How does this work under the hood? GPS? Cellular?
Bluetooth and ultra wide band.
It will use iPhones that are nearby to relay location information.
Apple Introduces AirTag
311–320 of 966 posts
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#312What 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…
You can ask Siri to play a sound on your wife's phone if you have your own iPhone or a Mac nearby.
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#313This is truly revolutionary for pet owners. All existing solutions I know of have at least one fault-intolerant property that makes them useless for the lost-pet use case (battery / size / unreliable connection coverage / etc.) If I understand correctly Apple tags solve all of these at once.
This isn't suitable for pets. The crowdsourced Bluetooth tracking will only really work for objects which will stay in one place when lost -- which pets are notorious for not doing. For finding a lost pet, you really want something with cell reception and a GPS for real-time location. There's a number of products which specifically provide this, like the Whistle dog tag. Unfortunately, they're bulkier and require rel…
What, no. It literally shows the device on the map moving from ping to ping in san francisco on the airtags website.
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what about the majority of people who do not own an iOS device? They can be tracked? Somehow I don't see this idea working out when law makers start seeing what kind of things this product enables.
> 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.
I'm not sure how that solves anything. I'm worried about situations like people tracking others by placing the AirTag on their person. If they gotten close to them once, they can probably do it more times too, to retrigger the inactivity period.
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#315If 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
These things are called beacons
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=S...
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm actually rather disappointed that it isn't using a passive RFID chip and multiple base stations to triangulate item location - that would probably bring the price for the actual tags down to something stupidly cheap.
Is this actually doable? I always thought RFID is unusable at those distances.
RFID does work with base stations - I believe some toll roads use them. It's however impossible to deploy these at the scale necessary to make these tags work - the range is so short you'd need them every few meters.
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
I too, found the anti-stalking features might hinder the use of AirTags for locating intentionally stolen items: (1) it has a removable battery, and also (2) "someone can tap [the tag] with their iPhone or NFC-capable device and instructions will guide them to disable the unknown AirTag". The anti-stalking feature also seems to contradict its privacy features: > Bluetooth signal identifiers transmitted by AirTag rota…
Its private from 3rd parties, but not private from apple and whoever subpoenas them. Apply this principle to everything apple does and says about privacy and you see it everywhere in their products. Even more cynically, you can say it's private from their competitors.
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Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How many of these third party devices can use every iPhone, iPad and more in the world as a beacon?
Tile uses everyone with the tile app installed. It's not the same by sheer numbers, but it's more than enough that if someone slips a tile tracker on you they will know where you're at. Or, if someone wants to spend a bit more money, not even much more, they can buy a full GPS tracker that doesn't need anything to report on it. Apple isn't coming out with some groundbreaking spy tech here, this is very routine stuff thats been in a small format forever. And guess what, none of the existing ones do anything to alert anyone of stalking, unlike Apple. I don't even like Apple but this is silly.
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Does this render it useless for anti-theft, then? The other question is: when presented with evidence of stolen property, will the local PD enforce the law and assist with the retrieval of said property?
That's already been answered. Stories abound about "Find My Doohickie said it was at this address. I even knocked on the door, and the person that answered said, 'yup, have your phone, whatta ya gonna do about it?'. Cops said file it with insurance." Cops don't care about a $1000 phone, they're not going to care about your bicycle, either (which has also been proven on multiple occasions).
That depends on the state you are in. That is how it will play out in CA, not at all how it will play out in TX.
Re: Apple Introduces AirTag
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what about the majority of people who do not own an iOS device? They can be tracked? Somehow I don't see this idea working out when law makers start seeing what kind of things this product enables.
> 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.
Good luck hearing that when it’s stuck to the bottom of your car.
That being said, plenty of devices are already available to cheaply track people without them knowing.