14 DAY TRIAL // An Israeli man has successfully recovered his stolen Apple tablet using the ‘Find My iPad’ service in MobileMe guided by his wife and daughter who were sitting at home in front of their computer, watching the ‘blue dot’ move.
As he returned to his car after doing some planting at a local cemetery, Jacob Dayan found a very unpleasant surprise - the window on his car was smashed, his bag containing credit cards and an iPad, stolen.
“When I call my wife to tell her the bad news, it hits me. I can find my iPad! I ask my daughter Vered to log in to my MobileMe accounts, and within few minutes I hear the good news – the blue dot is active, my iPad is on the map!” he relates on his blog.
“I start the chase, and Vered instructs me from remote. ‘Turn left … they are heading to the other cemetery… they are now approaching Rt 40..”.’
Throughout the 10-mile chase, Dayan calls the police but they refuse to assist until a proper complaint is filed. To do this, Dayan is instructed to stop the chase and proceed to the nearest police station.
“How frustrating!” he writes. Dayan continues to rush to the location where ‘Find My iPad’ says his tablet is.
Just in the neck of time, Israeli police decides to drop the formalities and assist.
“A policewoman and her assistant arrive, and we stand next to the apartment’s doors. Vered is pushing the button from far away, commanding the iPad to start an alarm sound.”
“Yes ! We can hear a sound coming out from one of the apartments. We’re not sure if it is the second or third floor, so we start banging on both doors. The iPad sound fades away,” he writes.
The daughter then informs Dayan that the iPad is again out of the building. Based on what she sees on the live map feed at home, the iPad is seemingly somewhere in “the bushes between the building and the road.”
“I rush downstairs, and here it is. Inside the thick bush, my iPad is beeping an alarm sound. Hurray, my iPad is safe, not even a scratch.”
Dayan says the policewoman couldn’t believe her eyes. As she stood in awe, “She calls her supervisor to tell him that the unbelievable just happened. The story is real. This lunatic person, that claimed that the iPad is in this site, is correct. The iPad, stolen 10 miles away, is here.”
The police had their hands tied as they couldn’t break into an apartment without a warrant. But they did ask for a demo of the iPad, Dayan says.