Monday, May 12, 2008

To catch a thief

This can only be described as a beautiful Macintosh story, almost a fairy tale in crime detection.

A burglary was committed in the New York apartment of a woman who happens to be an Apple store employee, and the thief got away with TVs, iPods, DVDs and two laptop Macs. The lady had subscribed to the .Mac online service, which included a tool named Back to My Mac that enables you to use a second machine to get in contact with your home Mac, and to operate the latter in a remote fashion, just as if you were sitting in front of it. Realizing that the robber was using her stolen Mac, the lady used Back to My Mac to take control of the machine, whereupon she was able to use its built-in camera to take a photo of the robber, staring at the screen, and to receive an email copy of this portrait. She showed the photo to friends who had been to a party in her apartment, and they instantly recognized the robber, and supplied his name and address. The lady then wandered into the local police station and supplied the startled cops with a complete description of the crime, including an excellent portrait of the culprit. She immediately recovered nearly all her stolen stuff. As for the robber, if ever he were to find himself behind bars for a short spell, he might look into the idea of using his spare time to do a bit of reading about the advanced possibilities of the Macintosh.

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