Filed under: Internet Tools, iPhone, App Store
Changes in Apple attitudes force changes in Google Latitude
We didn't want to let the week slip into the weekend without mention of the long-awaited release, on Thursday afternoon, of Google's Latitude client for iPhone, allowing users to update their locations to the social service and keep track of friends and family on the move (otherwise known as "iStalkU" -- no, sorry, that was Loopt, my mistake). You can access the service by browsing to http://google.com/latitude on Mobile Safari on your iPhone or iPod touch.
Yes, that's right, browsing. Latitude, believe it or not, is a web app -- which means that you can't get push notifications about your contact's movements, or keep constant tabs on folks without leaving Safari running. Intriguing. As Google's Mat Balez notes in his blog post announcing the Latitude release, Google actually developed a native app for Latitude... only to have Apple, uh, suggest that the big G redo the concept as a web app to avoid user confusion with the Maps app. Really? Must have been an interesting phone call.
David Coursey at PC World is frustrated with the limitation, and it's hard to fault him. Meanwhile, location-centric apps like Brightkite are already on the store -- of course, they are also kneecapped by the lack of a backgrounding mode to send updated position fixes.
If you're a Latitude fan, give us your feedback on the new web app below.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Dave S. said 1:48AM on 7-25-2009
Yep, kneecapped... The more I use my iPhone, the more I wish I had all apps capable of working in the background. Latitude is a poster child for the failure of Apple's current policy.
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Sparks said 3:17AM on 7-25-2009
As someone who has both an iPhone 3GS and an Android phone (G1), I can honestly say I find the iPhone more usable. And that's in part because it *doesn't* run stuff in the background.
Yes, having the notifications pop up on my G1 is great, but I also quickly discover how many things leave themselves running in the background. After a while, even the home screen becomes horribly unresponsive, and earlier today I got an error message from the OS when the contacts app stopped responding. You really must download a process manager and periodically close all the things that have decided they must stay running... and many of them install as services, and so will gradually start back up again in the background.
I feel like I've gone back to Windows Mobile in one of the areas I most disliked about WM.
Sure, there are benefits. The ability of Google Voice to start running in the background and literally just take over all phone functionality is pretty neat, giving quick feedback of new GV SMS messages or voicemails. The ability to do Latitude checkins in the background is neat. All those little background notifications for Twitter and suchnot can be pretty cool.
But using both on a daily basis, the iPhone ends up being a better /phone/ to me, because I don't have to worry about, 'hrm, the contacts app has gone horribly sluggish, I wonder how much junk is running in the background now.' So if I need to make an outgoing phonecall, I generally find myself reaching for my iPhone.
(In fairness, the Android contacts app has only tanked on me the one time, but as that was /today/ the incident is pretty fresh and striking in my mind.)
CaptCaveman said 3:40AM on 7-25-2009
The background issue needs to be addressed by Apple.
I finally had to jailbreak my phone this week, because I was tired of exiting out of apps by mistake.
I was so used to just jumping over to SMS or checking email while listening to Slacker. Or hitting the view button when an interesting message came in. But I found myself hitting the home button and then cursing because I forgot that I couldn't do that.
So now I can enable back-grounding and just use my phone instead of exiting apps, starting them again, finding I need to do something else and exiting again. And when I'm done with the app, simply disable back-grounding.
Alex Bratton said 10:49AM on 7-25-2009
The background location tracking challenge is definitely an issue, even beyond the social networking space (we created a good guy tracker for a critical infrastructure security firm pulls GPS data into a tactical display). There are some creative ways around that coming out (without jailbreaking) but they really only make sense for enterprise or government applications (they need gear in the telecom network).
We recently built a location app for GTX Corp with a bit of a different approach, iLOCi2 - http://locimobile.com, and it just went live this week. iLOCi2 focuses on making it very easy to ask someone else for their location and quickly get a response with a map. Using APNS and the maps features makes it a much more active process in the 'right now' rather than a passive tracker.
Ian Hamilton said 1:53AM on 7-25-2009
Mat Balez, Product Manager, Google Mobile Team...not Mat Velez.
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Michael Rose said 2:13AM on 7-25-2009
OOPS. fixing.
Ryan said 2:01AM on 7-25-2009
Not on topic, but I want to gripe somewhere. Mobile me is down for unscheduled maintenance. C'mon apple, people pay for this!
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Noah said 6:45AM on 7-25-2009
Well. The next time you think you want to post something that isn't on topic... can you close your browser instead? That'd be great. kthx
Ron said 2:24AM on 7-25-2009
HeyWay is still my favourite location-sharing app. It allows you to send your location when you want, to the people you want, and it has instant notification.
Definitely one of my favourite apps, and Google Latitude hasn't changed that fact.
There are so many limitations with Latitude, it makes it pretty much useless. Without notifications, these apps are useless because everyone has to be running the apps at the same time to know what is going on...
There is nothing stopping Google, or anyone else, from having a "notification app" that notifies you when events happen such as a location move, or even new Gmail!
People shouldn't have to resort to using Prowl/Growl to get notified from activity in your essential applications.
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Keith Tomlinson said 2:29AM on 7-25-2009
It's terrible - such a poor show from both Google and Apple
Could I also ask that people stop comparing to loopt - it's only available in the USA so how is this a fair comparison for the rest of us?
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Kento Ito said 2:36AM on 7-25-2009
I know this is frustrating, but if you think about it, if Google Latitude became a native iPhone app, Apple might have considered the app a huge invasion of privacy, since it's Google, and yanked the app from the app store, and also turned on the KILL SWITCH to delete the app from the phone, because it might be considered malicious.
Basically, Apple wants to protect people's privacy. With Google Latitude, anyone with gmail already has a latitude account (since Gmail account is a Google account) meaning billions of users using iPhone to check Gmail might be tracked via Google Latitude.
Loopt, on other hand, is an opt-in thing. You have to make separate account, and then you connect with people you know. Very different from Google Latitude.
One is malicious, and other is very opt-in.
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matthew.comp said 5:09AM on 7-25-2009
I don't see how Google Latitude is in any way not optin. If it was a proper app, you'd still have to download it, run it, let it find your location, and let it keep updating your location. If it was malicious then it would be installed in Maps 'and' turned on by default, but as it is, it's no more malicious than loopt. Besides, even if you turn on latitude, you still have to add friends, it doesn't automatically add google contacts or anything, so unless you do that you're letting no-one know where you are.
Amerist said 3:06AM on 7-25-2009
Nice article headline.
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William said 2:21PM on 7-25-2009
Wouldn't a better headline be, "Changes in Apple's attitude forces change in Google Latitude"? As it's written, "Apple attitudes" implies multiple attitudes changing, when in fact, Apple is one corporation, so "Apple's attitude" makes more sense. Since Apple is one entity, it "forces", not "force". And, as far as I can tell from the article, it forced one change, that Latitude be a web app, not a native app. What are the other changes that Apple's attitude forced?
Noah said 6:44AM on 7-25-2009
I would use Google Latitude if it was native.
Shame it's not.
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sterling said 9:24AM on 7-25-2009
I don't understand why you would want the app running in the background. You want people to see where you are all the time?
Look at Brightkite. You can check in to a location, post a note or photo from that location. Latitude lets you say, "I'm here..."
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Noah said 3:09AM on 7-26-2009
The point is not so people can see where I am "all the time", the point is for my location to be up-to-date, so if some friends are downtown... and I happen to be 500 meters away, they can give me a call and we can meet up a few moments later.
Google Latitude brings people together, but only if the information is up-to-date, and with a web app... that'll never be the case.
At least if it was a native app, I can jailbreak and use backgrounder.
chateauneuf said 10:02AM on 7-25-2009
Google Latitude is an excellent concept, that can be improved. Apple has to rethink and let them release it as an independent app. Push notifications is a must implementation. Making Latitude live in the Maps App would be nice, like Google Maps for Blackberries and other platforms.
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John.B said 10:03AM on 7-25-2009
Meh. The first thing I did when I went to the AT&T account management website was to opt out of Loopt. If we're friends, you know where I'll be or you can text me and I'll tell you. The whole stalk-by-phone paradigm (n.b. not iPhone specific) is just creep-tacular in my book.
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Philotech said 10:02AM on 8-02-2009
1. After Latitude was out for Blackberry and other mobile devices before iPhone OS 3.0 came out, I was pretty sure Maps on the iPhone would include Latitude and run in the background, at least to some extent. Latitude is nothing more than an add-on to Google Maps, and iPhone Maps is nothing but Google Maps.
2. I had Latitude up and running including GPS tracking on by Blackberry 8310 (2.5G = no UMTS), and while I did not conduct any scientific or reproducible battery benchmark, it ran well over 2 days (or, if you deduct short phases during both nights when Maps/Latitude was still running but cell network was switched off, maybe a little less than two days). Considering my BB is well over 2 years old, the battery has experienced some 200 charge cycles and the BB was in use during those two days including 45mins of phone calls and plenty of e-mailing, the battery drain appears to be almost negligable to me.
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