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Into Thin AirPods

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Re: Into Thin AirPods

#181

Post by snotrockets »

fwlr wrote: post #108
callesgg wrote: post #90

The AirPods location as shown on the map is not the actual location, it is the location of the phone that last reported “hearing” the signal from the AirPods. When you are close to them and connected to them, the map will show your own location not the AirPods. This explains why the AirPods tracked the authors own location at times. Possibly also why the map showed the boys location. He was using Bluetooth so his pho…

Yes! Some may feel the author was excessively cautious but in this case it actually compensated for the author also not understanding exactly how Find My Device works, and the two cancelled out and resulted in the correct decisions being made! In trying to troubleshoot annoying “lost AirPods” notifications without turning off Find My Device, I ended up learning a bit about how the system seems to work. The way Find M…

It's a bit more interesting than that, as it's E2E encrypted, to avoid leaking the location of any device on the network.

Find My enabled devices are actually sending "my current public key is …" messages. The finder ("adult", in your terminology) device encrypts their location with that public key, and sends that, and only that, to Apple's servers.

The finder device isn't identified in that message, so you can't track a finder device by listening to "encountered a device" transmissions to Apple.

That public key is also rotated every 15 minutes, so an attacker can't track a device by tracking broadcast messages of a specific public key.

When you connect to Find My, you download that encrypted location, and use your private key to decrypt that location.

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/find-my-security-se...

Re: Into Thin AirPods

#182

Post by arrakeen »

edude03 wrote: post #80

As someone who has lost three pairs of AirPods (including the newer pros) I’ve never understood why Apple allows another device to pair with headphones that are already paired to an iCloud account. Once my girlfriend saw my AirPod maxs lying around and wanted to try them. She put them on her head, tapped “continue” or whatever it said under “not your AirPods” and was listening to music in 15 seconds. Obviously they w…

> I’ve never understood why Apple allows another device to pair with headphones that are already paired to an iCloud account.

even folks who spend >$5k on headphones would find this suggestion obscene.

Re: Into Thin AirPods

#183

Post by edude03 »

Reubachi wrote: post #123
edude03 wrote: post #80

As someone who has lost three pairs of AirPods (including the newer pros) I’ve never understood why Apple allows another device to pair with headphones that are already paired to an iCloud account. Once my girlfriend saw my AirPod maxs lying around and wanted to try them. She put them on her head, tapped “continue” or whatever it said under “not your AirPods” and was listening to music in 15 seconds. Obviously they w…

I could not imagine a worse solution to a user-error. Imagine this same comment but about wired headphones, for example. Since the dawn of time people have stolen and misplaced things. Please don't give Apple any bright ideas about monetizing human clumsiness.

Imagine this same comment but with your car. People can’t just walk up to your car and drive it away specifically because there is a key that allows the key holder to verify they are authorized to drive (yes obviously someone can steal your keys but that’s the idea anyway)

No one accuses car manufacturers of monetizing human clumsiness and generally speaking the system works pretty well.

Re: Into Thin AirPods

#184

Post by edude03 »

bee_rider wrote: post #120
obituary_latte wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm totally guessing, but could it be actual corporate strategy? If they are easy to steal, AppleCare+ becomes more appealing and/or having to replace them increases sales. It's certainly an easy problem to solve. Can anyone think of any other legitimate reason not to?

Ease of use and they didn’t think of it? Most headphones don’t have a lockout feature.

They have such a lock out feature on all their other portables and desktops too in fact (activation lock) so I’m mostly surprised it didn’t “naturally” carry over

Re: Into Thin AirPods

#185

Post by obituary_latte »

bee_rider wrote: post #120
obituary_latte wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm totally guessing, but could it be actual corporate strategy? If they are easy to steal, AppleCare+ becomes more appealing and/or having to replace them increases sales. It's certainly an easy problem to solve. Can anyone think of any other legitimate reason not to?

Ease of use and they didn’t think of it? Most headphones don’t have a lockout feature.

How would locking them to the owner make them harder to use? They're smart enough and have designed enough software where they could trivially allow the user to share them if desired- that is the only "inconvenience" I can image it would cause.

I doubt they either didn't think of it or that it wasn't suggested frequently.r

Re: Into Thin AirPods

#186

Post by aziaziazi »

afavour wrote: post #153
fwlr wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Some may feel the author was excessively cautious but in this case it actually compensated for the author also not understanding exactly how Find My Device works, and the two cancelled out and resulted in the correct decisions being made! In trying to troubleshoot annoying “lost AirPods” notifications without turning off Find My Device, I ended up learning a bit about how the system seems to work. The way Find M…

This is true and also speaks to confusion around AirPods: second generation AirPod Pros are "adult devices" (or at least their case is) while all other generations are child devices.

Indeed, the case is "adult device" !

> A new U1 chip enables Find My with Precision Finding for your case, so you can exactly locate it. You can also use Find My with proximity view if you lose track of your AirPods Pro

https://www.apple.com/uk/airpods-pro/

Re: Into Thin AirPods

#187

Post by Scoundreller »

Fnoord wrote: post #161
Scoundreller wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol isn’t sterilizing. E.g. Not very effective against non-enveloped viruses, for example. I’d leave ‘em in the sun personally. But putting it random stuff at the edge of your ear is probably low risk when it comes to activities people do on the regular.

Not sure I like that given there's a battery in them. There's also a device which bombards small device like earphones with UV for a couple of minutes. Got it at work. My over ear headphones don't fit, but my Sony in-ear with noise cancelling do. Oh, and they still work afterwards, of course.

I mean, they’re often half in the sun anyway. UV can do its work without getting things hot.

Re: Into Thin AirPods

#188

Post by 908B64B197 »

pawelwentpawel wrote: post #67

I recently had my iPhone stolen while on a trip in Latin America. It seems that it was an organised group with a vast distribution network. I could follow their entire supply chain which spanned through entire Brazil, from south all the way to Salinopolis which is a beach city in the north of the country. Most probably they travelled through the airport with an entire bag of phones stolen during the carnival. Putting…

> While Find My might be a useful tool if you forgot something at your friend's place, I doubt the probability of successful retrieval of a stolen phone is high.

What I hope is that some day most parts will have some form of authenticity verification built-in. Putting in stolen parts in another iPhone would just brick it and tell the holder to surrender it at the nearest Apple Store.

> Police wouldn't move a finger (I had a similar experience in UK when I had a Macbook stolen in a central London restaurant).

What I've been told by Brits living here in California is that certain crimes are simply not recorded by the police because it would make statistics look bad.

According to him this was, in part, because politicians were pushing for it due to Brexit.

> The return to risk ratio of dressing up as a batman and trying to retrieve the device yourself is not the best

In some places, the government will even charge you with a crime for doing so (after the police refused to investigate of course).

Re: Into Thin AirPods

#189

Post by edude03 »

liminalsunset wrote: post #148
edude03 wrote: post #80

As someone who has lost three pairs of AirPods (including the newer pros) I’ve never understood why Apple allows another device to pair with headphones that are already paired to an iCloud account. Once my girlfriend saw my AirPod maxs lying around and wanted to try them. She put them on her head, tapped “continue” or whatever it said under “not your AirPods” and was listening to music in 15 seconds. Obviously they w…

This feature actually appears to have been implemented at some point. It's called Pairing Lock. The only problem is I'm not sure if it has been silently removed, since on my phone and AirPods the same location in the screenshot no longer says Pairing Lock. https://old.reddit.com/r/airpods/comments/q29h40/we_can_fina...

Nice! I was unaware of this. I also don't see this options though, so I assume it's been removed

Re: Into Thin AirPods

#190

Post by lowercased »

dragonwriter wrote: post #140
mongol wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is confirmation a purely Catholic thing?

Its common to most of Christianity (excluding the Baptist, Anabaptist and other “believer’s baptism” denominations) but has different cultural attachments; its quite plausible that, in a local area in parts of the US, the Catholic community would be the only one where it is both practiced and the kind of event for which gift-giving would be associated.

It was a relatively italian/catholic area we grew up in. You sort of knew who was being confirmed and when in that era (late 80s).
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