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Apple Introduces AirTag

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Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#621

Post by serial_dev »

llbeansandrice wrote: post #438
serial_dev wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compani…

> these companies could point out that "Apple does this, so it must be an acceptable idea". Friends and jumping off bridges and all that. I get that Apple has immense sway in these marketplaces but I've never gotten a good explanation for why it's Apple's fault when another company makes that same anti-consumer decision. Headphone jacks being the most prominent example.

I didn't blame anyone, I was just saying it couldn't have happened without Apple doing things first.

And not even all the things I listed really annoy me, I have listed examples for things where Apple had to be the first from the established manufacturers. For example the audio jack, I basically never used wired headphones in the last 6 (?) years (since the first time I bought Beats with Bluetooth), so I don't even care.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#622

Post by toomanybeersies »

stef25 wrote: post #262
inasio wrote: 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.

The only time I've used Find my Phone was when my house was burgled and it was stolen.

Unfortunately, despite being given the exact location, the police weren't interested in picking it up. Luckily it was only a $100 phone, so I wasn't too concerned about getting it back, because nothing good would've come from attempting to recover it myself.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#623

Post by askvictor »

hackama wrote: post #517
calsy wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia roughly 20 kids per week present to emergency having swallowed or inserted a button battery and in several cases many have tragically died. It is an agonising death over a period of days/weeks for the child and horrible for the parents to witness. Many times both the parents and medical professionals don't realise what is actually happening to the child until it is too late. There is growing support for…

CR2032 is 2cm wide so you're probably referring to smaller batteries as these cannot be swallowed by a child.

The rule of thumb used to be that if it fits in a 35mm film canister, it's too small to have around children younger than 3. Nowadays I suppose a lot of people don't know what a film 35 mm canister is...

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#624

Post by culturestate »

yardie wrote: post #423
pfranz wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Lithium batteries are high output until they're not. Like the CR2032 battery in my car keyfob it's working until it's not. The drop from 3V to 1V is precipitously fast. Also, 1 year is extremely conservative. I normally get 3 years out of these batteries. An Airtag that's constantly being interrogated may run out faster than say a keyfob used 5x a day

Yeah, I'd expect these to last notably longer than a year for most people. The AirTags marketing page gives the measurement spec:

> Battery life based on an everyday use of four play sound events and one Precision Finding event per day.

That seems like exceptionally heavy usage to me.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#625

Post by randyrand »

JohnBooty wrote: post #484
joshe wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would make sense to do the anti stalking notification after say 4 days. This would make stalking labor intensive since the stalker has to swap tags frequently. So if you leave one in someone's car or drop it in a bag, you'd have to steal it back and replace it. Also if the stalker is unable to track it down, the victim gets notified automatically which makes stalking with these much more dangerous for the stalker.…

It would make sense to do the anti stalking notification after say 4 days "Your privacy and safety are important to Apple. We won't let anybody use these devices to stalk you for more than 96 hours." You haven't thought this through! Seriously, the use cases for 96 hours of tracking are frightening. 1. Meet victim in club/bus/supermarket/wherever 2. Drop AirTag in their bag/pocket/whatever. 3. Now you know where they…

that sounds like one of those issues everyone worries about but never happens.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#626

Post by idiotsecant »

zsmi wrote: post #387
idiotsecant wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

low-cost, low-power battery monitoring is like pretty much the most solved problem ever.

you forgot something, low-cost, low-power, low-accuracy battery monitoring is like pretty much the most solved problem ever. low-cost & low-power & high accuracy, not so much

What do you mean? It's literally just a 2-axis lookup table with voltage on one axis and SOC on the other.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#628

Post by no_wizard »

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?

Turns out all the people up in arms about the headphone jack didn’t really amount to much more than media fervor.

I really like the look of this over the tile products personally and it’s “rightly sized” to me. I definitely will see myself owning a few of these air tags

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