My phone detects going on a run as "someone snatching my phone and running off"(mastodon.gamedev.place) |
My phone detects going on a run as "someone snatching my phone and running off"(mastodon.gamedev.place) |
Where it joins “walking”. Google Maps will suggest almost arbitrarily bonkers public transport directions to avoid walking. Personal favourite: the sensible way to get from my house to work, unless the weather is terrible, is six minutes on a train and a 15 min walk. Google Maps would, generally, prefer that I spend 15 mins on the train going mostly the wrong direction and 15 minutes on a tram, then a five minute walk. It will also contemplate a ten minute walk, ten minutes walking being within the threshold Google deems physically possible, plus an arbitrary amount of time on a rather slow bus. Apple Maps and Transit are better at this.
Neither is good for turn-by-turn directions, but both are good for "what are all the different ways to get there"
Sure, there's not much need for navigation in that situation, but if you're trying to be smart regarding where I am, maybe take into account if I'm travelling at 200 kph before plonking me on a twisty gravel road.
It would also be nice to have a configurable transportation choice for the time to leave notice. Because some things I’ll walk to, some I’ll take transit and some I’ll drive and Apple seems to want be to just pick one and only use that.
My other map complaint is that there’s no indication of how much tolls are when comparing toll vs non-toll routes. Because if it’s $5 to save ten minutes, no thanks but for a buck, maybe I’ll do it.
My Apple Watch is set up by default to assume any 15-minute walk is a "workout" and interrupt me to ask if I wanted to record it. No, I'm just going to the store, what is this "workout" nonsense. My Oura Ring was worse, it would assume any walk duration is noteworthy and my timeline would be a jumbled mess of "workouts". But these would be reasonable assumptions for a mostly sedentary office worker living in the suburbs.
I remember when a Google feature was announced long ago, some of the headlining features was plane ticket support and currency conversion. The average American gets on a plane once a year, to a place where they accept American dollars, and wouldn't ever care about these features. But these are important if you're in your 30s and travel is an important part of your life for either business or vacations.
It’s fine for pure walking directions, but it gets unhappy about the idea of someone using public transport walking.
There is a maximum walking distance, I don't know the limit but it's certainly more than 10 minutes. I have never managed to trigger it other than by asking for a route to a location miles beyond any transit options. And it did provide me a route across the Grand Canyon. (Most people are not doing a rim-to-rim in a single day.) (But then it was totally bonkers--offered me a bike route with a time that was preposterous. Looking at it--tiny portion by bike, then walk your bike--the standard rim-to-rim route. But it assumed bicycle speed. No--try that, you're going over.)
> After looking over Google’s advice, my key takeaway was that thieves are in much better shape than me, and run both longer and faster than this nerdy writer has in more than two decades.
https://www.androidauthority.com/android-theft-detection-loc...
Personally, the main situation I'm concerned about is on a bus or train, where someone grabs your phone right and exits right before the door closes. But I already avoid spending a lot of time on the street with my head buried in my phone.
- Warming up for a run: Possible agitated tweaker, possible crisis
- Going for a run after midnight: Evasive solitary movement after dark
- Sprinting the last block home: Flight behavior consistent with shoplifting offense
- Running with a hood up in the rain: Deliberate biometric obfuscation - Two runners meeting at a corner and leaving in opposite directions: Brief contact event, possible hand-to-hand
Score increase the darker you get.
I look at the results on my PC with a web browser, phone is a passive middleman and is never touched directly for fitness tracking.
/s
Yes absolutely
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mggh4ll/a/crossbody-strap...
https://www.gov.br/pt-br/apps/celular-seguro-br
https://www.gov.br/pt-br/servicos/comunicar-roubo-furto-de-a...
I can't be the only person to see the irony here. Do they also have a drive-thru to report car theft?
There are some routings in london for example where the best course of action is actually to take a train, get off walk 5 minutes then take a different train, google will always tell you to stay on the train to a point where you can change trains in the same station.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/747380/daily-step-averag...
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/activation-lock-sec...
As of iOS 27 beta, there's now an additional "partner finance lock" status that will also be an available parts-lock status (to prevent a 'leased' device from being parted out).
https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/21/ios-27-code-suggests-apple-co...
It also functions as a public searchable database of stolen phones, allowing a prospective buyer of a second hand device to check it.
iphones will remain locked regardless of what country they're in. I presume you're talking about states who are seemingly unwilling to pursue/prosecute claims of theft?
older iOS devices as well are also vulnerable to having their syscfg rewritten via exploits, so you can "clean" a locked device that way as well with a good set of serials. Apple Watches are a hot one for this.
I'm sure this is different with different components of course depending on how granularly apple tracks their hardware—but the whole package certainly can't be activated.