Yesterday, apple released version 4.2 of their iOS. With it, came the announcement of free ‘mobileme’ accounts & ‘find my iphone’ apps for all…
From paid to free
Up until yesterday, mobileme accounts cost $99 per year and they still cost that today for premium services however the popular ‘find my iphone’ app is now free. Find my iphone taps in to the iphone’s inbuilt GPS sensor and can report back to me.com where exactly it’s located. All you gotta do is log in to me.com to find it.
So for example, if you happen to steal my iphone and drive down to Cork with it, i’ll be able to find you because all i have to do is log in to me.com and i’ll see something like this;
So i’m able to track you down to within a few hundred meters radius (the location on that map isn’t quite accurate, it says i’m in a housing estate as i write this when i fact i’m in the college canteen!). However, i’m also able to send my iPhone a message and play a sound for 2 minutes or i can lock it or wipe it. All remotely.
That makes this ‘find my iphone’ feature invaluable. It provides great peace of mind and now that it’s free, no iphone 4, ipad or ipod touch should be without it.
Ever check your pockets and panic thinking “oh no, i’ve dropped my phone in town or left it in a shop?” sure you have… well, a quick check on me.com will show you that you’ve simply left it in the car or lost it in the house somewhere…. so the peace of mind this service can provide is definitely worth paying nothing for 
It’s also a nice security thing too… lets say you’re a parent and give your child a loan of your car. All you gotta do is pop a spare iphone in there and secretly track them 😈
The only potential downside is that some kind of location feature obviously has to run or update in the background so i’m not sure what impact that has on battery, but so far i haven’t noticed a massive difference in battery life. In any case, it’s worth it for the extra bit of peace of mind.