Great news if you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and you are the kind of person who regularly loses or misplaces stuff – the Find My iPhone feature is now free. Earlier this week, when Apple announced the launch of iOS 4.2, the software developer announced that you can use Find My iPhone to locate your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad for free. Until now you needed a MobileMe Subscription to use Find My iPhone.
“The Find My iPhone app is a free download on the App Storea? and lets users easily locate a missing device on a map and have it display a message or play a sound. Users can even remotely lock or wipe data from a lost device to protect privacy,” said Apple in the press release that announced the availability of iOS 4.2.
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Right off the top of my head I can think of three scenarios that showcase how useful Find My iPhone is:
In the house - when Find My iPhone tells you that your device is somewhere in the house, you can instruct your iPhone to play a sound. Then all you have to do is go find it. At a friend’s - When Find My iPhone tells you that your device is at your friend’s Bob house because you carelessly left it behind after visiting him, you can write a message that will be displayed on the iPhone’s screen, something like “Be back to get my iPhone, Bob!” Please note that the message will be displayed even though the device is locked. It was stolen – since you do not want the thief to gain access to your data, you can remotely wipe all data stored on your stolen device. When you do so the iPhone will be restored to the factory settings.
The Find My iPhone app is available on iTunes here. Details on how to set up the free Find My iPhone feature on an iPhone 4, iPad, or iPod touch (4th generation) running iOS 4.2 are available here.