Find My iPhone is live, totally found our iPhone

We wouldn't really say we "have it together" when it comes to remembering where we put our keys / phone / small children, so Apple's announcement of the Find My iPhone service for MobileMe users came as quite a relief. The service just went live, and with a quick toggle of a preference pane in iPhone OS 3.0 the phone is fully prepared for all sorts of lost and found scenarios -- along with acting as an incredibly intuitive (if pricey) stalking mechanism. Find My iPhone works exactly as advertised, giving us a fairly good location estimate from within our lead-lined underground fortress, and sending annoying messages to the phone complete with sound, even when the handset is switched to silent, though unfortunately the sound is a sort of sonar ping that strikes us as incredibly difficult to locate, unless of course our phone is taken by whale. The only other problem is that both the location function and the message service took a couple minutes to track down our iPhone -- not a deal breaker, but we don't know what the hangup could be. After the device is pinged, a confirmation of the event was sent to our MobileMe email address. A live, enthralling video demonstration is after the break.

Gallery: Find My iPhone is live, totally found our iPhone

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[lxuke @ Jun 9th 2009 7:20PM]

iFirst

[CleverEndeavor @ Jun 9th 2009 7:22PM]

you have no life.

[webran61 @ Jun 9th 2009 7:23PM]

I would imagine, seeing as it installed itself in my Control Panel.

[Dakota @ Jun 9th 2009 7:25PM]

iDouche. Nobody cares if you're first.

Also, the GPS lag is going to be there - it's the same lag with AT&T's FamilyMap service. About 2 minutes or so on average for the device to respond to a location request.

[CleverEndeavor @ Jun 9th 2009 7:25PM]

@webran61,
wut?

[webran61 @ Jun 9th 2009 7:29PM]

Mine was directed @ Liquid Fusion below.

[Evangelion @ Jun 9th 2009 7:30PM]

iDiot...

[Quantumphysics @ Jun 9th 2009 7:37PM]

Once I have my iphone's location, I'm going to get my Glock and 3 clips to go retrieve it.

[Michael @ Jun 9th 2009 8:56PM]

@QuantumPhysics

That's your reaction to losing your iPhone? Pretty sure you should never have kids...

[AuDioFreaK39 @ Jun 9th 2009 9:48PM]

Did you guys notice how his WiFi connection dropped from maximum signal to just one bar after he tapped Ok to end the alert? Interesting..

[sanriver12 @ Jun 9th 2009 10:06PM]

zomg i lost my fail phone
seriously tho, very cool feature.

ps. low rank also the morons who respond to "first posts" you are only encouraging them, please just ignore them.
this is just an example.

[iphonerulez @ Jun 9th 2009 10:40PM]

Ha. The Pre is totally pwned. Na, na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye.

Now every handset company will be marketing some "find their phones feature". I can't wait till they start sending out the bloodhounds.

Apple didn't do Find My iPhone first, they merely did it the best. Peace and love to the iPhone-haters.

[CraigJ @ Jun 9th 2009 11:23PM]

@QuantumPhysics

Magazine.

[LiQuiD_FuSioN @ Jun 9th 2009 7:21PM]

Sucks that you *have* to have MobileMe to get this. Is it even that good of a service?

[Ben @ Jun 9th 2009 7:24PM]

so what its Apples product, Apples idea so they have every right to make it mobile me only :)

[Gerard @ Jun 9th 2009 7:28PM]

Att also offers this for other phones with GPS but they charge you 15 a month to use it. So MobileMe is actually cheaper

[utahnkid @ Jun 9th 2009 7:46PM]

I LOOOVE my MobileMe service, if you have an iPhone I almost consider it a must have. I use it to publish my website with iWeb, my email (which works flawlessly with the iPhone, better than Gmail as far as speed of notification) keep and share files for/with clients with iDisk, and best of all is how it keeps all my devices synchronized. I have an iPhone, MacBook Pro, and iMac and it automatically and seamlessly keeps all my pertinent information synchronized between the three of them. Add a contact in my iPhone, and as soon as I get home it's already sitting in both computer's address book (it even adds any picture you may have attached). Add a contact to my iMac and it's on my phone as soon as I check it - no manual synchronizing, no connecting any cables, it just works every time, on it's own. It even keeps my settings, bookmarks, mail accounts, and passwords the same as well. If you don't have an iPhone and use a Mac I wouldn't recommend it at all, just use Gmail. If you do though, and don't have it, you're seriously missing out.

[Dr. Spaceman @ Jun 9th 2009 7:46PM]

I think MobileMe is great. I really like the web mail. This is just the icing on the cake.

[Bufsabre @ Jun 9th 2009 7:51PM]

@Utahnkid

so basicially for someone like me who only has one mac (which is only for production purposes) its serves no value for anything other than mail? Or are there other features?

[utahnkid @ Jun 9th 2009 8:07PM]

Do you not have an iPhone as well? If not then yeah I would just stick with one of the other free services. iDisk IS nice, as well as the email and calendar services, but you can do this for free. It's really the auto synchronization that seals the deal.

If you have an iPhone and even just one Mac I would still highly recommend it though.

[LiQuiD_FuSioN @ Jun 9th 2009 8:54PM]

Hmmm.. I understand it's Apple's decision, I was just whining though.

When I really need to backup and easily retrieve contact information, I will definitely look into MobileMe. For now, I'm not much of a businessperson, I use the iPhone for leisure mostly (and some work/school stuff).

[MrNuclear @ Jun 10th 2009 12:08AM]

I also consider it a must-have (if you have a Mac & iPhone that is) for reasons mentioned above. I also use it combined with SpanningSync to sync the wife's Gmail calendar with mine - very handy for remembering birthdays, etc.

[james @ Jun 10th 2009 12:15AM]

I didn't even know what "MobileMe" was. Googling says: "MobileMe is a service that pushes new email, contacts, and calendar events over the air to all your devices. So your iPhone, Mac, and PC stay in perfect sync. No docking required. And that’s just one of many ways MobileMe simplifies your life"

Sounds exactly like Dashwire for windows mobile, except dashwire.com is completely free. It's a little different though: dashwire syncs contacts, photos, videos, call log, text log, bookmarks from IE mobile browser.

[mannymix @ Jun 10th 2009 4:17AM]

I gotta say, its a great service when I lost my iphone at the airport on a business trip, I checked my mobile me contacts on my laptop and still had all of my business contacts that I have collected over the course of many years. Its a good backup for clumsy people such as myself =p, plus my calendar is there too :D

[djangofan @ Jun 10th 2009 9:45PM]

You could totally turn on "audio record" on the phone an stash it under the seat of your kids car and then you'd get a complete rundown of all the stuff that goes down as well as location.

lol

[bolezhinkov @ Jun 9th 2009 7:22PM]

nice bible app.

[SHotta @ Jun 9th 2009 7:23PM]

Great feature, but it has been around for a while on WinMo phones.

[Franco @ Jun 9th 2009 7:30PM]

Yes, most people know the ideas of find my iphone is not new. the only reason this is a big deal is the way the function is implemented such as how it can override the silent mode of the iphone and how the service is set up so it is easy to get access to it without going through complicated steps.

[somewonone @ Jun 9th 2009 7:33PM]

Shotta,
Exactly.

Franco,
It's even simpler to implement on WinMo.

And, you do not require a special app to access your phones data/location with, simple email or SMS access will suffice.

Oh, and many of the WinMo tracker apps are FREE.

[Paul a. Chapel @ Jun 9th 2009 7:44PM]

Great. The problem is, WinMo is shite.

[patriotsn1 @ Jun 9th 2009 8:10PM]

@Paul

No it's not.

[Paul a. Chapel @ Jun 9th 2009 8:22PM]

Well, now, what a compelling argument. I've changed mind. WinMo is not shite.

[patriotsn1 @ Jun 9th 2009 8:34PM]

Just trying to match the quality of your initial statement.

You are very typical of people that like Apple products.

[Templarian @ Jun 9th 2009 8:38PM]

@patriotsn1, typical he's their spokesman.

[patriotsn1 @ Jun 9th 2009 8:45PM]

Well I sure hope they are paying him! Otherwise he has a very sad meaningless life...

[OneLove @ Jun 9th 2009 8:55PM]

if you want to see if your girlfriend is cheating on you, hide your iphone in her car and then "find my iphone"! lol.

[andi @ Jun 9th 2009 11:01PM]

As much of a troll paul is, he does have a valid point. Windows mobile is a horrible OS for a majority of non-businessmen. Most people don't like using computers that much, what makes you think they'd want to go back to what essentially is windows 98.

A couple of months ago I had to choose between the iphone 3g and the touch pro from HTC. The touch pro lasted all of one day before I had to take it back. It loaded pages slower than the iphone, it's interface was convoluted and the only way to "fix" the issue would be to install a cooked ROM. While I may know how to do that, the average person doesn't. Also installing a cooked ROM is not anything like a jailbreak for the iphone. I jailbroke my 3g in less than 5 minutes and when I later had to take it into apple store ( headphone jack went wonky ) I was back to default in less than 3 minutes.
I have an xbox 360.
I have a Zune ( and I believe it beats the ipod classic ).
I use windows xp, windows vista and windows 7 ( I use windows 7 over OS X )
In spite of all this microsoft's windows mobile is like internet explorer. Old, obsolete, and quickly being replaced by superior alternatives ( pre-OS etc. ).

[ImaYam @ Jun 9th 2009 11:28PM]

@ andi

"most people dont like using computers"

source???

Idiot.

[Eddie @ Jun 10th 2009 1:04PM]

I'm a WIndows person but find that the very stagnant WinMo experience on my HTC Advantage and HTC Fuze have me looking at alternatives. For example, without TouchFLo on the Fuze, the screen is unusable without a stylus -- why is it taking so long for Microsoft to implement a newer more touch friendly environment? Playing with the current iPhone at the store allowed me to compare it with the Fuze. I was quite impressed.....

[mike @ Jun 9th 2009 7:24PM]

Whats that phone looking icon next to the wifi icon in the status bar?

[Paul Miller @ Jun 9th 2009 7:25PM]

I have call forwarding on to my Pre.

[Doug @ Jun 9th 2009 7:56PM]

Whoa! That would've been nice to have that icon there in 2.0... I accidentally left call forwarding on a number of times. Friggin hell.

[LiQuiD_FuSioN @ Jun 10th 2009 12:19AM]

"I have call forwarding on to my Pre."

Hahaha.

Can you then forward those iPhone calls from your Pre back to the iPhone? Curious what would happen.

[Frank Tinsley @ Jun 9th 2009 7:25PM]

Aww you guys totally ripped off my tweet! http://twitter.com/franktinsley/status/2094911327

[collide007 @ Jun 10th 2009 12:43AM]

LOL, yours is funnier. Achmid the Dead Terrorist FTW!

[Robert Harrold @ Jun 9th 2009 7:25PM]

they should make it so that you can remote pin lock it to a custom pin from the net and then have it play the ringer and show the message every minute until you type in the pin.

[Jacob @ Jun 9th 2009 7:27PM]

why does it take so long? I thought At&t had the fastest 3G network ;)

[masterhalo @ Jun 9th 2009 7:40PM]

At the end of 2009 if we're lucky then at 7.2 megabytes download speed then it might be but it's AT&T we're talking about here

[Jacob @ Jun 9th 2009 7:54PM]

it's 7.2 megabits/sec. I figure even the current 3G network could send a simple message like that faster, heck sending a text would be faster funny enough.

[Jason Martin @ Jun 9th 2009 10:01PM]

Yeah. I don't know what the deal is there. As much as AT&T drops the ball, this one doesn't strike me as their drop. Let's keep the pitchforks aimed at them for delayed MMS and tethering for now.