Apple fans can tell you, sometimes even if you don’t ask, that the Macintosh is useful not just because of the system overall, but some of the little things included with the OS X operating system. Some of the added options are handy too, for example; Back to My Mac, which recently helped capture two low-level thieves.
Value added service from Apple foils laptop theft. (IMG:J.Anderson)
On April 27, over five thousand dollars worth in personal items were lifted from a White Plains, New York apartment. The stolen items included, iPods, laptops (including one MacBook), computer games, DVD’s, flat screen TV’s, car rims, some liquor, and various other items. They were owned by Kait Duplaga and her three roommates. Duplaga, extreme Mac user and Apple Store employee, was able to use a bit of her working knowledge and love of Apples OS X features to capture the criminals and get most of the stolen property returned.
According to the story in the White Plains Journal, the case broke when Duplaga got an instant message from a friend congratulating her on the return of the stolen items. Apparently, Duplaga’s instant messenger account had popped up online on and off over the previous few days, and her friend noticed it. Duplaga then went to another Mac computer and used a feature called ‘Back to My Mac’. Back to My Mac requires a .Mac subscription. It allows you to remotely connect and control any Leopard-based Mac,
Using this feature, Duplaga used another Mac and remotely accessed her stolen one, and as luck would have it, the thief was still there using the newly acquired hardware. She issued a few commands and activated the camera feature on the MacBook, and was able to snap a few pictures of the thief.
“When you take a picture with that computer, it shows a countdown, and when it does, this guy figures out what’s going on,” Daniel Jackson, the deputy commissioner of public safety in White Plains, said. “It all clicks for him, and he puts his hand up to cover the lens, but it was too late. She had already taken the picture.”
Duplaga did not know who the person on the other side was, but one of her roomies did, the person was at a party held weeks earlier with another man. Both were later identified as, Edmon Shahikian, 23, of 13 Cobbling Rock Road, Katonah, and Ian Frias, 20, of 1609 E. 174th St., the Bronx, and were arrested, and according to the police, almost all the stolen items located in their homes.
Frias is currently still in jail on a $7500 bond, Shahikian was released on a $3500 bond.
Back to My Mac will cost about $99 yearly, and is available for OS X Leopard.http://www.apple.com/dotmac/backtomymac.html
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