Beacon

The most important iPhone app. Ever.

I lose my car pretty much every day. The lot at school is massive and it all looks the same. I made this app so that I can find my way back to my car.

You can use it for finding things other than cars, too. You can find a tree you like, or you can find your couch if maybe you forget where it is sometimes.

Why, yes. Yes you did. This is because the parking lots at Apple are gigantic, and employees need a good way to find their cars!

When you’ve parked (or you’re in a tree, or on your couch) you load up Beacon and touch the “Place Beacon” button. You may identify it as the massive button that takes up like an entire third of the screen.

Then, once you’re sufficiently lost, just load up Beacon again and it’ll direct you right back to your car.

No fuss, no muss.

Beacon will magically determine which way you’re moving and adjust itself accordingly, so the arrow will always point toward exactly where you want to go.

IMPORTANT NOTE: the more accurate the GPS signal, the better off you’ll be. It takes a minute or two for the iPhone’s GPS to warm up. If you don’t let it warm up, it might decide your car is in the middle of the ocean. If you parked your car in the ocean, consider closing Beacon and calling your nearest Coast Guard. You need good accuracy both to place a beacon and to find it later on!

The ability to determine which way you’re actively moving is tied to accuracy as well. It’ll only work when the accuracy is good (the top of the screen will tell you when that is the case). It’s a totally cool feature.

Because Beacon uses GPS, it will only give good accuracy on the iPhone 3G.

For one thing, Beacon is free. It will always be free. Paying money for a utility is for suckers, and you don’t look like a sucker.

Beacon is also very fast. It doesn’t load Google Maps, and it doesn’t generate turn-by-turn directions, and it doesn’t contact third-party servers to fetch location data.

It loads up quickly, and immediately points you toward your car. This is important to me. I live in Canada, and when it’s −50 °C out I don’t want to wait for Google Maps to load before finding my polar bear to ride him home.

Beacon is so powerful, it might give you laser heat vision. We suggest using your new super-powers for good.

Yes. Yes it is.

These are the most-requested features. If you have other features you’d like to see, or if you need some help, just email me!