Hi Mac Users,
This weekend, I had the opportunity to use Find My iPhone to recover a lost iPhone. “Find My iPhone” is a free service from Apple that you can use on your iPhone to locate it, play a sound or message on it, erase all it’s data, or lock it down. You can do this from any Internet enabled computer. If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can download the App and set it up. Apple has a wonderful page that shows you just how to do it:
How to setup Find My iPhone (Apple link)
My family and I have hills around our house where we like to hike. My wife’s sister, Alissa had her iPhone in her front pocket. I have always told my wife that women’s pants have useless front pockets because they are half as deep as men’s pants and sure enough, Alissa’s iPhone was sticking halfway out her front pocket.
We had finished our hike and we were at home, getting ready to leave the house and Alissa couldn’t find her iPhone. We tried calling it after we couldn’t find it. We didn’t hear any ringtones in the house. Since we couldn’t hear it, she went to her computer and logged in to http://www.me.com/find to try and locate it. Unfortunately, Find My iPhone was not able to locate it because it said the iPhone was offline. Your iPhone can only be located if it can connect to a cellular network or the Internet. Since we couldn’t find it in the house, we assumed she dropped it in the hills and since it was 96 degrees, the iPhone was too hot and in temperature warning mode.
Sidebar: Your iPhone can present you with this screen if the internal temperature of the iPhone gets too hot. This can be done by leaving your iPhone in the car on a summer day. Leaving it in direct sunlight or using it when in direct sunlight, like GPS tracking or listening to music.
If you get this message, it is best to turn off the iPhone and let it cool down by moving it to a cooler location.
For several hours, we ran our errands and kept checking Find My iPhone to see if it would show up and eventually we got a response.
We started up the trail again. Since Find My iPhone uses Google Maps, we were able to zoom in and get a pretty accurate location. We did have to send a request to the iPhone to start playing a sound so we could follow the sound and finally retrieve it.
Pretty exciting! Find My iPhone is invaluable if you have an iPhone. Even if you lose you iPhone around your house and have it on vibrate, you can send a request to play a sound to locate it. You can also remotely wipe it so that if it is stolen, the creepy thief can’t look at your photos, or just lock it remotely so the thief is presented with a lock code (if you don’t have a passcode turned on).
– Jason
Great post, Jason. Many thanks.