By Dan Moren

November 4, 2019 11:05 AM PT

Wish List: Find My for CarPlay

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

Sometimes in technology you think of an idea that everybody needs–one of those things that you can’t believe nobody has built.

And sometimes you just think of something that you really need.

Not infrequently, my wife asks me to pick her up from the subway station. So I hop in the car, fire up Google Maps on CarPlay to keep an eye on the traffic, and off we go.

This is all well and good. However, sometimes my wife, in her infinitely helpful manner, starts walking in the direction I’m coming from so that we can meet in the middle. And while she usually takes the same route, it would be very helpful if I could see where she is, so I don’t drive past her.

Enter Find My (formerly Friends), which is perfect for this situation. Except for one little annoying factor: there’s no Find My app on CarPlay, which means if I want to see where she is at this very moment, I have to look down at my phone–precisely the sort of unsafe behavior that CarPlay is designed to avoid.

This probably isn’t a feature that everybody needs, but it’s one that I’d greatly appreciate–and, given the mapping synergy with CarPlay, it seems like something that makes sense.

That said, with iOS 13’s merging of Find My Friends and Find My iPhone, I can imagine an unfortunate daredevil scenario where somebody engages in a high-speed chase in order to retrieve their stolen iOS device. Fun for a Fast and Furious movie, but probably not in real life.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]

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