Come on Apple, stop stealing ideas from others.
Do you think Tile came up with this idea?
Apple Introduces AirTag
101–110 of 966 posts
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#102I thought one of the big use cases for this was to track stolen items, like a backpack or maybe even a bicycle. But the "anti-stalking" feature will notify someone if an AirTag they don't own appears to be traveling with them. Does this render it useless for anti-theft, then? Since it will just notify a thief that the bike they just stole is being tracked, and they can look for the AirTag and throw it in the nearest…
Does anti-stalking only work for Apple users? I assume it won't notify someone who doesn't have an Apple phone, making it kinda useless for half the population.
>And even if users don’t have an iOS device, an AirTag separated from its owner for an extended period of time will play a sound when moved to draw attention to it.
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#103> AirTag is designed for over a year’s worth of battery life with everyday use. The CR2032 battery is user-replaceable and widely available. Replacement batteries are sold separately. That's the piece of information I wanted to know first. Devices like this can be built, but those can't run on batteries for a reasonable time frame. Apple made it practical.
As pointed out above, this is already the status quo (replacable battery, 1 year life, etc). Tile has had it for years. I'm curious if it would've been technically feasible to have wireless charging on these instead of replaceable battery. Or would that greatly increase the price?
To be fair, replaceable batteries in laptops and phones also used to be the status quo and Apple successfully changed that. Just because it’s the status quo wouldn’t prevent Apple from “thinking different”.
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#104Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#105I thought one of the big use cases for this was to track stolen items, like a backpack or maybe even a bicycle. But the "anti-stalking" feature will notify someone if an AirTag they don't own appears to be traveling with them. Does this render it useless for anti-theft, then? Since it will just notify a thief that the bike they just stole is being tracked, and they can look for the AirTag and throw it in the nearest…
Several factors play into it - how much is it used for 'lost' vs 'stolen(?)' as well as 'if stolen, by someone savvy enough to be checking for tags?' and 'if stolen how long before anti-stalking alerts? Does it alert during daily commutes on the same train? Only after 2+ hours? 3+?'
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#106I thought one of the big use cases for this was to track stolen items, like a backpack or maybe even a bicycle. But the "anti-stalking" feature will notify someone if an AirTag they don't own appears to be traveling with them. Does this render it useless for anti-theft, then? Since it will just notify a thief that the bike they just stole is being tracked, and they can look for the AirTag and throw it in the nearest…
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Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s in the article too. It will start beeping when moved if it’s following someone that’s not the owner for a while.
So if a thief steals my jacket with an AirTag inside, some time later it’ll start beeping? At which point he’ll discard the AirTag and I won’t be able to track down my jacket. Kinda lame.
I think Apple decided preventing people from using Airtags to stalk someone is more important than preventing theft. Makes sense to me, can you imagine a high profile murder occurring because the perp was able to follow them with an airtag?
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#108I thought one of the big use cases for this was to track stolen items, like a backpack or maybe even a bicycle. But the "anti-stalking" feature will notify someone if an AirTag they don't own appears to be traveling with them. Does this render it useless for anti-theft, then? Since it will just notify a thief that the bike they just stole is being tracked, and they can look for the AirTag and throw it in the nearest…
>Does this render it useless for anti-theft, then?
It's hard to make tracking devices hidden. They need to phone home, so that means they emit a signal. Someone can sniff that out using a RF detector. that's why tracking devices tend to be integrated into the product itself (eg. into the ECU for cars, or part of the CPU/motherboard for computers).
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#109[deleted]
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
As pointed out above, this is already the status quo (replacable battery, 1 year life, etc). Tile has had it for years. I'm curious if it would've been technically feasible to have wireless charging on these instead of replaceable battery. Or would that greatly increase the price?
To be fair, replaceable batteries in laptops and phones also used to be the status quo and Apple successfully changed that. Just because it’s the status quo wouldn’t prevent Apple from “thinking different”.
It wouldn't, but in this specific case they didn't. Did apple bring any actual innovation that I missed? That's why I was proposing wireless charging, that would've actually been a nice step forward.