Software utilities

Some time ago, I forgot my memory stick in an internet café. I was half-way home when I realised, but I ran back anyway in the hopes that, by some miracle, it’d still be there, that it would have grown sharp teeth and barked at anyone who tried to take it.

Did I find it? Erm, no.

I have now come to the conclusion that it’s my memory stick’s fault it got stolen. Because it wasn’t a MacBook. If it was a MacBook and someone stole it, I’d have much better luck getting my Mac back.

Let me explain:

In New York, there was a woman whose Macbook got stolen last month after thieves broke into her apartment. It wasn’t just her Macbook though – about $5000 worth of electrical equipment got stolen, too, including another Macbook, two iPods, two flat-screen DVD’s and game consoles.

The police had no luck tracing the thieves. However, Apple have this clever little feature on their Macs (called ‘Back to My Mac’) that allows you to access your Mac remotely (using another Mac).

The woman was able to tap into her stolen book remotely, activate its camera, take pictures of one of the thieves who was using it at the time and forward the pics on to the police. The two guys were subsequently caught and arrested and most of the items were recovered.

Turns out the guys were friends of friends who had shown up at a party the woman had held several weeks before the robbery.

Though ‘Back to My Mac’ wasn’t invented for the purposes of catching thieves (how could Apple have known?), it sure came in handy, didn’t it?! Very!

(p.s: I bet the woman won’t have another house party for some time to come).