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"Track my iPhone" helps owner recover "lost" phone

Nice story. :cool:

Did you leave your phone lying on the table? I've never understood why people do that in busy restaurants or bars!
 
The man found his iPhone. Thank the good Buddha that he wasn't injured during the iPhone hunt and call it a day.
 
Wow, what a perfect story for Apple. :) Works as advertised.

for me I don't like it bc I have to have Push ON and it's draining my battery like crazy and it's so easy to turn it off.

If someone stole it and knew how to use an iphone, he/she could easily just turn off push, turn off mobile me, remove the SIM, etc. so many ways to deactivate it.

In the end, I'm glad you got your phone back. Great story.
 
Woz Beard said:
You had me at wiki. :rolleyes:

Let's not hijack the OP's thread. The man found his iPhone. Thank the good Buddha that he wasn't injured during the iPhone hunt and call it a day.
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It's not hijacking if the OP agrees with me. Anyway I'm glad the OP found the phone and was able to get such an epic story. and that we were able to put this PC oversensitivity to rest.
 
That is a great story OP, it definitely reminded me to turn on my "Find my iPhone" option after restoring to 3.0 when it came out. I'm glad you got it back!
 
I wonder how long it will take for someone to use the MobileMe finder service for bad things. For example, catching a cheating wife. It would be so damn simple to wire up a car charger to the tail lights of a car and put the iPhone in a secure location inside the trunk. Not perfectly accurate since you won't get the GPS signal in the trunk but tower based triangulation will be fine for searching for a car in a few block radius.

I am willing to bet the first time its used in a really evil way, Apple will be forced to put some sort of restrictions on it or even turn it off.

Very cool feature though, I am happy to see it worked out for ya. Personally, I would have called the police and had the punk arrested. What he did was very unacceptable and he will do it again unless he is taught a lesson. You got lucky and got the phone back, the next person he jacks it from won't be so lucky.
 
While I was at the Apple store on launch day, they had a $30-35 discount off MobileMe with the purchase which I bought. Glad I did! And great story.
 
mcdj said:
wait so did the hombre get the reward? ;)
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Kevin Miller: "Actually I did offer him the money in my wallet - $30ish - but he declined. Really I felt no obligation to offer, since he'd ignored repeated messages to call us. Walking away from us down the street doesn't qualify as reward-worthy behavior."
 
Great story. On a related note I recently submitted a suggestion to Apple that they allow the phone to be passcode locked via MobileMe. If you could lock the phone and send a message requesting contact that really discourages the 'finder' from keeping it and makes it impossible to disable Find my iPhone from the phone itself.

If it remains missing after a certain period of time you could then take the more extreme step of wiping the phone. It would be even better if Apple would enhance the firmware so that the personal info is wiped but the phone remains passcode locked (and therefore useless to the finder).

I can't believe Apple didn't think of this to be honest!
 
akonradi said:
Agreed. The dying battery at the very end and the fact that they managed to take screenshots of all of the locations even when chasing after someone on foot down the street makes the story seem quite fishy.
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Because, hitting command shift 3 every once in a while is too hard to do ... Come on, are you kidding me ?

If it was me, I would have been taking screenshots the entire time to be used as evidence in court. Because, I would have had the bastard arrested for theft. It baffles me how they go to great lengths to track the guy down, offering a $50 reward ... the guy runs off, they catch em ... and offer him money ?!

They handled the end very wrongly, that person belongs in jail. They were caught, got a slap on the wrist and will go out again to steal crap until they get caught.

Update: I notice the author said they simulated some of the screenshots after the fact, but that still doesn't change my point that taking screenshots is incredibility easy. I take screenshots 5 - 6 times per day, and I got an archive of thousands upon thousands of screenshots. I can't tell you how many times it saved my ass when I can show evidence of crap broken on a site or whatever I am working on at that time.
 
It'd be nice if you could get the iPhone camera to snap a picture and send it to the me.com website, the photo may be able to give you a better idea of the phones location. Now, if the iPhone had a forward facing camera....
 
im going to have to call BS....walking around with laptops....a crowded city and you happened to pick the right person....
 
/dev/toaster said:
Because, hitting command shift 3 every once in a while is too hard to do ... Come on, are you kidding me ?
Click to expand...
Chasing someone down in an unfamiliar neighborhood, probably running, carrying a laptop. You have to watch the screen, watch what's in front of you, and refresh the page constantly while at the same time looking for the person. Chances are you'd have a bit more on your mind... I'd love to see someone in a video doing all of the above...
 
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