Finding a use for Find My Friends
I really questioned the utility of Apple’s Find My Friends app when it was released with iOS5. Probably just me and my stage of life, but I don’t have so many friends wandering loosely about waiting to be found. I tend to know who I’m meeting and have used the phone to talk to them. And otherwise broadcasting my position or looking where others are doesn’t really interest me so much.
But the last few weeks the app has come into its own as my wife has started riding her bike to work. Thanks to the app I can see when she’s left work and where she is on the ride home and can judge our evening meal time appropriately. Yes, I could achieve much the same end with a call but this way seems neater, quicker and a bit more amusingly magical. And it doesn’t involve her having to take a call while riding down the road.
For more general use I still find the idea of the app a little disturbing, very ‘big-partner is watching you’ stuff. But I’m now a convert: there are some benign and helpful uses for it.