Apple Reportedly Launching Tile Tracker Rival with New Find My Friends/iPhone App

Find my iphone

9to5Mac’s Guilherme Rambo continues to provide leaks on Apple’s upcoming software and hardware plans, according to information from unnamed insiders.

The latest? Apple plans to launch a new app to merge Find My Friends/iPhone, for both iOS and macOS:

Apple is working on a new app that’s going to replace the Find My Friends and Find My iPhone apps. With codename “GreenTorch”, the app is currently being tested by engineers at the company.

People familiar with its development shared exclusive details about the project with 9to5Mac, but asked to remain anonymous discussing the company’s plans. The new app will have the same features of the two existing apps, but combined into a single app, which will be available on both iOS and on macOS, as a Marzipan app.

This new app will find your devices better and even when they are not connected to Wi-Fi or cellular data, with a feature called “Find Network”.

You will also be able to share your location with any friend, beyond just friends and family. Sharing your location with friends—which we assume would be through shareable web links—will let them also create notifications for when you arrive or leave a location.

The new app will be able to find all your devices—even those belonging to your family—with one app, including your accessories like AirPods. You’ll still be able to put devices in Lost Mode like before.

New Tile-Like Tracking Device to Locate Items via Crowdsourcing?

More interestingly, Rambo writes Apple plans to launch their own Tile tracker competitor:

Apple also wants users to be able to track any item – not just their Apple devices – using this new unified app. The company is working on a new hardware product, known only as “B389” by the people involved in its development.

“This new product will be a tag that can be attached to any item – similar to other products like Tile,” reports Rambo, with this new accessory linked to your iCloud account and by proximity like AirPods.

This new Apple finder ‘tag’ can notify you when your iPhone is too far away from the item it’s attached to, meaning this will help prevent users from losing or misplacing items.



There will be the ability to set ignored locations for tags, while you will also be able to share tag locations with your contacts. These tags will contain your contact info “which can be read by any Apple device when the tag is put into “lost mode” – the owner of the tag will receive a notification when it is found,” similar to Tile trackers.

With over 2 billion iOS devices in the wild, it suggests the company wants to create a crowdsourced network to help you find your lost items. Forgetting your wallet at Starbucks is going to get so elegant and seamless it seems.

No other information was obtained about when this Apple tag product may debut, but a possible debut in September alongside new iPhones would make sense.

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