Occasionally the internet turns up stories about people who've had their phones stolen, and successfully tracked them down using its 'Find My Phone' GPS feature.
But sometimes the story is a little darker.
That seems to be the case with Kenneth Schmidgall, who lost his phone on 30 December.
Using his ingenuity, the San Diego resident used Apple's 'Find My Phone' app to follow its signal. Eventually he found the source - a man riding a bike in a national reserve - and decided to confront him.
"I saw the gentleman on the bike and we followed it and kept tracking it and every time it would stop, the guy on the bike would stop," Schmidgall told local news.
In the video, he is seen getting hit by another man. Eventually a third man steps in to try and pepper spray the attacker, and an off-duty policeman eventually halts the violence until on-duty officers arrive.
Asked whether he thought the violence was worth it, he said:
"It's not the phone that's so much important. It's that people get away with this kind of stuff all the time with cellphones being stolen."
"I do think I taught him his lesson," he added.