And also, thank you, Find My iPhone.
See, Marjorie and I got out of a cab tonight, but my iPhone didn’t. I habitually check my pockets when I exit a cab, to be sure I haven’t left anything behind, and that would have done the trick right there, but in New York, cabs don’t make money sitting around, so in the seven seconds or so it took for the discovery, he was already long gone. I resigned myself to replacing an iPhone.
We came upstairs and Marjorie started the claim process while I opened up MobileMe’s Find My iPhone feature, which many users have decried as a gross invasion of privacy (never mind that cell phones have always been traceable by their very nature). I could see that my phone had just crossed the bridge into Brooklyn. I remotely locked access and stapled a message to the lock screen asking very politely for the finder to call us on the land line to return the phone. I used the app’s alert feature to make the phone ping for two minutes (which works even if the phone is on silent mode).
The cabbie, meanwhile, hadn’t picked up a new fare yet, and when he found the chirping phone he obligingly gave us a call and said he’d be happy to bring it back. Karmically speaking, this would be the payback for when Marjorie found a cell phone in the library today and turned it in at the front desk.
So I watched him on Google Maps as he brought the phone right to our building. I gave him a very well deserved cash reward, and everybody ended up smiling.
What a wonderful world.