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macbookairman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 15, 2008
900
9
Nebraska
The Find my iPhone feature showed off yesterday is now on me.com. You can see how it looks at me.com/account. But, you can't use it till 3.0 is out. (unless you have the 3.0 beta)
 

Jeremy1026

macrumors 68020
Nov 3, 2007
2,215
1,029
The Find my iPhone feature showed off yesterday is now on me.com. You can see how it looks at me.com/account. But, you can't use it till 3.0 is out.


It works just as advertised. The sound will play for 2 minutes if you don't stop it. Sending messages takes less then a second, and the map works perfectly. The only thing I havn't tried is remote wipe, just because I don't want to take the time to restore it.
 

macbookairman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 15, 2008
900
9
Nebraska
I read the help documents linked to on the Find my iPhone page, and it appears the service will be available for iPod Touch too. I was wondering if it would be, because all the info on the apple website talked about using it with iPhones.

I'm wondering how useful it will be though...just because the iPod Touch would need to have a Wi-Fi connection and the location info can be way off sometimes. I just hope in the future if I lose it, I lose it in a place with Wi-Fi!
 

Buschmaster

macrumors 65816
Feb 12, 2006
1,306
27
Minnesota
I read the help documents linked to on the Find my iPhone page, and it appears the service will be available for iPod Touch too. I was wondering if it would be, because all the info on the apple website talked about using it with iPhones.

I'm wondering how useful it will be though...just because the iPod Touch would need to have a Wi-Fi connection and the location info can be way off sometimes. I just hope in the future if I lose it, I lose it in a place with Wi-Fi!
As long as it catches the messages, maybe someone can return it to you.
 

nathan1281

macrumors member
Nov 19, 2008
35
0
For those lucky ones that get to test it first. Three questions.
1) If it says the phone is off line will it tell you the last spot that it was?
2) If you are in a building where gps isn't available will it still use the 3g or edge connection to give a decent guess as to where the phone is located?
3) I haven't read anything about this but does it seem like apple is going to impose a restriction on how many times this service is used a month, day, year?

Wonder if they will ever enable it to take a picture also?

Can't wait till the 17th!
 

robbieduncan

Moderator emeritus
Jul 24, 2002
25,611
893
Harrogate
For those lucky ones that get to test it first. Two questions.
1) If it says the phone is off line will it tell you the last spot that it was?
2) If you are in a building where gps isn't available will it still use the 3g or edge connection to give a decent guess as to where the phone is located?

Can't wait till the 17th!

Not sure about the last spot. Once I'd found mine once it seemed to cache that and the time it had seen that. I did mine for the screenshot inside...
 

GoCubsGo

macrumors Nehalem
Feb 19, 2005
35,741
153
This is a feature that I love most. I'm also thinking that the cost of MobileMe just became more appealing.
 

emt1

macrumors 65816
Jan 30, 2008
1,387
20
Wisconsin
For those lucky ones that get to test it first. Three questions.
1) If it says the phone is off line will it tell you the last spot that it was?
2) If you are in a building where gps isn't available will it still use the 3g or edge connection to give a decent guess as to where the phone is located?
3) I haven't read anything about this but does it seem like apple is going to impose a restriction on how many times this service is used a month, day, year?

Wonder if they will ever enable it to take a picture also?

Can't wait till the 17th!

1. If the phone is turned off, in airplane mode, or without reception, the map shows you the last location of the iPhone. I believe this is the last location that you checked and saw your iPhone was located. If you don't check that often, then I don't think it would help you.

2. Location services on the iPhone always use cell tower and wifi triangulation in addition to GPS.

3. No restrictions. Why would they?
 

Chris Welch

macrumors 6502
May 28, 2007
308
0
New York
One issue I've noticed with this is the following:

The noise alert does indeed play when your iPhone is in silent mode.

BUT, it only plays at the volume that your ringer is set to. So if you turned your ringer down for some reason, you won't hear a thing.

Odd. I would think they would have it play at the highest possible volume and disregard whatever volume the ringer is set to. After all, it's supposedly lost, right?
 

ItsGavinC

macrumors 6502
Jun 29, 2007
446
185
1. If the phone is turned off, in airplane mode, or without reception, the map shows you the last location of the iPhone. I believe this is the last location that you checked and saw your iPhone was located. If you don't check that often, then I don't think it would help you.

It is NOT the last location you checked, at least not for me when I tested it. I came home today and with the phone off, used the locate feature. It showed me on a road that I take to drive home, approximately 1 hour earlier. It would have been impossible for me to use the find feature while I was driving home.

My guess is that the location is getting pinged back apple servers at set intervals.
 

ItsGavinC

macrumors 6502
Jun 29, 2007
446
185
One issue I've noticed with this is the following:

The noise alert does indeed play when your iPhone is in silent mode.

BUT, it only plays at the volume that your ringer is set to. So if you turned your ringer down for some reason, you won't hear a thing.

Odd. I would think they would have it play at the highest possible volume and disregard whatever volume the ringer is set to. After all, it's supposedly lost, right?

I wish we could use that noise alert as a text message sound or a ringtone!
 

Mr Skills

macrumors 6502a
Nov 21, 2005
803
1
Do you get the email notification when the phone is wiped, or when you give the command? It would be nice to have the confidence that your phone is definitely wiped.
 

arian

macrumors newbie
Mar 28, 2009
3
0
Only of works with location services on. Useless if you want to preserve battery life.
 

robbieduncan

Moderator emeritus
Jul 24, 2002
25,611
893
Harrogate
Ditto.

Not sure of real-life usefulness, but it would be nice to wipe it if it was stolen.

Yeah, the location bit is not massively useful. I think the send a message/play a sound thing is. If you leave your phone on silent and can't find it in your house then this is a way of making it make a sound to help you locate it.
 
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