Worthless Lying POS App

So turns out that "Find My iPhone" app is a lying POS.

If you followed along on Facebook the last few days maybe you saw my posts about looking for my phone... was SO BUMMED when I couldn't find it yesterday but then I remembered that I could use that awesomely cool Find My iPhone app so I tried that out. Here's how it went...

Realize I can't find my phone. Check that iCloud thing and have it locate my phone via gps... Oh! Tah Dah! It shows a map of our town and dials in a picture of my iphone and tells me it is at Moana's gymnastics... which makes sense because that was the last time I saw it (Tuesday night at her gym). No problem I'll go pick it up there after I pick up Moana from school.

So yesterday afternoon I show up at the gym and look around and ask around but nobody seems to have seen a phone and we can't find it anywhere. We call it several times from anotehr phone to see if we hear it ringing but don't hear anything. Crap. I wonder if someone already took it from the gym? I go home and check my computer again... It relocates my phone and places it at THE MALL. OMG how the heck would I ever find it at the mall?? Must be some teenager who took it from the gym and is now hanging out at the mall... well I'll just wait til he/she goes home and I'll find him/her there. So I continue tracking the phone and like 20' later I see that it has left and is now showing up at a home a few miles from me. AH HA! I'm going to get this damn thief. Moana in the car with me we drive to the house where my iPhone is showing up on the gps map and while I am a little scared, it looks like a nice enough house so maybe it was all a mistake and I can just ask for it and they'll give it back? So, I leave Moana in the car for a minute and go ring the doorbell. Grandma comes to answer the door looking quite skeptical so I introduce myself and explain to her that Find My iPhone app assures me that my iphone is indeed in her home. She stares at me like I have three heads and assures me that she has been home with her husband all day and that no, they don't have any kids who attend gymnastics. They don't even use those iPhones. Unfortunately she comes across as believable so I put my tail between my legs and drive back home to check that GPS app again.

At home I'm back on the Find My iPhone app and now it's telling me it's been located in another neighborhood down the road... near a boat ramp. I use the feature that allows me to send a message to the phone and give my husband's phone number and ask them to call it to return the lost phone. Then I use the remote lock feature so at least they can't use it in the meantime. Then I put Moana back in the car and we drive down to the boat ramp which is all fenced off and it seems no one is there at all? GAH. CRAP.

Back at home- check the gps map again and see that the phone is on the move and it appears to be in the water?? Would it ping from underwater? It's moving. Must be on a boat. A boat? OMG what are these thieves doing with my phone on their boat?? Eventually it stopped moving and seemed to be stuck here. Did they anchor?

Finally Scott arrives home and I tell him the saga up to this point and he suggests I call the police before I go all vigilante again and swim out to that boat demanding my phone. So I call the police and apparently it must have been a slow night because an officer actually came to my house right away and filed a report for me. I showed him my iPad with a picture of the map (above) and he said he'd go drive by but there wasn't much they could do until the phone came back to land. He did suggest that I report the phone stolen to ATT so that if/when someone went to try to make it work it would come up as a stolen phone... That sounded like a good idea to me so I came inside and googled ATT stores in kaneohe trying to see if the store I knew of was still open at 8PM and wouldn't you know it? A little dot popped up on a map showing there was an ATT kiosk at THE MALL! Ok now I'm in full on detective mode so I grab Scott's iPhone and head off the the mall with my police report number so see what I can find out since obviously the first thing the thieves did with their newly acquired stolen device was to take it to the ATT kiosk at the mall to try to have it reset! Why hadn't I thought of that before??

I asked around in Radio Shack and Verizon stores if anyone has come in asking about having an iPhone reset but once again was greeted like I was crazy so my three heads and I left the mall feeling defeated once again. But this time I was armed with Scott's iPhone so I could be checking the gps map on the fly and wouldn't you know it? The phone was now showing up in the water but much closer to the harbor... they were coming in to the harbor again!?! I called the police back right away and informed them that the thieves were heading toward land and I was sure this was it! I would greet them there with the police as they were docking their boat and we would get those bastards!!!

So I drove back to the boat ramp and waited, in the dark... no police showed up. No boats were coming in. Blah. Check the app again and WHAT?? Phone was now showing up at a house across the street from the one I'd actually gone to earlier... could it be? Probably not but I drove over there anyway. Totally and completely obsessed at this point. Did a drive-by of the house where it said the phone was but it all looked dark and not likely that the phone was actually there... check the map again and WHAT? It was now showing up at the Police Station? OH THANK GOD. Someone was finally being honest about it and turned it in! Sweet.

Next stop Police Station where they knew me already as that crazy lady who had been following her iPhone around town for the last 4 hours since I'd called them several times already. And no- my phone was not there and no one had come by. I was beginning to feel like this Find My iPhone app was indeed a lying POS so I finally gave up and came home. But of course I checked it one more time from my computer and it showed my iPhone back out in the water where it had been located previously?? Argh. I went to bed and thought I'd try again in the morning.

So at 6AM this morning I checked and indeed, phone still appeared to be out to sea. BUT, by 7 AM it was back on land and spent about an hour at what appeared to be a little breakfast joint right near the mall? I wait to see if it stabilizes at someone's home where I figured I would go ask one more time before I just gave up and bought another new iPhone...

La la la this continued on for several hours where I was sort of working but mostly checking that gps map and watching my phone move all around Kaneohe. So weird these thieves would just be driving around our little town like that?? Anyway, at last resort I used that feature on the app that said it would sound an alarm on the phone until it was found and the password was entered correctly... I figured maybe if the thing was just beeping non-stop the thieves would get sick of it and throw it out the window of their car so I could just go retrieve it from the side of the road? Desperate times call for desperate measures... So I activate the alarm and right away hear a BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. Um, what?? I follow the sound of the BEEP to my hall closet where I open up a backpack and find my phone... battery nearly dead. Are you kidding me?? This thing has been here all along?? Unbelievable.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that the gps mapping on that Find My iPhone is a completely worthless lying POS. But the beeping alarm feature might be one to try before you call the police and go on a witch hunt around town.