Only on Hacker News would I have someone arguing with me that laptop theft is not a concern. You know what, you win. It's your $6,000 laptop, not mine.
A $6000 laptop doesn’t look much different than a $1000 laptop. I don’t think it’s a bigger theft risk than any other laptop.
Make sure the laptop is insured and that full disk encryption is enabled. If it’s a Mac, make sure you have it in Find My so you can wipe it remotely if that’s something you worry about.
Honestly, I didn't bother making a better case for why I wouldn't want a $6,000 laptop in large part because the nerve people have to argue that theft isn't a concern at all made me stubborn. Theft is one reason, but a laptop is also a hell of a lot easier to simply break or lose than a desktop that is permanently installed somewhere, and a desktop is more upgradable and repairable, with typically much more I/O.
Today's baseline laptops are really good as it is. 32-64 GiB of RAM is plenty, and at least on PC laptops you can do it fairly cheaply. Apple has been a consistent year or two ahead in mobile CPU performance but it fell out of my consideration ever since I realized the M1 and 7040 were both very sufficient for any local computation I cared about. (I'm not going to say I'd specifically go for less efficiency or performance, but it has become significantly lower priority over other things like repairability.)
Not really specifically hating on Apple, here. If I was going to get another Mac it'd be a Mac Mini or Mac Studio probably, ideally with a third-party SSD upgrade to both save on costs and get a slight bit of extra drive performance too. I've definitely considered it, even though I am very far from an Apple fan, just due to the superior value and efficiency they have in many categories.
For what it's worth, I never once insinuated that a laptop would get stolen on a train, only that I wouldn't want to bring such a laptop into the public in the first place. (Presumably, the laptop doesn't come into and exit existence upon entering and exiting the train, so this remains somewhat of a concern even if trains are involved.)
But yes, you're right. I've never personally seen a laptop get stolen. In fact, most people who have their laptop get stolen never see their laptop get stolen either.
I have, however, had coworkers who've had their laptops stolen. Multiple times.
