Apple's 'Find My' Feature: The Brainchild Of An Intern

The widely used “Find My” feature on Apple Inc. AAPL devices, a savior for many users who misplace their phones, was originally the brainchild of an intern at the tech giant.

What Happened: In a conversation with tech YouTuber Safwan AhmedMia, Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, disclosed the humble beginnings of the feature. The intern’s proposal aimed to assist people who frequently misplace their phones, leading to the creation of the ‘Find My’ ecosystem, Business Insider reported on Friday.

The “Find My iPhone” app was first unveiled in 2009 and became accessible to all users with the launch of iCloud in 2011. The feature was subsequently extended to Macs and is now a standard feature on all Apple devices.

Over time, the feature has expanded to locate not just lost devices but also people and misplaced items. In 2011, “Find My Friends” was introduced, enabling users to share their locations. A decade later, Apple launched the AirTag, a physical tracker for personal belongings.

While other tech companies like Google have launched similar features, Cue takes pride in Apple’s innovation, stating, “But nobody thought of it until we did it.”

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Why It Matters: The ‘Find My’ feature has proven its worth on numerous occasions. For instance, an iPhone user was able to recover their stolen device from an EcoATM kiosk at Walmart Inc., thanks to the ‘Find My’ app's location tracking feature.

Google is also joining the fight against stalkers with the imminent rollout of its ‘Find My Devices’ network, which is compatible with Apple’s ‘Find My’ network. This comes after a year of collaboration between the two tech giants to create a cross-platform system for detecting nearby trackers.

However, the ‘Find My’ app has also led to some unexpected situations. In one case, faulty Maps data allegedly led multiple people to a single Texas address in search of their lost iPhones.

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Image by Konstantin Savusia via Shutterstock

This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Pooja Rajkumari