Good luck selling that haul!
Apple stores are amazingly open, inviting, and easy to use.
The catch is, most of those devices will be useless if stolen.
Apple
Open Plan
Apple Stores are a very different experience than most other retail spaces.
They don’t feel like high-pressure sales machines.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
Phillipe Yuan / Unsplash
The vibe is more like a coffee bar or a social space.
This environment is a clear temptation to opportunistic thieves or planned heists.
And after-hours heists that target the back-office storerooms are usually more worthwhile.
But stealing those demo units is a total waste of time, thanks to Apple’s neat security protections.
For example, you cannot set a passcode on the iPhones and lock them.
If you reboot an in-store Mac, it resets itself to the original demo-unit state.
And since at least 2016, Apple has also included special anti-theft features in these custom operating-system builds.
In this case, the phone switches into a lost mode and stops working.
The phone will do nothing but display a message telling the user to return it to its store.
It also informs the thief that the phone is being tracked.
Secret Deterrent
But for a deterrent to work, potential ne’er-do-wells need to know about it.
So why doesn’t Apple make it more widely known?
One might counter that it’s already widely known enough.
And the other part of this is keeping the Apple Stores' relaxed atmosphere.
If you start putting up signs informing visitors about anti-theft measures, it’ll harsh their mellow.
