Loopt 3.0 Marries Background Location With The Check-In
June 21, 2010 at 14:41 PM EDT
When Loopt first launched on the iPhone alongside the App Store in 2008, it looked to be an awesome new location-based service. Apple clearly agreed, as they gave the app plenty of face time: demo slots on stage at major events, appearances in commercials, promotion in the App Store, etc. But the early version of Loopt had a fatal flaw: to work properly, the app had to be running all the time. Now, this wasn't really Loopt's flaw, since the iPhone did not allow third-party applications to run in the background -- but it was still a flaw. Today, that flaw gets corrected -- sort of. The new version of Loopt, 3.0, which is set to appear in the App Store at some point today, is built to use Apple's new iOS 4 software (formerly known as iPhone OS 4). The biggest new addition to the software is the ability for third-party apps to run processes in the background. Yes, this is somewhat limited , but included in what you can do is location-updating in the background. And Loopt 3.0 takes full advantage of that. But at the same time, it also still offers the functionality that proved to be more popular on the iPhone: check-ins.