61–70 of 592 posts
Are AirTags actually useful for anti-theft purposes? I threw one in the trunk of my car (just in case - I ordered a 4-pack and I had a spare one), and every single time I drive somewhere it chirps loudly when I'm exiting my driveway, making its presence immediately obvious without any delays, and despite my phone being with me in the car.
Are AirTags actually useful for anti-theft purposes? I threw one in the trunk of my car (just in case - I ordered a 4-pack and I had a spare one), and every single time I drive somewhere it chirps loudly when I'm exiting my driveway, making its presence immediately obvious without any delays, and despite my phone being with me in the car.
At 10 years I kinda wonder what the odds your AA batteries become problem occasionally (leaking, etc) long before the Airtag... although they are Lithium batteries.
are lithium batteries known to expand or catch fire in the AA form factor?
That is not how batteries work. Batteries drain even under minimal usage. My bet is that in 2/3 years this device will stop working already. Just change the batteries if you AirTag once a year. Especially if you are using an AirTag to keep watch over 10.000 dollar equipment.
Here [0] is the datasheet for the batteries used. 25 year shelf life is spec'd. I have personally run these cells buried underground, and gotten 4.5 years out of 4 of them, though my application is just for fun and likely not as power conservative as an AirTag. [0] https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/l91.pdf
Not a bad price, but it does require an existing Airtag. Ten years is a very long time in tech. I wouldn't be confident that the Airtag protocol will be functioning in 2035, and there are already rumors of a new Airtag and possibly a newer protocol coming up.
Well, they certainly _might_ be functioning in ten years from now. Conservatively, you get 5 years of use out of this, which isn't bad for $15-20, depending on your use case.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of smoke alarms now have 10 year batteries.
Now mandated in California. No more waking up in the middle of the night and crawling up a ladder to find out which of your smoke alarms decided it was too cold and decided to sing its low battery chirp.
Are AirTags actually useful for anti-theft purposes? I threw one in the trunk of my car (just in case - I ordered a 4-pack and I had a spare one), and every single time I drive somewhere it chirps loudly when I'm exiting my driveway, making its presence immediately obvious without any delays, and despite my phone being with me in the car.
Yes, but only if you remove the speaker which is well documented on YouTube
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Apple kills existing Airtags any time soon they effectively kill the product line. So they won’t.
Its really easy for them, and this also in line how they would operate: Add a new Airtag v2 protocol to the next iPhone and sell new Airtags only using that protocol. Why should you buy them? They could have different improvements you would like. Start deprecating Airtag v1 in 3-4 years - and only sell new ones. There are now 3-4 iPhone generations that can handle the new version. The next iPhone in 6-7 years doesn't…
But this is an accessory line. Apple is pretty good at keeping accessories working for as long as possible. AirPods v1 still work. A Magic Mouse bought 10 years ago still works as long as the battery isn't dead.