Its not just ability to make bombs out of laptops, but also discovered plans to do so. If in our silly senario it came out that we did a raid on a terrorist hideout and found plans to hide bombs inside shoes to bomb planes, and that shoes are more suitable than other items to making these bombs and that terrorists had been perfecting shoe bombs - then yes it might be prudent to ask people to remove shoes during flights. You are right - its a balancing act between risk and precaution, in this case I dont think its unreasonable to ask people to check in laptops when we find terrorist plans to blow up planes with laptop bombs
