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Apple may be developing a Tile-like tracking tag
Apple might be preparing to move into Tile's territory, as it's reportedly developing a physical tag you'd be able to attach to any object to track its location. It's also working on an app that will essentially merge Find My Friends and Find My iPhone, according to 9to5 Mac.
Apple sued over Find my iPhone
Well this is certainly a fitting story given a recent report that Apple remains the top target for patent trolls. GigaOM is reporting that a nonpracticing entity based out of Texas is suing Apple, alleging that services such as Find my Friends and Find my iPhone infringe upon their patents. The company in question is called Remote Locator, and per usual, information regarding ownership interests in the company and the patent itself are hard to come by. Notably, Apple isn't the only one being targeted by this particular patent as several other suits have been filed against Google and carriers as well. The invention itself is US Patent 5548637, which covers a method for "locating personnel and objects in response to telephone inquiries," and describes a system for using infrared transmitters to route calls to individuals or objects in large buildings like a hospital. Remote Locator is requesting a jury trial, and with respect to damages, is seeking an injunction and payment for past infringement. Patent trolls in recent years have become an increasing nuisance in the tech sphere, and with Apple holding billions upon billions in the bank, it makes sense why they're often targeted. Unfortunately, though, patent trolls have also taken to suing and arguably shaking down small-time developers who often lack the resources to adequately defend themselves against what are often frivolous lawsuits. The flurry of lawsuits filed by Lodsys in recent memory serves as a stark example. Thankfully, the Obama administration has taken notice of the patent troll phenomenon and has proposed some new guidelines that will hopefully serve to lessen the impact of patent trolls. All that said, we'll keep an eye on this case and see how Apple responds.
Daily Update for August 22, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Find My iPhone app updated, doesn't work for non-devs (Updated)
Apple today released updates to the Find My iPhone and Find My Friends apps. While Find My iPhone 2.0.3 features a slightly new (and iOS 7-like) design, there's also one small issue -- users are reporting that the update doesn't provide the desired functionality (locating lost Apple devices) unless you just happen to be a developer. So for the time being, if you're not a developer, don't install the update. Find My Friends 2.1.1 also includes the ever-popular "Bug fixes and stability improvements," but doesn't appear to have gained any flat design elements. Update: Well, that was certainly quick. As of 3:30 PM ET, various source report that Find My iPhone is no longer displaying the previous error message, which was ""Developer Account Required. You must be a registered iOS developer and have iCloud configured on iOS 7.0 Beta to use this version of Find My iPhone."
Apple updates Find My Friends with new UI, more in-depth location controls
We haven't seen many changes to Apple's location-based Find My Friends app since it debuted on iOS 5 more than a year ago. Cupertino must have realized it's time for an update; the company just overhauled the feature to include a new UI and more accurate location-based alerts. The app will now let you define the distance from a location for receiving notifications -- so you can get a ping when a friend arrives at the campus library rather than the dorms, for instance. The redesigned app also simplifies the notification process to fit on one page, with options to receive alerts when your friends arrive at or leave a specific place, along with settings for notifying others based on your location. The update is available now for users running iOS 6.1 or later.
Find My Friends update allows fine tuning
Find My Friends has received a small, but important update. Version 2.1 of Apple's friend-location software introduces a new UI to search and set location-based notifications. Paranoid that your child is skipping school? Use the UI to look for your child's school and get alerted if he leaves before he should. The Next Web has played around with the release and notes that the new UI allows you to set an exact distance from a location, so it's more useful for doing things such as locating someone a short distance away from you. Tap and drag on the location to set the parameters desired.
Bloomberg: Facebook once more building a friend-tracking mobile app
Facebook briefly dallied last year with the idea of letting us track our friends while on the road, only to be spooked off for reasons unknown. It might have developed enough nerve for another shot, according to Bloomberg. The social network is purportedly building a smartphone app that would locate nearby contacts and, unlike last year's Find Friends Nearby, would run in the background where it's supported -- making it more useful, if not very comforting to privacy advocates. Not much else is mentioned besides features that would "help [Facebook] profit" from its growing mobile base. The company itself certainly isn't saying anything official at this stage. If the app arrives in mid-March as claimed, however, Apple's Find My Friends and Google's Latitude won't have our attention (and location) to themselves.
Apple updates nearly every app for iOS 6, sneaks in key GarageBand, iPhoto and Podcasts updates
If you didn't already know that iOS 6 was out in the wild, Apple just delivered a torrent of mobile app updates to make it perfectly clear. Virtually every app that isn't preloaded now has explicit iOS 6 support to keep it running smoothly, and some of the upgrades are thankfully more than just skin-deep compatibility tweaks. Among the highlights are Podcasts' new subscription list syncing through iCloud, ringtone creation with GarageBand and iPhoto support for 36.5-megapixel image editing on the latest devices -- you know, for that moment you need to tweak Nikon D800 photos on an iPhone 5. We're including direct links to a few of the juicier updates, but we'd recommend checking AppleInsider's comprehensive list to see everything that you're missing.
Facebook's Find Friends Nearby feature falls off the map, leaves buddy locating to other social apps
We're happy to chat up our Facebook friends on the web, but empowering them to track us down in person makes that virtual social experience feel a bit too real. Perhaps that was the reasoning behind the mysterious disappearance of the company's new Find Friends Nearby feature, which bit the dust yesterday just as quickly as it first appeared. During its hours-long tenure, the new tracking tab didn't give precise friend location information, but did provide a list of buddies in an undisclosed vicinity, making it possible for some not-so-top-tier contacts to realize that you're still in Tulsa, and didn't actually make that move to Timbuktu. Whatever the reason, Find Friends Nearby is now very much lost, but it could theoretically make its return at any point in the future. For now, you'll need to return to keeping an eye on acquaintances the old-fashioned way.
Facebook's Find Friends Nearby: GPS lets you give nearby mobile users a Friendshake
A mobile Facebook feature called Find Friends Nearby, previously code-named Friendshake, is coming out of development and will soon be on its way to your iOS or Android phone. Perhaps springing from the social network's acquisition of ambient social app Glancee, it's still fairly primitive, merely navigating to a browser page on your device, where it will show you a list of other users within a given, undisclosed radius. Presumably, the benefit is to let you quickly add someone in your purview like Find my Friends, although we're interested to see what privacy settings are on offer. You never know, Mr. Zuckerberg could be tempting the privacy gods -- and governments -- once again.
Congressmen ask devs of 34 iOS apps about user privacy
In the wake of the Path address book fiasco, Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-CA) and G.K. Butterfield (D-NC) have followed up their initial query to Apple about privacy issues by contacting the people and companies behind 34 iOS apps. The list includes Tim Cook (again), concerning Apple's own Find My Friends, Mark Zuckerberg and Path's CEO Dave Morin, among others. The letters themselves are open for viewing on the Committee on Energy and Commerce's website, and include questions about exactly how many times the apps have been downloaded, what information they transmit back from user's devices and what happens to that data. The devs have until April 12th to respond, and while we're not sure what will happen after that, we're pretty sure this ends with someone's Hall of Fame consideration in doubt despite seven Cy Youngs and more than 4,000 strikeouts.
TUAW TV Live: Discussions of all things Apple
Hopefully by the time the show starts today, many of you will be running iOS 5 on your iOS devices. If not, we'll still be talking about some of its features and the new apps that are appearing -- like Find My Friends and the AirPort Utility for iOS. There are also some other fun things to talk about, like iCloud and the iPhone 4S. With me today live from Honolulu, Hawaii is Doc Rock. As you've probably seen from our earlier adventures together, the discussion can go all over the place, and whatever we see in the chat room is also fair game for talk. Below, you'll find a Ustream livestream viewer and a chat tool. The chat tool allows you to participate by asking questions or making comments. Remember that you can also join us on IRC server chat1.ustream.tv, chat room #tuaw-tv. If you're driving somewhere and would like to watch TUAW TV Live while you're stuck in traffic, please don't -- keep your eyes on the road! However, if someone else is doing the driving, you can watch the show on your iPhone and join the chat by downloading the free Ustream App. It's a universal app and is wonderful on an iPad, both for viewing and participating in the chat. We'll start at about 5 PM ET, so if you're seeing a prerecorded show, be sure to refresh your browser until you see the live stream. For those of you who are not able to join us for the live edition, you'll be able to view it later this evening on our TUAW Video YouTube channel and as part of the TUAW TV Live podcast viewable in iTunes or on any of your Apple devices.
Find My Friends: Fun, useful and secure
With the release of iOS 5 comes another fun and useful app: Find My Friends (free). The app allows you to share your location with friends, who can then use the app on their iOS devices to figure out exactly where you are. While this may seem like a cyber-stalker's dream, you need to invite friends to share your position information and you can remove that right at any time. There are some very good uses for Find My Friends, like keeping track of a teenage child's location or finding directions to a friend's location at a coffee shop. Find My Friends uses a leather-like skeumorphic design, creating a warm and friendly look. The interface is designed with four main screens: All, which shows all of your friends who are using the app and have given you permission to see their location; Temporary, used to invite friends to temporarily share their locations; Me, which lets you hide from followers and set labels for various locations; and Requests, an inbox for all incoming friend requests. Once a friend has allowed you to find his or her location, their name appears on the All page along with a small green "mileage sign" that shows approximately how far away they are. A tap on their name brings up the Info page, showing their current location, their address, and other contact information. At the bottom of the page are buttons for sending an iMessage to your friend or getting directions to their location. %Gallery-136375% Asking for directions launches the Maps app, which pre-fills the Start and End fields with the current locations of you and your friend. It then provides you with turn-by-turn directions to that person's location, which can be a lot of fun if they're out of state. I'm personally excited about using this app with Siri. It will be nice to say "Where's Brett?" and have it tell me where my colleague currently is. If Siri can read the turn-by-turn directions to me, then I can take a navigation app or two off of my iPhone. The app has a few flaws -- Erica Sadun was looking at the help pages, found at Me > Account > Find My Friends Help > Find > Find Friends, and noticed that some of the pages had placeholders instead of actual help. Ooops. It looks like the app was rushed to get out concurrent with the release of iOS 5 and iCloud. On the other hand, the app is so easy to use, you won't need to use the help pages. Be sure to check out the gallery for screenshots of Find My Friends in action.
Apple's Find My Friends app now available
In advance of iOS 5, Apple has released Find My Friends, a location sharing app similar to Glympse. As the name implies, Find My Friends will let you locate your friends on a map. It'll also let you share your location so your friends can find you. For those concerned about privacy, the location sharing feature can be turned on permanently or only temporarily which is great for when you want your friends to meet you while you're eating dinner at a local restaurant, but not when you go home. It's also conveniently integrated with the built-in contact and map applications so you can find your friends and generate a route to meet up with them. You can install Find My Friends by visiting iCloud.com on an iPhone running iOS 5. You can also download it from the App Store. [Via Macstories]
Daily Update for October 4, 2011: Special "Let's Talk iPhone" edition
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. Today, we bring you a special edition dedicated to news of the Apple "Let's Talk iPhone" event. You'll get all the highlights of today's announcements in just seven minutes. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Apple announces Find My Friends service
Apple has announced the much-rumored Find My Friends app. The app allows you to quickly see the location of friends who have opted to share their location with you. The app will offer deep levels of customization, such as letting users set a time window when they share their information. Also, at the end of the day, location sharing stops automatically and a person's location won't be shared again until they re-enable it. As to be expected with such a service, Apple has built in a number of privacy controls and parental restrictions. Find My Friends will work through Apple's iCloud service.
Apple announces Find My Friends feature for iOS 5
Apple spent a fair bit of time recapping some already announced iOS 5 features during its keynote today, but it also got around to announcing a new one: Find My Friends. That will let you easily find friends in the real world who have opted to share their location with you, and you'll also be able to invite friends to share their location for a limited time -- when they're driving to your house, for instance, so you can give them directions. Naturally, there are also some parental controls and other "simple" privacy settings.%Gallery-135713%
Rumor: Next iPhone to feature powerful Assistant, 1 GB of RAM (Updated)
Last week a reliable source (who asked not to be named) approached TUAW with information about upcoming iPhone features that sounded incredible. We didn't run the post at that time, however, both out of concern for the source and because we couldn't corroborate the details. This morning, 9to5 Mac posted pretty much exactly what we heard from our source -- that the next iPhone is going to feature an amazing voice control and device navigation system called Assistant. That's not all -- the source (who may or may not be the same person who talked with 9to5) told us that the iPhone will come packed with 1 GB of RAM and the Apple A5 dual-core processor, as well as a vastly improved 8 MP camera. 9to5 reported some details TUAW didn't get, including that the new phone will contain Qualcomm's Gobi Baseband chipset for use as a true world phone (GSM and CDMA). The Assistant, however, is a game-changer. Assistant is an outgrowth of Voice Control, which was introduced with the iPhone 3GS in 2009. It is based on technology from Siri, a company that was purchased by Apple last year. The Assistant requires the power of the A5 CPU as well as the 1 GB of RAM, which is why existing iPhones will not be able to take advantage of the new feature. The speech interface is launched by holding the home button for several seconds, after which a microphone interface slides up from the bottom of the screen, covering only about a quarter of the display. In contrast to the existing iPhone Voice Control capabilities, Assistant can help you with just about anything. Want to send an iMessage without typing? I could just say "send a text to Barb saying I'm going to the bank" and the message is created and sent. You can also use Assistant with the location-based reminder feature in the iOS Reminders app, by using commands like "Remind me to buy Vitamin D when I'm at Whole Foods Market." Voice requests for directions are also a feature -- asking "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" won't result in the expected response ("practice, practice, practice") but directions from your current location to 881 7th Avenue in New York City. Assistant also has a conversation view, in which the system literally converses with the user in order to provide the best results. Let's say set up a meeting with Tim Cook on October 4th. You'd say "Set up a meeting with Tim Cook," and the iPhone would respond by asking "Which email address should Tim Cook be notified at, home or work?" When you'd respond "Work,", the iPhone would ask the time and date you want to schedule the meeting for. At the end of the conversation, you'd be shown the details of the calendar event for confirmation. We're told that you can speak to the Assistant in your normal tone and speed of voice; it's that accurate. Assistant is also integrated with Wolfram Alpha, so you could also ask your iPhone questions like "Convert 10.2 acres to hectares" or "What's the cube root of 924?" and get an immediate answer. One more fascinating feature that is likely to be packed with privacy settings is "Find my Friends." With this feature, you could ask your phone "Where's Erica Sadun?" and (provided she's made her location information available to me) the iPhone would display her location. This could be very useful for finding TUAW teammates at Macworld Expo 2012. As with any leaked information, this could all be a ploy by Apple to a) figure out who is leaking to the Apple press or b) get all of us excited about an upcoming announcement. Well, we're already quivering with anticipation about the announcement, and if the new device(s) are anything remotely like what we've heard about, Apple will have another winner on its hands. Update: A slightly less reputable source adds that the upcoming iPhone also features AirPlay mirroring, which is found on the iPad 2 but not on the iPhone 4. This feature allows any app to be viewed via AirPlay video streaming to be mirrored full-screen to an Apple TV -- as though the device were connected with an HDMI cable straight to the TV.
'Find my Friends' MobileMe feature revealed in iOS 4.3 developer build
Looks like Apple will be adding a new "Find My Friends" feature to its MobileMe service in the not too distant future. The settings pictured above were unearthed in the latest iOS 4.3 developer build that's already yielding a healthy list of new devices and functionality including in-app AirPlay video support, a carrier-dependent personal WiFi hotspot, the return of the physical orientation lock switch, and a host of new multitouch gestures. Presumably Find My Friends will offer functionality akin to the free Google Latitude app doing little to justify Apple's $99 MobileMe annual cost. Update: Remember Apple's iGroups location-based social networking patent application? We just did.
