iCloud is very basic when it comes to locating your precious gadgets, but it does the job. The options you get with iCloud is the location of your device in iOS 5 or OS X Lion, Play Sound or Send Message, Remote Lock and Remote Wipe. That’s it, and that’s probably all you need. If you have an iPad or iPhone, you can use the same Apple ID to locate all that at once using iCloud or Find my iPhone or Find my Friends, but sometimes you need more, more in terms of just a dedicated tracking software for your Mac since it is more powerful machine with Webcam built-in, unless if it’s the Mac Mini or Mac Pro.There is iCloud and then there is Prey Project. I wrote about Prey Project recently.
Some of us preferred a more robust, high powered tracking software for our MacBook line, we would prefer a capture image from the WebCam so you can see who is the perpetrator, you can have those images sent to you via email. You can remotely access your Mac as well to download in-case you need it. There is more options in Prey than in iCloud and since Prey is free for the first 3 devices, you should look into it as an alternative.
Prey stays hidden inside your Mac OS X, and can only be activated when it is in Lost Mode. It does not have a keylogger, you can send message with voice, find it’s location, wipe it, lock it, or make some really really loud noise, snap a picture with the webcam, and more. Prey Project is free up to 3 users, and you can use this to take a picture using your webcam in incremental minutes in 10, 15 or 20 minutes.
Prey isn’t as robust as other ones that can track your email address, or copy them and send them to you, instead, it can do some digging about where the computer is connected to on the internet. Useful for the authorities who then can help track it’s IP Address via the ISP. Like I said, it can do a lot more mentioned here, but it isn’t as high tech as the others one, it can’t do video capture, just snap shots.
I found some disadvantage with Prey and that is, the time is set to take a picture every so and so minutes, however, if the webcam takes a picture while the person who has your MacBook leaves the webcam sight, all you get is just the background or some sort. The sound can’t be raised up so it will be louder when transcribing my message from Prey so everyone in the room can hear it. The voice transcribing the message sent from Prey is robotic and hard to understand.
Prey is open source software, and an alternative to Prey would be Hidden
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1 comment
Eric
May 28, 2012 at 1:42 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Gotcha