I was very excited for loopt, but it's actually pretty useless. There is no backgrounding of processes on the iPhone, meaning there is no push status updates.
That means a collection of what your friends are doing and where they are is usually weeks out of date. I have 30 friends in Loopt, all early adopter geeks with iphones. None have updated their status recently.
Add to this that it doesn't feed status in from twitter and facebook. You can push your loopt status to twitter though, making it a slightly cynical integration.
Part of the problem is the iphone and the walled garden. I'd love to see an unlocked iphone run loopt to constantly push my location.
When is the push-notification service that Apple talked about coming online? They'd have to go through Apple (and I don't know if they'll be charging), but it could work.
I think push/pull terms get confusing. Push often means servers can tell you something. Like push email is a notification that you have email.
What this requires is a frequent and periodic push to the servers from a background process. This means the app process setup needs to change, because in my understanding, the apps can't have running processes when you're not looking at them. They start fresh every time you open them.
Push email will probably come before persistent apps. It's also more compelling to apple because it would mean they could take a bigger chunk out of blackberry.
Considering how expensive national tv ads are I think its unlikely Loopt paid apple anything for them. Loopt seems to have a prety good relationship with Apple since they were featured at the Apple's developer conference keynote a few months back.
Loopt is strictly permissions based, and built to be secure from the ground up. You could, for example install it, along with a couple friends, to help locate each other at a concert or some big festival (this is really handy), and shut off broadcasting, or just ditch it later. It doesn't need to violate privacy; you have the ability to broadcast your location when you want to be found, and only to whom you want to be found by.
Do you not realise just how much fun it is to stand at one end of a stadium frantically waving for half an hour with your cellphone, trying to locate other people you know?
i can see how it would be useful, especially in work related sectors like taxi-services, hospitals etc. i would always dread if myself and my girl-friend had it that she would ask me why i had turned it off at such a time and grow suspicious...not that i am cheating on her or that i have a girlfriend...but its the sort of present that if i got it from one, i would break accidentally. great ap for parents and kids though. not great for cool kids.
You can call it a magic buzz word, but I think it's common sense. There's a whole existing segment of the offline advertising market that is built around marketing things close to you. Meanwhile, people routinely use their smartphone to look for places to eat, things to do, places to buy things, etc.
Apple has one of the best advertising teams, or they work with one of the best advertising teams, that I have ever seen. Their web site, for instance: the single best product advertisement I've ever seen online. Friends (and I at times) browse through every page, just reading the product descriptions. It's entrancing.
