could be better but sadly is not

had gadgettrak for a while. also have find-my-iphone. and although gadgettrak gave me some peace of mind, some things about it seemed to always bother me in the back of my mind to be bad in the design of the app. for instance, the user, or whoever has the iphone, has to respond to a push notification. a popup for the notification could appear but the user could ignore it by pressing the close button instead of pressing the launch button. and therefore the app doesnt start and no tracking is done. or the notification could have been set as a banner that appears at the top of the screen that can be easily ignored and cleared. again, the app is not launched and no tracking is done. and then theres that location arrow thats always at the top of the screen in the menubar. the gadgettrak folks say that doesnt use any battery, but even though i was believing that before, im not so sure about that now. whether if the battery is being used or not, but if the app can be IGNORED when a notification comes in where the notification is hoping to trick the user into opening the app, then having the location turned on all the time for this app is useless.

so, the design of this app is fatally flawed where it goes from a 50% chance that the user will click the close button instead of the launch button on a notification popup -to- almost no chance if the notification has been changed to a banner. and this is assuming there is no passcode set for the lockscreen. if there is a passcode for the lockscreen, then there is really zero chance of the app being activated for any tracking to even begin.

im guessing that this app was most likely pushed out as a flawed afterthought for something to sell to customers who already have gadgettrak on their computers and who may happen to have iphones.

but is this app worth keeping on an iphone at all? well, maybe yes but thats where you always have to manually click on the app to turn it on, turning on the location for this app, turning on tracking all the time, clicking the launch button when you get the notification because you cant count on anyone else to click the launch button, and then always have the app sitting in the multitasking bar to be in background all the time. but thats such a waste to have to do all this when this should all be automated.

theres probably no hope that this gadgettrak app will be revamped in the near future to make this app less fatally flawed. this app hasnt been updated since February 2011 and this review is being written in April 2012. fortunately, theres always the find-my-iphone app which is much more dependable although it doesnt keep all the reports that gadgettrak does.

iwantgizmos about GadgetTrak, v2.5