But not Apple TVs or HomePods, neither of which is easily misplaced or likely to be stolen. The service works via an app or iCloud’s Web site, and it can find iOS devices, Macs, Apple Watches, and AirPods. Over the next year, the company gradually extended the service to more devices and subsequently improved how it located, tracked, and wiped remote hardware. How the New Find My Service WorksĪpple introduced Find My iPhone in 2010. The new app and service will simply be called Find My. In iOS 13 and Catalina, Apple is combining Find My iPhone with the active, intentional location-sharing service Find My Friends. Whether or not it actually helps users recover that many more devices from under a car seat or from thieves, Apple has chosen a nifty set of interlocking encryption algorithms and privacy-preserving policies.Īpple never had a unified name for this device-locating feature previously, at best referring to the app as Find My iPhone, and customizing the name on whatever device it appeared, like Find My Mac and Find My iPad. In line with Apple’s commitment to privacy, the company’s description of the feature promises that it won’t reveal to anyone but you that the lost device is being tracked and where it’s located. This technique solves the problem of how to find a device that isn’t connected to the Internet: by relying on other Internet-connected devices in close physical proximity! (To be fair, Apple didn’t invent this approach, and Bluetooth-enabled location trackers like Tile have used similar crowdsourced approaches for some time.) This reporting works even when the missing Mac, iPhone, or iPad is on standby or sleeping, though it can’t work for a device that’s powered down, or if you have disabled Bluetooth or put your device into Airplane Mode. The trick is that any Internet-connected Apple device running iOS 13 or macOS 10.15 Catalina can identify broadcasts from the Bluetooth adapter in other Internet-offline Apple devices nearby and pass that information back to Apple. If you mark a Find My-tracked device as lost, but it’s not connected to Wi-Fi or a cellular network, Apple may be able to determine its location anyway with the passive help of your fellow Apple product owners. If you’ve ever lost a Mac, iPhone, or iPad, or had one stolen, you may know the frustration of having Find My Whatever enabled, but never getting a ping that it’s back on the network or never receiving confirmation the device was erased after you issued that command.Īpple aims to improve that situation later this year with revisions to its Find My iPhone service that turns nearby Apple hardware into relay beacons. #1665: Important OS security updates, abusive Web notifications, solve myopia with an iPhone, Self Service Repair.#1666: Air quality websites and apps, The Password Game. #1667: OS Rapid Security Responses, 1Password and 2FA, using Siri to request music.#1668: Updated Rapid Security Responses, OS public betas, screen saver bug fixed, “Red Team Blues” book review.#1669: OS security updates, ambiguity of emoji, small business payments with Melio, Twitter now X.
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