Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Apple Stealth Launches ‘Find My Friends’ and ‘Airport Utility’ Apps:

Find my Friends and Airport Utility for iOS. And yes, my Time Capsule is called Tardis. What else would it be?


Apple’s iCloud launches today, along with a few new iOS apps. And while we’re still waiting for the iWork and iPhoto updates that will allow us to use the new syncing and Photo Stream sharing services, Apple has released the Find My Friends and Airport Utility apps.


Find My Friends was announced last week at the iPhone 4S event. It lets you see where your friends are on a map, and lets them track you. One neat feature is the “temporary” setting, which shares your location for a limited time. This will probably come in handy when the Gadget Lab crew next hits CES in Vegas (for the evening parties — not for work).


Equally useful for travelers is the new Airport Utility. This lets you configure Apple routers from your iOS device. If you ever lugged a computer along on a trip just so you could configure your Airport Express to turn your hotel’s Ethernet connection into a Wi-Fi one, you’ll love it. Pretty much everything that can be done with the Mac version can be done with the iOS version.


You won’t find either of these apps in the App Store just yet. To get them, you need to jump through a few hoops. To get your copy of Find My Friends, just visit iCloud.com from your iOS device and click the link. It’ll take you right to the store. To get the Airport Utility, go to the Settings app, hit the Wi-Fi tab, tap your network an then tap the “Manage this Network” button at the bottom. Follow the prompts.


Both apps are free, and universal.


iCloud [Apple]


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