Where iCloud and the cops fail, open source seizes the day

In the most recent tale of woe, a college student ahead of me at a Best Buy was buying his second MacBook Pro in three months. The impetus behind this decision went as follows: the first one, despite his having set up an iCloud account upon arriving home and setting the notebook up, had been stolen from his bedroom. And while iCloud had worked as advertised and was able to show the computer’s current location, calls to the local police department had gone nowhere (the police were able to identify an apartment building that the MacBook Pro was now located in via its Wi-Fi port from, but stated they couldn’t investigate the area and that the situation would be better if the owner were able to provide even a rough description of the thief, or, better yet, been able to track the computer from the point where it was originally stolen to its current location).