On April 7, Apple officially integrated MFI products manufactured by third-party companies to the application « Locate ». Now, users will be able to (re) find their personal items – Apple or not – in the new Items tab of the application. The first ones concerned are in particular the VanMoof electric bikes and Belkin wireless headphones.
We know a bit more on the process which led to this taking over of the bikes. The project started a year ago. At that time, and according to Job Stehmann – head of product design at VanMoof-, Apple was actively seeking partners who could bring « something new ». Following the WWDC 2020 announcements, their San Francisco offices have sent some bikes to engineers in Cupertino, for evaluation purposes.
The project then adopted a weekly meeting rate with rather laborious adaptations. Apparently Apple seemed « sometimes a little lost », more used to small products than bicycles, larger and of a completely different nature with a more complicated software part to control electric motors or the anti-theft device.
From the month of June, when the new version of « Locate » will be deployed to the general public, the models S3 and X3 the VanMoof, already available, can be tracked on iPhone, iPad and Mac. The owners will also be able to mark a bike as lost to be notified of its location when another iPhone user is nearby.
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