Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me create GPS address book locations

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I want to set Siri geofenced reminders for my kids' bus stop and a few other locations. The problem is that I live in a rural area, and these places don't have street addresses. What can I do? I want to be able to remind my wife to pick up milk and butter after she's done picking up the kids. Can you help?

Your loving nephew,

Kaelin

Dear Kaelin,

Auntie has some bad news for you. As far as the TUAW team can reckon, the Contacts app doesn't support GPS locations. That means that you can't use geofenced reminders for arbitrary locations beyond "when I leave this location."

If you try to drop a pin in Maps, you'll quickly discover that rural locations plus the GPS coordinates plus the address book don't add up to a coherent location solution. Maps tries to find a street address to match the coordinates, and that address may be miles away, especially if you try to mark a camp site in a large state park.

Since Contacts is built on street addresses, not coordinates, your locations will be off -- sometimes way off.

For now, Auntie recommends the "when I leave this location" workaround if it's you doing the errands, and encourages all her nieces and nephews to file a feature request with Apple.

Hugs,

Auntie T.