Google Latitude on iPhone is a bit pants
By Benny Har-Even in Editorial
It rather went under my radar that Latitude has finally arrived on iPhone last week. However, it’s not quite what it is on Blackberry and Android.
I expected it would be rolled into an update to the superb Google Maps app but it seems not - it runs only as a web app apparently at the behest of Apple itself.
While on Blackberry and Android can run any application in the background - on the iPhone, Apple only lets a few, such as its own iPod and Mail apps, due to battery drain issues.
This means that to broadcast your location you have to have the web page open - do anything else, and move somewhere else, and it won’t track you. Which makes it rather pointless in my book. And the app permanently things my office is in Paddington. Which it isn’t.
And the actual page doesn’t contain any useful contextual information about what the person is doing - it’s all rather bland.
I’m holding out hope, probably in vain, that this will be sorted in the next significant iPhone update. At the moment though, it’s a bit pants, basically.
Rated: 60% (2 votes)
Loading ...Comment by James - July 31, 2009 on 12:55 am
You are right - I was disappointed too. I will stick with www.pocketlife.com - that works just fine and has a quite nice UI to it. Why always go with Google, when there r good startups out there?
Pingback by - July 31, 2009 on 1:08 am
[…] Google Latitude on iPhone is a bit pants While on Blackberry and Android can run any application in the background - on the iPhone, Apple only lets a few, such as its own iPod and Mail apps, due to battery drain issues. (tags: google latitude iPhone) […]
Comment by - August 3, 2009 on 1:51 am
I’ve written a script which solves the background auto update problem. You can get it here:
http://nat.org/blog/2009/08/playnice-google-apple
You need to run it on a server; it will fetch your iPhone location from MobileMe and post it to Google Latitude automatically.
The iPhone updates MobileMe with its location continuously for the ‘Find My iPhone’ feature.
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