[curiousuburb]

IIRC, there are some 3rd party technologies that add a GPRS or other bit of hardware to some laptops and then have them 'phone home' if stolen.

Most of these are PC based options, but I seem to remember at least one PowerBook owner claiming he had something similar in software... don't enter your unlock code periodically and it calls home.

Perhaps Apple is leaving the market to these kind of 3rd party companies. Doesn't help you much now, but in future you might investigate such tools.