Apple¡¯s not stupid. When it displays gadgets in its many stores, those all come with security measures that allow staff to disable them, rendering them useless to thieves. That doesn¡¯t stop criminals though, and they can strike at really inconvenient times.
Apple
Though Apple stores have been robbed before, the company¡¯s outlets have been facing thefts particularly frequently these past couple of months. And yet, none of those cases come close to this recent one right from Palo Alto in Silicon Valley.
According to a local publication, the Apple store in Palo Alto was robbed at 7pm local time on Saturday last week. The thieves, eight of them, dashed into the store and made off with $57,000 worth of demo iPhones, including the new iPhone XS and XS Max. They then made their escape in multiple vehicles.??
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As if that wasn¡¯t enough, a passerby called the police at 5:50am on Sunday, saying the store¡¯s glass front door was smashed. This time, the suspects fled with another $50,000 worth of iPads, iPhones, and other products. That makes two thefts at the same store in under 12 hours!
The worst part was, both thefts occurred over the weekend immediately after the iPhone XS and XS Max launched in the US on Friday. Coincidentally, Apple CEO Tim Cook himself had been at that particular store during the Friday launch event.
Reuters
Police say they haven¡¯t yet arrested or even identified any of the suspects. It also remains unclear if the two robberies were connected or two gangs of thieves just happened to have such similar timelines.
Despite the losses however, Apple can at least say with certainty that the stolen devices will be useless to the crooks. All demo pieces run on a special modified version of iOS. This includes a ¡®kill switch¡¯ that permanently disables the device when it goes out of range of the store¡¯s WiFi.
Maybe that¡¯s something Apple needs to publicize more to discourage would be store thieves at their outlets.