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Apple Introduces AirTag

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Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#231

Post by runawaybottle »

ehsankia wrote: post #83
habibur wrote: post #16

> 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?

If you are forgetting where your object is, you are probably forgetting to charge it too.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#232

Post by [deleted] »

andrewla wrote: post #207

What I need is the inverse of this -- my wife is forever losing her phone around the house, and I need a button on the wall that you can press to activate "find my phone" mode and play a beep on it. EDIT: Thank you for all the suggestions! I'm aware that this is possible from another iPhone or iWatch or iPad -- this is the current workflow. Use my phone or take the ipad away from the kids to play the beep. Is a butto…

[deleted]

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#233

Post by randyrand »

basisword wrote: post #142
crazygringo wrote: post #71

I 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…

I thought it was intended for lost items rather than stolen items. I've had my phone stolen multiple times and thieves know exactly what to do to prevent 'find my' activating. I'm sure it wouldn't take them long to find/disable AirTags either.

It’s for both.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#234

Post by sib »

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #9

If 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.

They've thought about this use case and actually tried to do something about it:

"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."

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#235

Post by thatguy0900 »

tchanglington wrote: post #168
crazygringo wrote: post #71

I 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

You can already purchase a huge range of items that do exactly what an airtag does. Everyone is already fair game for this type of stalking, it is silly to try and paint apple in a bad light here.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#236

Post by serial_dev »

llbeansandrice wrote: post #141
Nextgrid wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

> Apple successfully changed that I feel like this gives far too much credit to Apple. Any one company can "think differently" but Apple shouldn't get the blame for all of the other companies following suit. Remember the ads Samsung ran before axing the headphone jack a year later?

I do think it couldn't have happened without Apple doing it first from the big manufacturers.

Apple had (and still have) the status and prestige to do anything and make that a standard. If Huawei/Samsung/etc didn't include chargers, didn't use USB or USB C, changed from 3.5 to some proprietary audio jack first, they would have been ridiculed.

But once Apple changed these things (except luckily the USB), these companies could point out that "Apple does this, so it must be an acceptable idea".

The most annoying thing about this is that they are trying to spin these changes as innovation or something for the environment.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#237

Post by 05 »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #208
dustinmoris wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 si…

I guess bicycles thieves are either savvier or have an easier job. Their modus operandi is to throw a bicycle into a truck or van, move them in lots of fifty across state lines, and tear them down to components. Any trackers will be quickly rendered useless once they're in the van, and immediately found and discarded. I'm definitely planning on getting Airtags for my bikes, but mostly for amusement and occasionally f…

> Any trackers will be quickly rendered useless once they're in the van

You can build a custom LoRa based tracker with 100+km range (line of sight), a van won't disable that. You'll have to use signal triangulation, though, because GPS reception in a van won't be great.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#238

Post by asdff »

DangerousPie wrote: post #185
Rebelgecko wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this mean that if your phone dies or you turn it off during a movie your keys will randomly beep at you?

I suspect "an extended period of time" will not be an hour two.

How long is that, though? I wish Apple spoke in absolutes when discussing technical details. Some people shut their phone off to golf or do some other outdoor activity, like hiking. Some rounds take close to 6 hours on public courses depending on pace of play. Imagine your friend is trying to putt then your air tagged golf bag starts going off on the 18th green.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#239

Post by alephnan »

gerry_shaw wrote: post #192
tyingq wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't expect user replaceable commodity batteries from Apple. That's nice.

It is ridiculous that something as basic as having a user replaceable battery is considered an unexpected nice feature.

Some Tile models don't have replaceable batteries either.

There's a tradeoff in form factor

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#240

Post by gnicholas »

crazygringo wrote: post #71

I 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…

This is a good question. I wonder what the period of time is required before it notifies you about potential stalking. If it is more time than would typically take for someone to realize that the item is stolen, then perhaps it’s not such a big deal. But if it’s only 30 minutes or so, a thief could be notified that they’ve stolen a bicycle that’s being tracked before you come out of the grocery store, movie theater, etc.

A related question: can you geofence an airtag so that you are notified if an item leaves an area without you? This could be especially helpful for things like bikes that you would park for long periods of time and would want to know if they’re being moved by someone other than you.

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