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Apple Introduces AirTag

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471–480 of 966 posts

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#471
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.

Tile's been doing one-year battery life with a CR2032 for quite some time now.

I had a tile, battery died, won’t buy again.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#472
post #261
post #211

Earlier 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.

"AirTag is designed from the ground up to keep location data private and secure. No location data or location history is physically stored inside AirTag. Communication with the Find My network is end-to-end encrypted so that only the owner of a device has access to its location data, and no one, including Apple, knows the identity or location of any device that helped find it."

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#473
post #262
post #126

A week ago my wife dropped her Iphone from a ski lift, and couldn't find it afterwards. I went to try and find it, from home she used Find my phone to get a picture of the location, and had it play sounds when I was nearby. I found it under a foot of snow, first try. This has been around for a while now but it was the first time I saw it first hand, I was blown away.

Only time I used it was when my phone fell out of my pocket in a friend's car when he dropped me at home. Find my phone clearly showed where it was, traveling through the city and amazingly I could still use WhatsApp desktop to message my friend to bring it back. Tech is awesome sometimes.

> Tech is awesome *sometimes*

:`(

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your car's battery isn't glued in place behind a cover held by screws with an intentionally obscure pattern. Not to mention, car manufacturers don't (yet?) use specialized batteries that only they can source legitimately nor use DRM to make the car reject a perfectly good battery just because it's not the original one that came with it.

My next car’s battery will be glued in place, permanently affixed to the frame. When it dies after a million+ miles, I’m sure both battery and steel body will be quite ready for recycling.

Assuming it doesn't incinerate you first, of course...

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#475
Once I started using Tile it became impossible for me to remember where I put my keys. There just wasn't any pressure to stay organized since the beeping would always save me. But whenever the battery was out or the Bluetooth wasn't connecting oh boy.

Same kind of thing happened with GPS. I used to pay more attention to maps and really learned streets but now I just expect the phone to solve everything for me. I'm lost without it and I don't like that.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#476

While it seems like a good product, let’s put things into perspective of big tech. Platform owner, that has deep insights into other products on it, and their revenue, is creating competing product, that’s utilizing api and privileges that others cannot. And utilizing platform they own to push this product to users, without having to pay for it.

I do wish it would’ve been open-sourced and used cross-platform.

also > that’s utilizing api and privileges that others cannot

Apple is allowing third party device makers to integrate with the find my system. What’s the difference between apple

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#477
post #204

Earlier 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?

Tile didn't start with replaceable batteries--they still don't use them in all their products. I don't know how AirTags will be in practice, but user-replaceable batteries haven't been great. I don't know if it's a technical restriction or not, but "low-battery" seems to be a time based warning and not based on battery charge. So I either get an alert when 1 year has passed on all of my devices at the same time, or t…

If the airtag dies without warning, wouldn’t it alert the user that the tag is out of range, and so then they could replace the battery? (Presumably Apple has a UI flow for this.)

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#478
post #26

Earlier 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."

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.

According to the link, if the tag is away from the owner you can disable tracking with a NFC-enabled device, as well as an iPhone.

It's not for anti-theft

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#480
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. ...putting it in a faraday bag? Since tags are cheap, they can even smash it.

This isn't really complicated, just remove the battery.
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