Find iPhone vs Airport Utility, an interesting story

[bengi]

Last week my kid lost his iPod in the garden of our house at the seaside. It is a small block of flats with just 6 families. Only two families have kids, mine and another. We are in the attic (this is important for the WiFi coverage, kerp reading...).

At 7 pm, when my kid realized that he could not find his iPod Touch 5, I launched Find iPhone from my iPad and hit the play sound button. The iPod showed up in the map and it actually was in the garden...

Only one kid was there... but at the question "have you seen an iPod" he just said "no".

I then hit the lock button, but the iPod was no longer on-line.

I was 99% sure that the kid had find our iPod, so instead of insisting with find iPhone I launched Airport utility and extended the network with an airport xpress and... bingo! Everytime the kid came back from the seaside I could see my kid's ipod connected to my network.

So I wrote a polite note letting everybody know that "I knew from Apple" that our iPod was still in the building and that before going to the police I would have appreciated if other residents had helped us locating the device "for sure still in the garden since my kid lost it before getting back home and after entering the gate". I accurately avoided to accuse, I justed let everybody know that I knew for sure where the iPod was.

Magically, 1-2 hrs later a guy came to me with the iPod saying that he had just discovered his kid playing with our iPod.

The iPod had not been reset but all location services had been deactivated, luckily WiFi was still on...

 

[cambookpro]

Clever idea there, but obviously only works in very specific situations! Glad you got the iPod back.

 

[617aircav]

Only worked because it was not reset and not turned off.

 

[bengi]

Only worked because it was not reset and not turned off.

Indeed, in fact after realizing that the iPod was no longer traceable I lost all hopes, but since I knew the thing was still in the area I also set up another wifi, this one non password protected, as a decoy. Soon or later I should have seen the iPod MAC address conncted to my network... It was unnecessary, though.

 

[ant1298]

Perhaps you could record the serial number etc so if you had to call the police you could easily prove it was yours. And obv for future reference.

Good find/catch though

 

[nostresshere]

Need to smack the crap out of that little kid, unless the Dad already did!

 

[bengi]

Need to smack the crap out of that little kid, unless the Dad already did!

He's a 9 years old kid with no experience with iOS (this is what his father said). Wonder who has helped him deactivating all localization services, change the desktop backgroung and how has he learnt to run for 42 miles with Subway Surfer in three days without being discovered by his parents...

 

[iKaushal]

glad u got your iPod back...!!