I'm genuinely surprised the batteries are replaceable. Apple isn't a very green company (unless you talk to their marketing dept), so to see this is sort of amazing.
Apple Introduces AirTag
161–170 of 966 posts
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#162I'm contemplating an AirTag for my dog!
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#163Very cool though I hope they make it clear that it's not worth going after items, even expensive items yourself if they were stolen rather than misplaced. Even if the police won't do anything about it and you know where the items are. In the bay area, they won't for instance. Just please don't go after it yourself. It will get people killed.
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
A bike thief isn’t going to go rf sniffing
not yet. If a significant portion of otherwise theft-friendly bikes have trackers, I don't see why they wouldn't learn to, someone would probably even commoditize the sniffing tech to sell to other thiefs.
> not yet. If a significant portion of otherwise theft-friendly bikes have trackers, I don't see why they wouldn't learn to, someone would probably even commoditize the sniffing tech to sell to other thiefs.
They wouldn't because we already have TONS of historical data that thieves don't do that.
I am a motorcycle lover and like every owner of a nice bike I know that apart from properly chaining your bike down the single most effective way of retrieving your bike back is by having a tracker on it. In fact some insurance companies give a big discount if you have a professionally mounted tracker on your bike.
History has shown that despite motorcycles being worth 10-20k thieves still don't go through the effort of locating and removing a GPS tracker. What they do is the following... they steal your bike and only move it like 10 streets further away from its original location into some hidden dark dead end alley where no person would normally go and where the owner wouldn't find it by accident. Then they leave it there standing for like 2 weeks and if nobody comes to pick it up within those 2 weeks then they know there is no GPS tracker at which point they can safely take it back to their garage where it gets dismantled into and rebuild. Otherwise they risk of having their garage being exposed.
Now you might ask why only take it 10 streets further away? Because the easiest way is to cut a chain or some poor security and then wheel it down the road for 5 minutes. Only two weeks later they come with a proper vehicle to transport it away.
So if professional thieves can't be bothered (or is just practically too difficult) to locate a tracker then I'm sure normal opportunistic thieves won't be able either.
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#165The "commercial" they used to introduce this during the event was hilarious and awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbApA2JLZ_c
The music is a strange, interesting riff on the Aquarium movement of Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals, not the usual Apple modern pop stuff.
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#166Considering world environmental issues we should slow down consumerism around the world rather than accelerate it. For me it looks like a useless piece of tech in a long run (30-50 years). My opinion
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Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
So, this prevents some legitimate use cases, for example putting a tag in a suitcase for the flight, because it'll start beeping at some point?
A shame. It would've been cool standing at that conveyor belt at the airport and rather than staring at the luggage as it comes, being able to sense one's own stuff.
Also, seems that it's not suitable for putting on a cat or dog's collar for the same reason.
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#168I 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…
It’s going to be real funny if non Apple users are basically fair game for AirTags tracking and you have to get an iPhone to protect yourself from AirStalking
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#169If I was evil and stuck these to ex-girlfriend/boyfriend car or something, illegal? Edit: Downvoters. I am not doing this obviously. Am asking as this is the clear abuse I see. Tracking people without permission. I see this as being a weird legal thing we hear about down the road.
I'm surprised I never ran into something like this on aliexpress.. I've seen a few spypen popping up
There are lots of GPS tracking devices that phone home over 3G. But they're all bulky and have terrible battery life. These (like the Tile devices that came before them) just use Bluetooth LE to talk to any phone nearby that will listen (in Tiles case it was their small network of owners, for AirTag it's any modern iPhone), and that phone will do the actual GPS tracking.
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the link: "iOS devices can also detect an AirTag that isn’t with its owner, and notify the user if an unknown AirTag is seen to be traveling with them from place to place over time."
That's cool and all, but how do they handle a trainload of people all going the same direction sitting near each other? I mean public transportation is still a thing.
> Of course, if you happen to be with a friend who has an AirTag, or on a train with a whole bunch of people with AirTag, don’t worry. These alerts are triggered only when an AirTag is separated from its owner.