See that, potential thief? If you steal a phone, there is a 95% probability that you keep it, sure, but a 5% probability that you stole it from a motivated technically competent person who will track you down and ... make you give it back. That huge downside risk will certainly will prevent you from stealing things in the future!
Your timestamped movements are a marketer's wet-dream. And since the iphone can both display advertising AND make purchases, said marketer has even more incentive to flip around your life in his OLAP tools like a rubic's cube.
I would go as far as to say that a marketing company should subsidize an iphone if the user agrees to install their version of "MobileMe".
I agree that MobileMe is a privacy concern, but I don't agree that the problem comes from marketers. An automated program will serve you ads which are relevant to where you are, and it is unlikely that a marketer can get directly to your data. The real problem is when people who do should not have access to your data get it, or when those who can get access legally abuse it.
I would much prefer a version of MobileMe that I can remotely activate -- I do not want my every movement being stored in some database on the off chance that it will be useful. I would much rather activate it when I need it, LoJack style.
Erm, that's how MobileMe works. It doesn't store your every movement; that'd burn through battery life pretty quickly. It gets a position when you tell it to from the website; presumably the order comes over the same channel push messages do.
Mobile me needs some information from your phone before it can be remotely activated. But I'm sure this is to insulate Apple from crazy stalker boy/girlfriends and the havoc that would ensue.
It's similar to the story that Clay Shirky uses in the opening of Here Comes Everybody, although the phone in that story wasn't an iPhone, and the emphasis was more on how the victim "crowdsourced" the phone's recovery.
What a brilliant story. You almost have to feel sorry for the thief, who obviously had no idea what he was getting himself into.
I like the way Apple has provided all the tools needed to stalk an iPhone thief, at least until they jailbreak the phone. I've heard some people complain about such GPS tracking features being a privacy issue, but clearly they are handy when your iPhone is stolen.
Of course if Apple went one step further -- build this feature in for free -- then they might reduce to nearly zero the incentive people have to steal the iPhone.
Note for Android folks: There is no MobileMe for Android, but there is a similar app called Mobile Defense (and it's free!). I downloaded it after reading this.
