It beats waiting in line at an Apple Store.

A pair of brazen crooks punched another hole in the lax JFK security when they stole a trove of new Apple iPad minis — worth $1.5 million — from the same cargo building that was the site of the 1978 Lufthansa heist featured in “GoodFellas,” The Post has learned.

The crooks struck shortly before midnight on Monday and used one of the airport’s own forklifts to load two pallets of the tablet computers into a truck, according to law-enforcement sources.

They might have gotten more, but the thieves drove off leaving three more pallets of the Apple tablets behind after they were challenged by an airport worker returning from dinner.

“So, as a caper goes, it was probably unsuccessful,” a source said.

The thieves were still at large last night. Investigators, suspecting an inside job, have been questioning airport workers and given three of them polygraph tests, the sources said.

The crooks arrived at Building 261 around 11 p.m. in a white tractor trailer marked with the name CEVA on the side, according to the sources. They pulled up to the side of the airport building that faces onto a street and has less security than the other side, which is accessible from the airport tarmac.

Sources believe someone let them into the area and then let them out after they grabbed the iPads.

They grabbed about 3,600 of the minis that were being shipped by a company called Cargo Airport Services, which said the iPads had just arrived from China and were destined for locations around the US.

A group of crooks stole $5 million in cash and nearly $900,000 worth of jewelry from the same building at JFK on Dec. 11, 1978.

That haul would be some $21 million if adjusted for inflation and has been ranked as America’s largest robbery of cash ever.

The alleged mastermind of the robbery was Luchese crime-family associate James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke.

He allegedly got away with the crime after whacking nearly all of his co-conspirators in the heist — a legendary gangland bloodbath that was recounted in one of the most famous sequences of the Martin Scorsese film “GoodFellas.”

Hey, you. Yes, you, without the iPhone over there: I don't care how much you hate iOS, odds are you have dozens of friends on iPhones playing Letterpress right now.

You're missing out. Trust me.

And if it's not Letterpress, it's something else. Once upon a time, it was Words With Friends, which started on iOS before hitting Android. Where would any of us be without access to Words With Friends?

Maybe these are bad examples for some of you, but the point stands: even today, the best and most popular apps come to iOS first, and some remain iOS exclusives indefinitely. The variety and quality still easily outclass Android (as much as that pains me to say), and Windows Phone isn't even in the same league.

But I don't always want to be using an iPhone. Don't get me wrong, I've had every iPhone on launch day — a fact I'm not particularly proud to admit, considering the hours I've spent languishing in lines — but I do feel a sense of obligation to switch it up fairly regularly between iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Next year, I'll need to add BlackBerry 10 into that rotation, which scares the hell out of me.

Every time I switch, I'm thrown into a bit of disarray: I lose apps, I lose content, and I leave droves of games in limbo (I don't know how many times I've stopped playing a Strategery game halfway through with Dieter or Bryan because I got rid of an iPhone recently). It sucks. I was actually really enjoying using my Lumia 920, for instance, but I'd occasionally find myself waiting around somewhere and I'd reach into my pocket to blast through a few rounds of Letterpress, only to remember the cold hard truth of my Windows Phone circumstance.

Enter the iPad mini. It's my rock, my constant. I now know I've always got iOS nearby in case I stumble on an exciting new app or a game all my friends are playing, which is having a surprising impact on my stress level. I no longer feel bad about not having an iPhone from time to time.

The foundation of my suggestion, obviously, isn't new: you could buy an iPad or an iPod touch for years now and accomplish a similar effect. But carrying around two devices of the same form factor — an iPod touch and a Nexus 4 or Lumia 920, for instance — seems insane. And the iPad, as some others have described, is better suited to leave the coffee table as little as possible. But the iPad mini is the best of all worlds: it's small and light enough to take with me everywhere I go, large enough to be used as a legitimate tablet, and yet still small enough to not feel too silly running the occasional non-iPad-optimized iPhone app. And it keeps me close to the trove of apps that I'm not getting on my phone du jour.

I'm not saying that a go-everywhere tablet / phone combo is right for everyone, but it makes a lot more sense to me than any other mix (a Nexus 7 and an iPhone, for instance, or a Surface and a Galaxy Nexus).

Cyan? Strategery? Count me in.