Did you think Apple was done announcing the new features coming in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion? Did you think Apple was done bringing features from iOS to the Mac? Well, they’re not, and here’s a big one that might be coming this Summer with Lion: Find my Mac.
Just as you can imagine this is probably a Mac implementation of the very popular iOS feature to locate, restore, and lock your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The details are scarce at this point, but we have found references to a Find my Mac service deep down in the 10.7 file system. The actual system files don’t tell us much besides the name, but they do share this Lion build number: 11A372z.
That build number appears to be an internal seed, meaning Apple has been playing around with this Find my Mac feature internally, but swiped it from the developer preview. If it means anything, Apple didn’t actually announce Find my iPhone until WWDC 2009, but it was found in the iOS 3 beta file system a few months earlier.
In terms of these Find my Mac files being for a difference service, we can’t imagine Apple making another service, not related to the iOS service, as this would cause user confusion, something Apple is completely against.
We speculate that this Find my Mac service will be integrated into the free MobileMe, like Find my iPhone, and the Find my iPhone application for iOS devices will be updated to support Macs. Macs will be able to locate other Macs with the online version of the tracking system through Me.com.
Macs don’t have GPS systems built-in so they will have to rely on WiFi connectivity like WiFi-only iPads, and iPod touches. Find my iPhone has a restore function for iOS devices, but we are not so sure that feature will make its way to the Mac in its current iOS implementation.
Restoring a Mac completely will most likely take much longer than an over-the-air iOS restore. Perhaps Apple will implement some super-fast encryption system that can only be unlocked by the user when it’s returned. We could not locate references to Find my Mac in 10.6.6 Snow Leopard, and this guy might need a new name.
