Find My iPhone is free (how to set it up)

iOS 4.2 includes a free and super useful new feature: Find My iPhone. Once limited to paid $99/year MobileMe subscribers, this new capability will soon become the new best friend of late model iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users everywhere. By “late model,” that means iPhone 4, iPad or iPod Touch 4G. If you own one of these devices, then you’re about to experience some very cool new things.

But that’s not to say that Find My [iDevice] won’t work on other iOS 4.2 Apple handsets. It will work on them, but you need at least one of these current devices in order to sign up for the service. Once you do that, you can spread the joy to, say, your iPhone 3GS.

Says Apple, “Once you create an account on a qualifying device, use your Apple ID and password to enable Find My iPhone on your other devices running iOS 4.2.”

HOW TO ENABLE FIND MY IPHONE

Once you’ve got your late model iDevice loaded up with iOS 4.2, here’s what you do:

Launch Settings
Tap on “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
Tap on “Add Account.”
Tap “MobileMe.”
Plug in your MM user name or Apple ID.

That Apple ID is the same one that iTunes and the App Store uses to purchase apps, songs and other titles. You can also create one right from this screen. Your login will get verified, and once that happens, the Find My iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch is yours to enjoy! (And don’t forget to grab the Find My iPhone app in the App Store, not to be confused with Find My Device. That’s a different application from a third-party developer.)

FIND MY IPHONE’s FEATURES

Simply put, it gives you peace of mind. You now have some very cool remote features at your disposal: Audio alerts and screen message, location tracking and Remote Wipe.

Audio alert: Say you misplace your iPhone in your house. I’ve been usingICantFindMyPhone.com, which dials your number so you can hear it ringing and locate it. And this has worked extremely well for me — when the ringer isn’t muted. Now, you have another even more robust option: Log into www.me.com, and you can send an audio alert remotely. And it will emit a sound, even if your device is set to vibrate. If you lose it outside the house, you can send an audio alert to make the device’s presence known to whoever finds your gadget.

Screen message: If you want an easy way to communicate with someone who may have found your device, you can also make it display a message right on your screen. This makes it easy to give an alternate phone number for them to contact you, and you can even offer a reward for the gadget’s safe return.

Location tracking: This feature is probably of the most use for tracking iPhones and 3G-equipped iPads, since they have GPS on board. It may not offer exactly pinpoint precision, but it can give you an idea of where your device is within a certain square radius. The iPod Touch and Wifi-only iPad are another story, though. Yes, they can still be tracked (to a lesser degree) by Wifi triangulation (using nearby hotspots or wireless internet). But the thing to note is that the device’s Wifi needs to be turned on and it has to be actively joined to a network for it to work.

Remote Lock/Wipe: In my opinion, what might be the most important features are the security functions of Remote Lock and Remote Wipe. If you’ve ever been nervous about losing your iThing — and all your private info along with it — being able to remotely secure your data with a lock code (even if you didn’t have one on there before), or even eradicate your info completely will save your sanity.

If you have multiple iProducts, you can use one to locate the others or send remote services to them, so having access to these features is very handy to have right on the device. And all of your devices enabled with Find My iPhone can also be accessed and viewed online.

This is a ridiculously handy set of features to have, and believe me — you may not use it all the time, but if you only use it once, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.