Okay, so about all these schools, districts, and states (like Greene County in North Carolina, Henrico County in Virginia, and the entire state of Maine) that took the plunge and leased AirPort-equipped iBooks for all their middle and/or high school students: everyone knew there would be hurdles to clear. The teachers would have to be trained-- not just in integrating the laptops into their lesson plans, but also in basic troubleshooting when things went wrong. And things would go wrong; we all know a Mac can be virtually pain-free to maintain, but when you're talking about dozens, hundreds, or even tens of thousands of Macs, maybe not so much-- especially ones being lugged from classroom to classroom every forty minutes, dragged between home and school in backpacks, and tweaked on the software end by bored teens angling for some Unreal Tournament action.

So: new equipment, new procedures, new rules... no doubt, it was a big adjustment and not without its setbacks and downsides, but overall most people felt that the pros of the iBook programs far outweigh the cons. Of course, most people also didn't realize that one of the cons would be students occasionally being held at gunpoint. Go figure.

Yup, apparently things have gotten a little sketchy around Miramar High School in the Miami area; faithful viewer Ryan McLean tipped us off to a Miami Herald article that describes "a series of armed thefts of Apple iBook computers from students walking to and from school." An attempted robbery on Thursday morning was "the third in as many days, and the eighth time a student had been accosted walking to or from school." In most cases, two men drive up alongside one or more students on foot, one gets out ("often with a gun"), gives the classic "your iBook or your life" spiel, gets back in the car with the goods, and the two drive off. So far eleven iBooks have been stolen outside of the school by robbers threatening violence.

The scary bit is that police had already arrested three people for various other Miramar High iBook thefts and robberies (including one involving a threat with a hammer-- yeek), but obviously "some robbers are still at large." And when the two-guys-with-a-gun-and-a-car finally get nabbed, who's to say someone else won't start accosting students with, say, a chainsaw, or the threat of off-key a cappella show tunes? After all, when you've got a whole high school full of kids and every single one of them is toting a compact and easily-pawned $1,200 laptop, that's pretty much the textbook definition of "easy pickin's." What better way for a bad guy to pick up some quick cash?

In an attempt to keep its students from having gats shoved in their faces every other day, Miramar High recently instituted a policy mandating that students who walk to and from school leave their iBooks at home-- which is why Thursday's incident was only an "attempted robbery" and the creeps left the scene empty-handed. Unfortunately, that policy sort of defeats the purpose of having the iBooks in the first place, so it's not exactly an ideal solution. Perhaps this is an opportunity for Apple to introduce a new and highly profitable line of personal protection products in the education channel; big-city schools would jump at an iBook-iKevlar-iTaser bundle.