Comments on: MobileMe pushes out new Find My iPhone, Remote Wipe service

By: TheBasicMind

TheBasicMind — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:59:59 +0000

Actually you can enter a pass code lock just to prevent the find my iPhone feature from being disabled. It’s just that it’s not very intuitive how you do it. Don’t set up a pass code lock, instead use restrictions. Enter a pass code that needs to be entered to access restricted features then switch off “allow Location”.

Voila.

This ensures the Location Services option on the main settings screen is greyed out and can’t be changed (it doesn’t prevent location services being used which is what I think most people will think – hence my comment that it isn’t very intuitive).

You can’t do the same thing to restrict the option to enable (or disable) push content, however I’ve found this doesn’t seem to affect whether the service can find your iPhone. Even if it is switched off, you can still find your iPhone (perhaps it just takes longer, I haven’t tried benchmarking the different options; or perhaps it is just required for MobileMe it initialise the service but then is no longer required once it is done.).

[Thanks, that's a useful thing to point out - unfortunately, there aren't yet any restricts for similarly blocking access to change Push settings or your MobileMe account information. Turning on restrictions will however prevent a another user from resetting your settings from the phone, although it doesn't stop them from restoring the phone from iTunes. - Dan]

By: Fix for WiFi problems after iPhone 3.0 upgrade — RoughlyDrafted Magazine

Fix for WiFi problems after iPhone 3.0 upgrade — RoughlyDrafted Magazine — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 04:07:32 +0000

[...] else: Find My iPhone, Remote Wipe work with as many devices as you can register with MobileMe: Support [...]

By: Berend Schotanus

Berend Schotanus — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:58:51 +0000

Another observation with Find my iPhone:
This afternoon I visited a congress in a hotel 80 km from here. I left the hotel at 8:30PM. I tested “Fond my iPhone” at 11:00PM.
MobileMe first needed some 30 seconds of thinking. Then it displayed the exact location of the hotel. And then, again after some 30 seconds, it displayed my actuel home location.
So apparently MobileMe keeps my location in memory.

By: luisd

luisd — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:34:42 +0000

At the moment the only option you have is to activate passcode lock. With this on, you need to type a 4 number digit to wake the phone and use it. It is quite annoying to have it like that. You can change the time it takes before the lock becomes active, but there is no way to have a passcode only for the find my iphone feature.

By: daGUY

daGUY — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:19:23 +0000

Very clever features, with one fatal flaw: if someone steals your iPhone, couldn’t they just go into the settings and turn off the “Find my iPhone” feature (and/or delete the MobileMe account from the phone) before you have a chance to locate it or do a remote wipe?

At the very least, the ability to disable any of these features from the phone should require a password. Even better, they could move the toggle for these features into iTunes itself, so that they can only be disabled if the phone is plugged into the computer it syncs with.

Very clever ideas, though. I’m sure they’ll iron out these issues over time.

By: t0m

t0m — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:34:16 +0000

Two things – does the Find my iphone need a setting turned on on the iPhone to work? If your phone was lost but not locked, presumably someone could change this.
The second thing – the volume of the alert (when I tried it) seems to be linked to the ringer volume – if it was on near zero volume, it’s a much quieter sound made. Maybe they’ll flesh out the functionality – we haven’t really seen a defined yearly update cycle for MobileMe, – more dribs and drabs of update.

By: Berend Schotanus

Berend Schotanus — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:51:26 +0000

To me the “Find my iPhone” service worked instantaneously, after I activated Push notification. Probably because I was early with my update :-)
It is a nice service but I also have some second thoughts:
- Push notification increases battery consumption, that’s why I turned it of. Don’t know if Find my iPhone is enough reason to switch it on again.
- Find my iPhone seems rather fragile against malicious attacks. When a thief knows how an iPhone works it is easy to switch off “Find my iPhone” and prevent a remote wipe.

Probably Apple will gain a lot of experience with this first installment and come with further improvements later on. Maybe one day achieving the ultimate goal dat an iPhone is not an interesting target to steal.