Real-Time "Find my iPhone"?

It's not designed for real-time tracking. I would imagine you would have to keep refreshing the page. For it to be real-time, it would need a constant connection to Apple's location servers, which it doesn't do for obvious reasons (design, battery life, performance, etc).

bobsentell said:

That's what I thought, but obviously the "Find..." service has a way to turn on the GPS remotely. I highly doubt Apple will keep it on by default.

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Find My iPhone uses the location services that are already configured and turned on by default in firmware 3.0.

A thief could easily disable location services in the iPhone's general settings tab, and the service wouldn't work.

It doesn't turn any feature on remotely.

bobsentell said:

That's what I thought, but obviously the "Find..." service has a way to turn on the GPS remotely. I highly doubt Apple will keep it on by default.

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I'm fairly certain it doesn't use GPS, just cell tower triangulation and skyhook. It never gives you a dot, only a circle with not such great accuracy.

bobsentell said:

I did a search but couldn't find my answer. Does anyone know if the "Find my iPhone" feature offers live updating or is it a "snapshot" of where that phone is at that time?

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As mentioned, it's not only not live, but you need to keep logging into me.com every 15 minutes to access that area of it. At best, you can get an update every couple of minutes, since it "refines" the location for over a minute, at least as far as I can tell, every time you ask it (or at least nearly every time).

The General said:

I'm fairly certain it doesn't use GPS, just cell tower triangulation and skyhook. It never gives you a dot, only a circle with not such great accuracy.

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That might be for privacy reasons. I've seen a circle with a radius that couldn't have been much more than 100', if that. I think, if there's a GPS, it uses it. But I could be wrong.

bobsentell said:

So this would even work with the 2G? Other than giving me a general idea (left it at dad's, in-laws, etc) I fail to see the point of giving me a 10-mile radius.

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You just described the main point of the service. It'll get you to at least the block. In my case, the circle is around roughly three homes in my neighborhood.

http://www.apple.com/mobileme/whats-new/

bobsentell said:

So this would even work with the 2G? Other than giving me a general idea (left it at dad's, in-laws, etc) I fail to see the point of giving me a 10-mile radius.

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It's not a 10 mile radius. You don't give triangulation enough credit. This is a screenshot of mine:

Looks like the OP wants FamilyMap. I think it's compatible with the iPhone, and it'll support all your stalking needs.

https://familymap.wireless.att.com/finder-att-family/howWorks.htm

Find my iPhone is precise enough to let you realize that you left your phone at a restaurant or at a friends. It is not precise enough to find the guy that stole your iPhone and kick in his door. It's not designed to be a tracking device so you can't put it in your spouses car and track them.