the friend tracking feature seems similar to Glympse, which I've used a lot:
sharing your location for a set time is really useful
sharing your location for a set time is really useful
I clarified that I am actually more worried about the public reaction to this rather than legitimate use cases. Not really worried, just, why not leave it at a third party app?
To answer my own question, Apple's solution has probably both more polish and more lock-in power, just as with iMessage vs WhatsApp & Co.
Err, no, I really don't believe it has.