Playing with Location based Reminders
One of the many new features that come with the iOS 5 upgrade is the new Reminders app. My first thought was "why do I need another productivity app?". I have several that I have tried and really none have added much functionality that places them as the superior in a sea of list-making-and-getting-things-done products. However, Reminders has one feature that offered a huge "innovation" in reminding and checklists, that being the location based reminder function.
That actually would make my life better, I could have it remind me which things to pick up at which grocery store (I'm a comparative shopper, so my milk and my cereal come from different venues), and the option of setting the reminder for arrival or departure meant I could have a future where I never leave the house without that crucial "thing" (glasses, keys, wallet) except perhaps the phone itself (this happens very rarely). Before this dream could become a reality, one has to enable this function. Its not too difficult, but for a nice walkthrough go here.
Once you've got that sorted out, and give it a try, you may discover as I did that it really doesn't work very well in a densely populated location like New York City, which is of course where I am. The flaw in the location prompts is that they are based on AGPS, GPS, and Wifi. A/GPS and Wifi enabled maps provides the best location identification, but obviously if we are on the move, that is not an option. The iPhone 4 and 4S have GPS as well as AGPS, but to according to this post on MacRumors, Apple nor most app developers use the GPS function. This means that the location reminder window is VERY large. AGPS (in case you didn't know) uses the cell phone towers to triangulate the phones relative location, and in a city like NYC with such "excellent" cell phone coverage this means less than spectacular accuracy.
So how bad is the accuracy? How did it effect Reminders?
Terrible. It prompted me with ALL of the reminders (which included stores more than 15 blocks away from each other) after i had walked only about a block from my apartment. It never prompted me about my keys, wallet, nor glasses (all of which i had with me, so it didn't matter). So overall it was a failure.
It's a very useful concept, and the execution on Apple's end is well done, though flawed (they really should allow you to search Maps from the app and add locations without having to save them as contacts). Does this mean it won't work for you? No, I'm sure YMMV based on where you live, where you are going, and who your network provider is, so give it a try before you dismiss it completely.
