True, but a laptop is much more of a hassle to quickly grab and run with than a phone.
What also helps is having one that's full of stickers or overall looks fairly (ab)used. A pristine MacBook is going to be much more of a target than a random ThinkPad with a sticker, greasy keyboard and 20 scratches.
Depends on where and when you are. Some hyped up dude is fixated on the next fix and lacks the executive function to discriminate. The more professional thieves are more discriminating.
I agree that it’s just a matter of when it’s stolen, not if it’s going to be stolen.
The article suggests the laptop is about $300, and he uses it about 1hr/day.
If the laptop is stolen less than once a year he spends less than $1/hr for coding on the go, which I would consider a fair deal.
By “when” I mean time of day. If you’re heading somewhere in Brooklyn after 7pm, that’s different than heading to the city at 7am.
There’s probably no market for it, but it might be interesting to make a MacBook case/cover and/or stickers that make it look old, cracked, scratched, and dirty.
It would be interesting to see if that would deter a thief.
https://nuroco.com/products/mosiso-laptop-pu-case-for-new-ma...
Reminds me of the old SNL sketch: https://streamable.com/m7omz