iOS 6 is officially out and we're sure you're busy maxing out your Internet connections trying to download it. If you've already installed iOS 6 and you're looking for new and interesting ways to stalk your friends, you're in luck. Apple has released an updated version of its Find Friends app along with the release of iOS 6, which not only improves upon the UI to make the app more usable, it also allows you to set up alerts for when your friends come and go—from anywhere.
The Find Friends app and service was first launched with iOS 5 in October of 2011. Essentially acting as Apple's version of Google Latitude, Find Friends allows iOS device users to look up and track the geographic locations of other iOS-device-using people. This comes in handy when you're planning a get-together with family or friends, or you simply like to know where someone is during the day (such as your school-aged child). Both sides of the "friendship" need to be confirmed before Apple allows you to follow another user, and there are some privacy controls that allow you to temporarily block access to your location.
With the latest version of Find Friends, it's mostly the interface that has changed. Apple has revised the app so that your friends list pops up over the bottom of a generalized map view (instead of separating them onto different screens)—anytime you tap on a specific friend, the map will zoom in on that person; when you tap to go back, it slides the friend list back up from the bottom.
More importantly, Apple has added a button that allows you to send a text message to your friends without forcing you to switch apps first. In practice, this is much more useful than it seems. Usually when you're trying to find a friend using this app, you're doing so for a reason (perhaps you're meeting up for a movie or trying to see why they're late to your house). Sending a message to that person to see what's going on tends to be the next course of action after figuring out where they are. I very much appreciate this feature (it's worth noting that when you decide to do this, the app does eventually bump you over to the Messages app so you can compose your text).
But the most significant new feature—and the one that will undoubtedly cause at least a bit of controversy—is the ability to set notifications for when your iOS-using friends arrive or leave a certain location. You can set this notification by viewing a specific friend's location and then tapping the "Notify Me" button on the top right. This brings you to a screen that allows you to decide whether you want to be notified when that person is coming or going, and with which address to associate the notification.
As we alluded to earlier, there are reasons why this is a great feature to have. If your child has an iPod touch (or even an iPhone—kids have everything these days!), you can set it up to send you a notification when he or she leaves school in the afternoon. If you want to know the precise moment to throw a meal on the stove, you can have the app notify you when your spouse is leaving the office. If you're mad that a friend appears to be at your favorite bar and didn't invite you along, you can set a notification so that you're alerted anytime that friend arrives at that bar in the future so you can brood about it some more.
Wait, what?
Indeed, it's the last example (and other similar scenarios) that might make some Find Friends users uncomfortable. It's one thing to become Find Friends... friends with the knowledge that people will be able to see where you are when they check the app, but it's another to know that your friends may actually set up push notifications for when you leave your house or show up somewhere. I have a friend who gleefully informed me that he set up a notification to alert him anytime I leave my own house—which, it turns out, is not often—and I couldn't decide whether to laugh or weep and then quietly remove that person from my friends list.
Of course, the solution here is relatively simple: go into your "Me" tab and remove that person's permissions from your followers list. But this isn't the best solution either; what if you want to be able to find each other at other times, but you don't want that person receiving automatic notice of your whereabouts? It would be helpful if Apple would add a setting in the Me tab that lets you specify whether others can place notifications on your location—it could be slotted in right underneath the "Hide from Followers" switch.
There is one catch to this feature, though: it requires the other party to be using iOS 6, too. I tested this app both before and after the release of iOS 6, and I was unable to set notifications for any friends who were not running the developer betas. After the public release, however, that changed—when my friends upgraded to the new OS (even if they hadn't yet installed the updated Find Friends app), I was able to do so. Not that this is a particularly useful tip—practically everyone using a newer iOS device will eventually run iOS 6—but it's worth pointing out for when you can't figure out why your one friend still on an original iPhone can't be stalked via notifications.
That said, I like the new app. It appears that Apple is paying attention to what users seem to do the most when they're trying to find people and has modified its UI to make the best use of the space available. It would be better if Apple allowed for user-specific privacy levels like Google Latitude does—in Latitude, you can specify between city-level or "best available" location for each individual friend. This would help mitigate the notification problem as well; if a friend is set to city-level-only, he or she would only be able to see that you're in town and not much else. But when it comes to tracking the locations of those who are truly close to you—and who you actually trust—it's hard to argue that Find Friends isn't a decent solution. And with the recently added features, the app is even better tailored to families, who may want to use Find Friends to help foster some peace of mind about where their loved ones are.
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