a guard to write it up.

I used to work at an Apple Store and although while I was an employee I was absolutely forbidden to discuss this (apple PR wanted to pretend it didn't happen), I can at least somewhat anonymously divulge somewhat the information now: My apple store was robbed during Christmas when the power went out.

The store was literally packed to the point where it was a fire hazard, the power went out for 10 to 15 seconds, and when it came back on, we were missing nearly every demo iPod and iPhone.

They never found the culprits.

I was impressed.

That's an impressive heist: sneak people in where they won't be noticed in a crowd, cut power to the store, and in the momentary scuffle of people leaving you'll never be caught.

Either that, or there was an ordinary power outage and quite a few people got the same idea at the same time. That's probably more likely since they only grabbed the pocketable stuff.

The article reads like a viral ad:

The magsafe cords detached instantly, offering no resistance and leaving power sockets undamaged.

Finally, the stiff unibody shells means that the villains could grab the notebooks one handed from a corner with no flexing, and no risk to the internal circuitry, the tough aluminum bodies resisting the jostling clanks inside the sacks.

I think that's a deliberate spoof of Apple's marketing.

That's hilarious! Now, to jive with the rest of Apple's marketing, it'd have to conclude with "The heist was pulled off 2.8X faster!"

Aren't laptops in stores usually attached with more than just power cords?

iirc, yes. i even remember playing with an ipod that had a security cord on it that i pulled too hard by accident and it set off an alarm.

I seem to recall seeing the computers, or at least iPods, attached via an alarm-headphone jack. That's fine for store hours but doesn't do any good at night.

They are but the security stuff is more to warn that something is getting stolen than to stop you from stealing it. It's not much more than a sensor stuck to the machines that sets off an alarm.

It won't really stop you from removing it from the table but it will stop you from just slipping it in a backpack.

Obviously, once you broker the front door, you're good to go.

I've seen Kensington cable locks in the store in San Francisco

"Empties store"? I suspect the writer has never worked in retail electronics or even bought anything from an Apple store. Display models are a fraction of merchandise on-hand.

iPhone developers are getting pretty desperate these days. :)

Funny that this other heist came up on rolfe-winlker's blog. Quite a contrast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk-1O31r1Q8&feature=playe...

heh, reminds me of the nvidia prototype video device thing they demonstrated at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year. It had a power cord and a tv cord attached and nothing else. It was kinda around the corner from where the nvidia employees were and there was nobody around. I stood opposite thinking how easy it would be to grab and run... :-P

Obviously I didn't, but it would have been interesting to own a prototype handheld video thingy. (they were using it to demonstrate their embedded gpu for smartphones, it was coool)

Holy crap, I used to work at that store!

And I bought my macbook there! Man, I remember when the only place worth stealing from in Marlton was K-mart...

Flagged. This is YouTube video material, it's not even interesting in any way other than fluff.

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