find my iphone
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Apple releases Find my iPhone app
Apple has released a Find my iPhone app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch today, bringing the MobileMe service to the three devices (it only tracks the iPhone and iPad, of course). If your iPhone or iPad goes missing, you can install the app on any other iPhone, iPad or iPod touch and log in with your MobileMe credentials (a MobileMe account is required) to find it. Once located, the app places its location on a map. From there you can display a message on the iPhone or iPad's screen, have it play a sound (even if silenced), remote lock it or even wipe it clean. Of course, the whole thing hinges on your having a 2nd device to find the first one. Find my iPhone is free and universal and available now.
Apple launches 'Find My iPhone' app to remotely wipe and find your lost treasure
Stay with us here because this one isn't obvious. Apple just launched its Find My iPhone app on the iTunes App Store -- a service previously limited to MobileMe's web interface. The App will find your iPhone or iPad or iPod touch should it be lost or stolen. So obviously, you don't install it on your lost/stolen device, you install it on a different iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, yours or somebody else's (try a Starbucks). Panicked owners can then login with their MobileMe account to map their missing property and then remotely lock the device or wipe the data. The App can only be installed on iOS 3.1.3 or later devices and is available now for free.%Gallery-95615% [Thanks, Brian M.]
Enter Gmail contact syncing and DropBox; exit MobileMe?
Well, that's that. I have whittled MobileMe down to two useful functions: Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe. And yes, I use one of those functions quite often, say, when my husband is off on some 80 mile jaunt on his bicycle. I have, thankfully, yet to require the services of the other one. But the rest of it: email, syncing, and online storage? Gone the way of the dodo. Initially, I moved mostly over to Gmail to take advantage of its more robust email aliasing. I have several email addresses on personal domains, and Gmail gave me the best mix of domain use, plus sophisticated filtering and spam identification. MobileMe just doesn't play nicely with personal domains, and once Google enabled IMAP for gmail and then push email, I basically abandoned my .me address, relegating it to receiving Apple Store retail receipts and my Apple ID for iTunes.
Find My iPad comes to MobileMe
Find My iPhone, a long-standing feature on MobileMe that allows you to remotely locate a misplaced iPhone via MobileMe's web interface, has been extended to the iPad. Find My iPad has the same features as Find My iPhone, including playing the little sonar sound effect with an onscreen message (in case your iPad falls behind the couch or something). Find My iPad also includes the same Remote Wipe feature as Find My iPhone -- so if your iPad is irretrievably lost, you can remotely vaporize all the data on it, thus ensuring that thieves don't get access to your contacts, credit card info, or embarrassing lolcat pictures in addition to your iPad. Apple notes that "The Find My iPad feature works best if your iPad includes both Wi-Fi and 3G, but it will also find your Wi-Fi-only iPad when it's connected to a wireless network." Translation: Find My iPad probably isn't going to work very well at all for the Wi-Fi-only models. It'll probably give you a very general idea of your iPad's location on Find My iPad's map, but without GPS capabilities, the Wi-Fi-only iPad will have nowhere near the specificity of the 3G-enabled iPad or iPhone. Naturally, just like Find My iPhone, Find My iPad requires a $99/year subscription to MobileMe -- though if you're already using the service for your iPhone and/or Macs, there's no extra charge for the new iPad-specific services. [Via Ars Technica]
Find my iPhone rescues two phones at Busch Gardens
It was like something out of CSI. The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that the snatched iPhones incident began when a mom and her stepdaughter were getting aboard the SheiKra roller coaster at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida. The theme park provides unlocked storage bins for people to put things in so they don't fly away during the ride, so their two iPhones (in purses) were dropped in. Probably not a very safe thing to do, but that's what they did. When the 13-year-old girl cut her lip during the ride, the pair was about to rush off to a first aid station -- forgetting about their possessions -- but before they could get back to the storage bin, someone snatched the purse with the iPhones inside. The police and park security were called, and then the 13-year-old crime victim remembered MobileMe. In an employee break room, the teenager logged into the family MobileMe account using an officer's laptop. (It's worth noting that while this process used to require a desktop browser, you can now access Find My iPhone from another iPhone.) The officers dispatched another squad car to go to the displayed location, where a man sitting outside an apartment building hurriedly concealed a cellphone when the officers approached. You guessed it. He had one of the stolen iPhones; the other one was inside the apartment. Police reports say Richard Emerson, 25, admitted the theft and is charged with grand theft. He's out on bail, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement says it is his 19th arrest. It took 45 minutes from the time of the theft to the arrest of the man. MobileMe may not be for everybody, but the Find my iPhone feature is getting a pretty good track record. It's probably a good idea to emphasize that recovering stolen property is a police matter, not something you should do on your own. [Thanks to Dan for the tip]
Find My iPhone now works in Mobile Safari
Apple's MobileMe site at me.com used to be completely useless on the iPhone or iPod touch in Mobile Safari -- you'd get a splash page telling you to set up your contacts, calendars, and mail accounts, but that was about it. No webmail access, no direct access to galleries, iDisk, or even Find My iPhone. Apple introduced standalone apps that addressed some of these shortcomings (iDisk and Gallery), but there was still no way to access Find My iPhone unless you resorted to workarounds. Things have improved somewhat with the new MobileMe page. Instead of simply admonishing you to set everything up on your Mac or PC, MobileMe now provides you with a link to instructions for setting up mail, contacts, and calendars. There's also links to download the iDisk and Gallery apps from the App Store. What's most useful about the change is you now have the ability to use Find My iPhone from an iPhone. This might seem dumb at first -- "If I have my iPhone in my hand, why do I need to find it?" you may ask -- but if your household has multiple iPhone users and one of them leaves an iPhone at a pub, until now your only option was to dash home and try to find it on your computer. Now, you can access all the Find My iPhone features right at the moment your friend or significant other gets that wide-eyed, "I just misplaced a paycheck worth of electronics!" expression on his or her face. You can send an immediate message to the iPhone to get that loud, pinging submarine noise, which just might help you find the iPhone before you even leave the pub. Find My iPhone is still only available as part of a yearly $99 MobileMe subscription.
Ask TUAW: Mac mini HTPC, Find My iPhone with another iPhone, eliminate duplicate photos, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about Mac minis running as HTPCs, eliminating duplicate photos, using an iPhone to access MobileMe's FInd My iPhone feature (for another iPhone), automatically mounting a network disk, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.
Find My iPhone: Questions, answers, and suggestions
Mobile Me's Find My iPhone is a wonderful (relatively) new feature which can help track down your iPhone if it is lost or stolen, but it is not foolproof, and it must be configured before you need it. Q: "Is it true that Find My iPhone does not work if you have 3G turned off or lose your iPhone where there is no 3G service available (EDGE only)?" A: False. Find My iPhone works with the original iPhone, which did not even have 3G or GPS capabilities, so it does work with EDGE. If you have a 3G-capable iPhone and disable the 3G (Settings > General > Enable 3G > OFF) to save battery life, "Find My iPhone" will continue to work. Q: "Will find my iPhone work over WiFi?" A: True... sort of... Maybe... Not really. In my home I have very little or no AT&T service (or Sprint, or Verizon, or any other cell provider). I do have WiFi all over the house, and Find My iPhone has never failed to help me locate my iPhone when it is "lost" in my house. In order to test it purely over Wi-Fi, I put the iPhone into Airplane Mode (meaning that both EDGE and 3G were both disabled) and enabled Wi-Fi. I asked "Find My iPhone" to locate my iPhone and was told that it was near Orlando, Florida. It was, in fact, in Ohio. I repeated the test and it came back with the same information. Later, I tried the "Wi-Fi only" test from my home, and Find My iPhone could not find my location at all. However, even in Airplane + Wi-Fi mode I was able to use the "Display a Message" and "Remote Passcode Lock" features. So you may not be able to locate it on a map, but you still may be able to connect to it. Proper setup is your first crucial step All of this is a moot point if you don't have three crucial settings enabled on your iPhone. Without any one of these, Find My iPhone will not work. Settings > General > Location Services has to be on (this one is obvious, right?) Under Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > (Your Mobile Me account), you must set "Find My iPhone" to ON. This is not enabled by default. Under Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data, you must either enable Push OR have fetch set to Every 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or Hourly. If you disable Push and set Fetch to "Manually" Find My iPhone will not work.
iPhone turns Pittsburgh man into Columbo, helps cops catch robbers
The MobileMe Find my iPhone service certainly paid off for a Pittsburgh area man. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that police said the man was robbed at gunpoint in Shadyside (a neigborhood on the east side of Pittsburgh, home to an Apple Store) by two men who asked for his credit cards and the PIN numbers. Police say he turned over his wallet, PIN numbers, and his iPhone. Later the man used his computer and MobileMe to find the location of the phone, and police located the crooks at a gas station. Officers recovered a pellet gun, stolen ID cards, credit cards and cash. Three men have been charged in the incident with device fraud, conspiracy, receiving stolen property and possessing instruments of crime. 2 of the 3 are also being charged with robbery. The victim, not identified by the police, is probably a happy guy, and will no doubt renew his MobileMe subscription when it comes up. One caution. If something similar happens to you, don't go chasing the thieves by yourself. Confronting criminals is serious police work & nothing for the amateur sleuth to try. [Via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and thanks to Sean for the tip]
Talkcast reminder: Potluck night tonight
Our weekly interactive podcast goes live at 10pm Eastern this evening, and it's going to be a potluck night on the show -- you bring whatever you want to talk about, and we'll bring our own casserole of TUAW news from the last week. We'll definitely talk about the new iPhone 3GS: how fast it is, how Find My iPhone really can help you find your iPhone, five things you might not know about the phone (if you didn't read that post yet), and, errr -- how fast it is. The speed is such a big story we'll talk about it twice! Plus, you'll probably hear us wax poetic on how much we love the mini, and we'll talk about our "stickiest" iPhone applications -- apps we just can't help but load up that "one more time." Should be a lot of fun -- definitely tune in and join us at 10pm Eastern this evening over on TalkShoe. To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, or you can try out the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VOIP lines (take advantange of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *-8. Talk with you then! Recording support for the talkcast is provided by Call Recorder from ecamm networks.
Find My iPhone reunites true nerd with lost iPhone
You know, we might be inclined to disbelieve this exciting tale of derring-do if it weren't for the highly improbably heroics and ingenuity displayed by its three protagonists -- you just can't make this stuff up. Probably. Kevin, Ryan and Mark were in Chicago minding their own nerdness out at Brickworld when Kevin left his iPhone behind at a dive bar. When they went back for it just minutes later the phone was gone, and instead of calling the cops like a bunch of suckers, Kevin and co. did the right thing and pulled out a Sprint 3G dongle and a MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, Find My iPhone couldn't get a lock on his phone at all -- it was either off or out of data range. The next day at lunch he finally got a delivery confirmation message from me.com, which kicked off a wild, dangerous chase into the wilds of Chicago. We won't spoil the ending for you (he finds the iPhone), but Kevin does raise a couple good points about the service functionality: you need to pull up MobileMe on laptop to use the service (instead of perhaps another iPhone), movement updates aren't pushed, ringer volume impacts alert volume whether the phone is on vibrate or not, and there should be an option for controlling the phone in more nefarious ways like taking pictures. We're glad it all ended up well, but those moments of Lego bliss that Kevin and his friends missed out on are gone forever.[Thanks, Tristan W.]
Find My iPhone location tracking enables all-city chase
We're not 100% convinced of the safety of his approach, but Kevin Miller's determination to recover his lost iPhone -- combined with the power of MobileMe's new Find My iPhone feature -- led him on a wild chase across Chicago, which he visited while he was attending a LEGO convention in nearby Wheeling, IL. After leaving his phone in a bar, Kevin tried to get FMI working (via a friend's laptop & broadband adapter, ironically from Sprint; as Megan & Michael pointed out, you can't access the MobileMe page from the iPhone browser anyway) with no luck. The next morning, however, the phone began responding and Kevin's three-man team began the hunt. With laptop in hand and a succession of more and more specific location details, the guys began tracking down the errant phone. We won't spoil the end of the story for you; Kevin's post is quite entertaining and worth a read. Still, once you do know how the plot turns out you may want to consider enlisting the police for a missing phone, rather than choosing to use their methods.
3.0 update brings Street View, 'Find' functionality to iPod touch
iPod touch users are finally getting a taste of what iPhone users have had since iPhone OS 2.2: Google Street View. iPhone 3.0 Software Update for iPod touch includes an update to the Maps application that enables Google Street View, and it works just like it does on the iPhone. Additionally, the "Find my iPhone" feature is implemented as "Find my iPod touch" for iPod touch users. It works exactly like Megan described yesterday, but is perhaps less accurate than using the iPhone's built-in GPS. It'll at least get you close, so long as it's connected to a Wi-Fi network. If it is, you can send messages to the iPod touch and wipe its memory. If you do send a message to an iPod touch that's turned off or not connected to a Wi-Fi network, the message is queued until it's on and connected. Both features appear to work on both first- and second-generation iPod touch devices. As Megan mentioned, since the first-generation iPod touch lacks a speaker, it won't make the "ping" noise associated with Find my iPhone unless you have speakers plugged in. Perhaps less useful for finding it in the house, but still helpful if you left it on a table at the park. Have you found an undocumented feature that the iPhone 3.0 Software Update for iPod touch provides? Let us know by tipping us, or leaving a comment. Thanks, Harold, Ben, Rocky, and everyone who sent this in!
Find My iPhone: If only I could find myself so easily ...
Mel gave you the instructions for how to set it up... but dear reader, we're going to go in-depth into the features of using MobileMe's Find My iPhone to see how well it works in locating and securing your phone from a remote location -- including performing a voluntary wipe. Locating where your phone is via map When you bring up the Find My iPhone page in MobileMe, the first thing you will see is a map giving the approximate location of your phone. As indicated above, my phone is somewhere inside of my apartment. Because the map is powered by Google, you can toggle it among plain map, satellite, and hybrid views of the location. However, the feature won't give off an exact address. So, if you happened to leave your phone inside of a shopping center complex, you'll still have to visit each store to track down the phone. Read on for more into Find My iPhone's features ...
Find my iPhone: How to set it up
With all the excitement about iPhone version 3.0, there isn't a lot of help on how to set up one of the most unique features of the upgrade, Find my iPhone.If you're having trouble, here are the steps. First, the service has to be turned on. You do that in your iPhone settings. Under email accounts, select your MobileMe info. You'll get to a page that has an on/off switch for Find my iPhone. Turn it on. After that, you must be in your MobileMe web page. Sign in. At first glance, you won't see anything. You have to click on the accounts icon, and you should see a Find my iPhone icon at the bottom of the account settings. You can then decide to find your iPhone on a map, send it a message, or remote wipe it. I found the map pretty accurate, as I have a metal roof on the house that plays hell with GPS and cell signals. I sent a test message. That worked fine, and I received an email confirmation that the message was sent to the phone. I didn't try the remote wipe. I've spent enough time today downloading and uploading iPhone software and data.Note: Apple MobileMe servers are a bit spotty today. It took me a couple of tries to get into my account options.Find my iPhone is a powerful new feature. I hope I never need to use it.Here's what the icon looks like on the MobileMe page:%Gallery-66217%
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.
USB tethering, Publish Video and Find my iPhone found in OS 3.0
Apple touted quite a few new iPhone features at yesterday's OS 3.0 event, but now that the beta build is trickling out, there's been a bevy of unearthed discoveries to further pique our interests. First up, the gang at Boy Genius Report found an option to enable the "Find My iPhone" service in the MobileMe settings. Unfortunately, that's all we've got, but we wouldn't put it past Cupertino to build some me.com-linked location tracker that'd be the envy of Orwell himself -- hey, that'd be pretty useful if you accidentally left the mobile in a taxi. Also in the MobileMe section, it now says Publish Video when you go to publish an image. It's an odd typo, to be sure, and while video recording has been near the top of our wishlist for some time, we're not about to get our hopes up. Finally, Mac Rumors is reporting that a hacker has dug up and successfully activated the USB tethering capabilities. Apple's Scott Forstall had mentioned the devs were building it in, but were still in talks with the carriers. As to whether any or all of these functions will actually end up in the final OS 3.0 build, your guess is a good as ours. For now, check out more pics of the MobileMe additions after the break.[Thanks everyone who sent this in!]Read - Find My iPhoneRead - USB Tethering
