iOS users have long been familiar with Apple’s Find My iPhone feature that will help them locate and secure any lost or stolen iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Well it seems that Apple has now brought that invaluable feature to the Mac in the latest developer preview of Lion released last night at WWDC 2011 in San Francisco.

9to5mac first discovered hints that the location service would come to OS X back in February, buried in a .plist file in an earlier developer preview of Lion. Apple has since flipped the switch to turn the feature on, and it works pretty much as expected. Set up is found in the Internet Accounts panel shown above. Once it is activated, you can locate your Mac through Me.com or through the Find My iPhone app on iPhone and iPad. Through these, you can also send a message to be displayed on your Mac, such as where to call you if found. You can play a loud sound to alert anyone nearby. There are also options to remotely lock or wipe the Mac in the chance that it cannot be recovered. When locked, the Mac displays a grey screen and prompts the user for the custom four digit passcode set before it becomes usable again.

Interestingly, when it is unlocked, it will allow the guest user (or thief) to use Safari so that the Mac can establish an internet connection so it can acquire an IP address and therefore locate itself. Pretty clever methodology, Apple.

I currently use the utility Hidden to track and recover my Mac if it is ever lost or stolen. I’m sure that Find My Mac will be a welcomed relief to many users, especially since it is a free service. I will most likely switch over to Find My Mac when Mac OS X Lion is officially released next month.