Whenever there’s a new Apple patent, our eyes light up in anticipation and wonder. What new feature are they going to introduce? What innovation is going to blow our minds? What gimmick is going to keep us glued to our iPhones?
This time, Apple has patented a system that’s going to be a boon for people who are careless. If, like me, you keep misplacing or losing your things, Apple is going to come to our rescue soon.
Apple on Tuesday was granted a patent covering a lost-and-found system that enlists the help of other user devices to locate and track items to which low-power electronic tags are affixed.
(Quote from AppleInsider)
In simple English, the new technology enables the “crowd” to find your lost articles. To do that, Apple proposes to put small beacons/trackers in the stuff you feel is prone to be lost, like your backpack or your keys.
Now, when you lose one such “tagged” piece of article, you can raise a request (through an app perhaps) to find your goods. Apple’s servers will then send a coded message to all the compatible devices on their ecosystem to search for the tag on your lost good.
All the hundreds of thousands of iPhones, iPads, etc. out there will then send out small electromagnetic pulses to search for the required tag in their vicinity. If any of them return a positive result, Apple’s servers will retrieve the location of said device and relay the information on to you.
The technology that Apple has patented is called “Bluetooth Low Energy” beacon technology. As the name suggests, the tech is based on Bluetooth. Therefore, the search for beacons/tags can take place only with a few meters from the searching device. This short range of search also means that Apple will have to incorporate a large number of devices to make the system work. It seems likely, therefore, that most new Apple devices will come equipped with the tech.
Apple will not force each and every user to use the tech. It has said that users will be allowed to opt out of this “crowd-sourcing” service if they so wish. For one, because it has direct access to your device all the time. For another, because keeping the “searcher” on the whole time is sure to take a toll on battery life.
As far as the battery is concerned, Apple has assured that it’s a “low power” tech, and will only have a very minimal effect on your battery. However, I’m fairly sure that a lot of users will be reluctant to use this technology. There are only so many good deeds one can do in a day, and sacrificing your battery life to help some klutz find his things is not one of them.
There’s a strong possibility that when this tech becomes public, it will be clubbed with the “Find my iPhone” feature. We might also get to see a complete overhaul of the app to make space for all the new features that this crowd-sourcing feature will bring.
What’s not so certain is when this feature will be rolled out for the public. We’re hoping to see it in the iPhone 8. However, Apple has been disappointing us of late and we won’t stake our lives on seeing this tech in action in 2018 too!