Find My Mac uses known Wi-Fi tower location databases to pinpoint a Mac’s whereabouts, as it doesn’t have access to cell tower triangulation and GPS technology the way an iPhone or 3G-capable iPad does. Still, it seems to still be fairly accurate, and it also provides users whose Macs have gone missing with the option of locking the screen with a four-digit PIN and erasing the contents of the hard drive remotely. Find My Mac also lets Mac owners play a sound through their Mac’s speakers, and display a message of their own creation on the device’s screen. Even if your Mac is off when you send these commands, they will take effect the next time it’s online.

Once Find My Mac is enabled on a user’s Mac, they can view its location on a map using iCloud.com, and also perform any of the actions listed above from the website. It’s very likely that Macs with the service enabled will also eventually show up in the Find My iPhone apps for iPhone and iPad, too, based on how it works in the browser.

Making Find My Mac a part of the free suite of iCloud services is a smart move by Apple. Because of its role as a data security and anti-theft measure, it should help draw even single-device Mac owners who aren’t interested in email and information syncing features to iCloud, and adoption is going to be crucial to the ultimate success of iCloud. Apple is likely hoping that iCloud will not only attract new users to the Mac and iOS platforms, but also keep them there. Having all your data, purchases, email and documents associated with an account designed to work best on Macs and exclusively on iOS devices should provide lots of motivation not to go looking at competitor products.

Business strategy aside, having the ability to remotely track and wipe your Mac, which is a much more expensive loss than an iPhone, and one that is probably more likely to hold sensitive info for most, is a great boon to Apple customers. Look for it to go live alongside the rest of iCloud this September.

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If you’re getting or giving a new MacBook during the next couple of days, then grab Mac app Hidden, which provides a number of theft prevention services. Now until January 2011, the app is free. All you need to do is register, download and install.

What does Hidden do? It’s a little bit like Find My iPhone for your Mac computer, in that it lets you track where your computer goes, so long as whoever stole or bought your stolen computer from the original thief turns it on and connects to a wireless network. The app then connects to the Skyhook network of Wi-Fi signal towers (the same one the iPhone and iPod touch originally used for geo-location services) and reports back with the approximate location of your Mac.

Hidden also offers more than just location tracking, though. It launches a three-pronged attack agains thieves, by also attempting to identify them and keeping track of what they do with your computer. It accomplishes the first by taking pictures periodically using your built-in iSight camera, and the second by taking screenshots of your computer when it’s in use, which should help you know whether or not a thief attempted to access and abuse your private data.

The Hidden app doesn’t display an icon in the Applications folder, or a menu bar item, or even a preference pane in the Settings app. That way, no one will know that your Mac is being tracked. Once you’ve registered, you can sign in to the Hidden website from any computer and track computers on which you’ve installed the Hidden app right from a web-based dashboard. All you need to do is change the status of the machine to “Stolen” and Hidden will start gathering data. You can also set it to “Test Mode” if you want to see what kind of info you’ll receive in case of theft.

You can uninstall the app by following instructions found on Hidden’s FAQ, but it requires an administrator password, so as long as you’ve set a strong one, thieves shouldn’t be able to do the same.

For the great price of free, this is a great way to give some piece of mind this holiday to Mac-using friends and family.

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Oh the sheer horror of it! I’m feeling uneasy at the very thought of my iPhone getting half inched. At the moment, my strongest defense against thieves seems to be keeping my iPhone within a 1-foot radius at all times.

Beyond simply keeping a keen eye on one’s iPhone, it would be much more appropriate to leverage some of the device’s actual technology in an effort to ensure its safety and, at the very least, assuage the owner’s simmering worry.

Caught You! is the first app to hit the store that has awoken the tiny gadget-loving Bond inside of me: the app utilizes the iPhone’s raft of connectivity features — specifically 3G/Edge and GPS — in a bid to combat theft.

The Honeypot

Once installed, Caught You! masquerades as a standard iPhone app called Bank Details. The idea is that when your phone is pilfered, the thief — unethical and prone to stealing things as they are — will be sifting through your apps, spy Bank Details and decide to load it up in a bid to access your precious savings.

The Bank Details app invites Mr. Thief to enter a pin number. The thing is, there is no pin number, and so while Mr. Thief is excitedly trying various combinations, the app is covertly mailing its location back to you.

It’s an ingenious concept, executed in an efficient way, putting the iPhone’s Q-esque feature-set to potentially good use. And it’s exciting to think you might catch the thieves at their own game, should that fateful day ever come.

Preparing The Ruse

The setup process is simple — it requests your email address — this initial configuration screen will, the app warns, never be seen again. After this, you simply have to close and open the app a few times — each time agreeing that the app is allowed to use your current location — in order to initialize it.

A tip though: the address you use will be the one that future covert messages are sent to, so it’s best to set that to a rarely used email account, certainly not the email account that you have synced to your iPhone’s mail application.

After this quick setup process, the app will never again ask for permission to use your current location. To all intents and purposes it seems like an iPhone app designed for holding various bank details, account numbers and such.

The developer’s instructions don’t mention this, but if you manage to botch the setup process, by entering the wrong email address, simply delete the app and re-install it. Once freshly re-installed, the app is ready to be initialized.

In The Wild

After the setup period, I took to the streets of central London and tested out the Bank Details app several times. I was looking for speed and accuracy, in terms of the app locating me and firing off an email as fast as possible.

While the app’s performance wasn’t perfect, it was admirable — locating me down to the nearest block. The alert email hit my account seconds after opening the app. The message itself containing activation time, latitude and longitude, plus a very handy Google Maps link.

Now there are of course some unmentioned caveats that may not be obvious to the average user. As discussed, the app needs to be initialized before use. In practice, when the app is activated, the iPhone will need to be able to locate itself quickly and it’ll need a data-connection signal in order to fire off the covert email.

Furthermore, standard practice once your mobile phone is stolen is to call your carrier to de-activate the SIM, contact the police to report the crime and call the insurance company. Delaying any of this might mean you’re ineligible for your insurance and will almost certainly give the individual who scampered off with your iPhone more time to rack up the bill.

Summing Up

Caught You! really does work, in so much as it accurately determines your location and consistently fires off emails to your chosen address. However, it’s unclear just how useful this app would really be. Where it shines is in its psychological comfort-value. It really feels good to know that there’s an extra degree of protection for such a valued possession.

Knowing which block, in which neighborhood, your kidnapped iPhone is on may not be so helpful in practice though. Furthermore, is this the kind of information the police could take seriously or act on? And, if not, surely it wouldn’t be advisable to go knocking on doors in a desperate bid to retrieve your stolen goods.

For worried iPhone-owners who fear that their device could be pinched at any moment, Caught You! is a worry-allaying app that you’ll hopefully never have to use. However, for the rest of us, the app’s prime-feature, while impressive, is vastly outweighed by its lack of practicality. As such, I just can’t see this being useful in a real-world iPhone-theft situation.

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Movies, created by French developer, Olivier Bernal, went live at the App Store on December 19. The app, retailing at $2.99, allows users to grab essential information on the latest box-office releases.

The icon for Movies clearly features a watermark from iStockphoto, a royalty free image library, implying that rather than purchase the master image, Bernal has pilfered the preview sample.

This particular iStockphoto license (including the ‘Electronic Items for Resale’ addendum) is available for 115 credits. At 95 cents per iStockphoto credit, this would be a one-off cost of $109.25. Bernal would therefore need to generate only 37 sales of Movies to cover the cost of the image license.

Achieving just 37 sales is hardly a difficult objective when you also consider that, in order to maximize the potential customer-base for his app, Bernal has created several iterations using the same icon, including Cinema and Cinema UK.

It seems that this may not be the first time Bernal has pilfered from iStockphoto. There are two more highly suspect app icons – TV Shows and Week Number of the Year. The TV Shows icon features a white diagonal line, quite possibly from an iStock Photo watermark. The latter of the pair, clearly uses an iStock Photo sample, titled Calendar – icon idea.

It’s not as immediately obvious as our prime suspect, but enlarging the app icon and then comparing it to the iStockphoto sample image, the original watermark is easily visible.

Sites such as iStockphoto provide a valuable service to organizations with limited design resources, allowing independent creatives to distribute royalty-free visual assets at reasonable rates. It’s therefore somewhat disappointing to see independent developers effectively stealing — surely they should understand the value of content generated by fellow independents?

Furthermore, setting aside development time and cost, distributing via the App Store is hardly prohibitive in terms of initial outlay: Apple charges a one-off fee to developers of $99. It seems that either saving a few bucks or just downright laziness on Bernal’s part led him to grab the sample imagery from iStockphoto.

The question is, now that Bernal has been called out on his immoral icon antics, what will his next move be? It’ll be most interesting to see how he handles the designers whose creations he has illicitly profited from; ideally, after a hasty apology, Bernal will be compensating them for their contribution to his App Store products.

Note that we’ve tried to reach Bernal for comment on the story but have yet to hear back. We assume he was too busy shoveling a mountain of coal from his stocking, stealing bonbons from children and kicking puppies.

UPDATE: We heard back from Mr. Bernal:

For [your] information, I bought the right to use the pictures this morning. You were right, at the beginning I first started with nothing and can’t afford to pay for the pictures, it’s perfectly normal to pay if I intend to continue to use it.

He says the updated, non-watermarked icons will be implemented with the next updates to the applications sometime in January.

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Saltwater Aquarium

Nothing says “international man/woman of mystery” like a saltwater fish tank. Whether you’re plotting to destroy the world, or just aiming to become a master of seduction, your lair should definitely house Finding Nemo and his buddies. Real aquariums are expensive and hard to maintain, but your Mac has you covered.

I know it has been around for a while, and it might not be the most useful software on the planet, but I still can’t get enough of SereneScreen’s Marine Aquarium. It comes in both pay and free editions, with the free version lacking the fish variety and customizability of the paid-for software. I set it up on my 32-inch LCD TV and let it run while working or entertaining.

More recently, SereneScreen has released a version for the iPhone, which, while it lacks the options of the desktop version, provides a nice way to grab a little zen in the midst of a chaotic day. At $1.99, you might have to be a fish nut to actually pay for it. I’m nutty for the aquatic little buggers.

International Espionage Tracking Device

Now that you’ve got the diggs outfitted for the spy game, you need some of the Q-type gizmos to go with it. How about a location tracking device? All you have to do is distract the bad guy, make the swap, and you’ve got a homing device. All it will cost you is your Mac, and your target has to have an identical one to switch it with. It could happen.

Thanks to GadgetTrak, this scenario is entirely possible. They make MacTrak, software which uses Wi-Fi location technology to tell you where your computer is, within 10-20 meters. Not only that, but it uses your notebook’s iSight camera and Flickr to post a stream of photographs of whoever’s using your computer. The GadgetTrak folks seem to think MacTrak is for tracking down stolen computers. No imagination, that’s their problem.

Clever Disguise

In your line of work, you deal with sensitive information, and its important that both you and your computer aren’t compromised or identified. I don’t need to give you advice, that horsehair mustache, eyepatch, and fake limp turn you into a different person altogether. But what to do about that computer?

It can show a false front too, thanks to Desktop Curtain by Many Tricks. This handy app shows a desktop picture of your choosing complete with menu bar, hiding your actual desktop clutter and classified information from prying eyes. Handy in a pinch for deceptive screenshots and screencasts, also.

There you have it. Go from geek to spy in 3 easy apps. I’ve already done it and now I’m a bona fide MI6 agent. My license to kill is in the mail, they tell me. For now I have a license to mildly injure. It’s a graduated licensing system.

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Because the theft of a laptop is a great deal less common than a failed hard drive, it can easily be overlooked by Mac users. Fortunately, there are a number of applications which can step in to help you locate a stolen or missing laptop. This article will provide an overview of several competing applications, comparing them on features and price.

MacTrak from GadgetTrak

MacTrak for OS X is heralded as “the most advanced theft recovery solution available for Apple systems”.

The software is activated by logging into your MacTrak.me account and clicking a button to activate tracking. The next time your Mac connects to the Internet the software will activate and start sending you emails with the specific location and network environment of the system, as well as use the camera to take a photo of who is using the system every 30 minutes.

Some of the extra features offered by MacTrak are:

• Wi-Fi Positioning: The ability to accurately pinpoint the location of your Mac through analyzing Wi-Fi networks
• Flickr Integration: Social media at its best. Photos taken every 30 minutes are uploaded to Flickr with location details
• Network Information: It also collects network information to provide to authorities

It is priced at $60 — a one off payment which doesn’t need renewing every year. It’s transferrable between computers.

iAlertU

iAlertU doesn’t take the form of a laptop tracking application, rather aiming to warn you at the point when someone is attempting to run off with your precious Mac. The software is ‘armed’ either through a menu bar button, or via the Apple Remote Control (think similar to a remote control car alarm).

Through the use of either the laptop motion sensor or trackpad/keyboard inputs, iAlertU is able to determine when someone is using or moving your laptop without permission. An audible alarm is sounded — it makes quite a racket — and a photo is taken using the iSight camera before being emailed to a pre-defined address. The alarm will continue to sound even after the laptop has closed, making a silent escape fairly difficult!

The problem with this software is that once your laptop is gone, the software doesn’t include any tracking facilities. The upside is that iAlertU is completely free.

Adeona

Adeona is an open source application and doesn’t rely on a proprietary, central service. Very strong encryption is used for storing and sending location information, and emphasis in placed on ensuring that you are the only person able to track the laptop (which is good, as it would be somewhat disconcerting if someone else was tracking your every move).

Three features are pushed as the main reasons to use Adeona:

• Private: Adeona uses state-of-the-art cryptographic mechanisms to ensure that the owner is the only party that can use the system to reveal the locations visited by a device.
• Reliable: Adeona uses a community-based remote storage facility, ensuring retrievability of recent location updates.
• Open source and free: A big advantage over more expensive competing applications

As with other competitors, the OS X version has the ability to take photos using the built in iSight camera. Location information is stored at OpenDHT, and remains accessible for one week after capture. The information sent includes the internal IP address, external IP address, nearby routers, a photo and the wireless access point name.

As the software is completely free, it’s worth taking a look at.

LoJack

The final piece of software to be considered is LoJack. While possibly having the best name of the bunch, it also offers a good range of functionality. They also claim that LoJack is able to recover 3 out of 4 laptops stolen with the software installed. Impressive!

The premium version is priced the same as MacTrak, at $60, but this is a yearly rather than one-off cost. The difference here is that, rather than just offering a software service, LoJack also has a dedicated theft recovery team who will assist in tracking down your stolen machine. It is staffed by former police officers and security professionals and carries a private investigation agency license.

Other services included are ‘data delete’ — a tool to remotely wipe your laptop — and a $1000 service guarantee if they’re unable to track down your laptop (with a few conditions). These extra two features are included in the $60 package, but are not with the cheaper, $40 standard edition.

While this doesn’t apply to OS X, it’s worth noting that LoJack has an agreement with several laptop manufacturers to build their software into the compute BIOS, ensuring that it survives a re-install of the operating system.

Conclusion

Many people do not use a security service/software package for their laptop and may simply extend their house insurance to cover a loss or theft. If you would like to be able to locate a missing Mac, along with potentially catching those responsible, using software such as LoJack or MacTrak would certainly be advisable. They offer a great range of services and have an impressive track record. $60 is not a great deal to pay for the peace of mind and added security.

Both the free iAlertU and Adeona are great tools, but aren’t backed up with quite the same support and service network as the commercial software.

Do you use a piece of security software, or do you think it’s unnecessary caution? I’d be interested to hear your opinion.

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