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A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

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Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#541

Post by hatsix »

mmahemoff wrote: post #309
hatsix wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly how Apple operates. The last Apple device with Firewire was produced in 2012, though it was sold for several more years. MacOS 13 (2022) dropped the Firewire CoreAudio driver (as well as other, more niche support for Firewire). So... exactly 10 years. If you're going to put me in a bucket, I'd be in the "Apple Hater" bucket, but I honestly think that the way that they do this is fine. It would have been…

You’re right Apple has a playbook of changing port types every few years, but there are adaptors available. The devices themselves still work, just that Apple knows they can use this one trick to encourage some customers to upgrade. With wireless devices, protocol changes would brick the device, so they’d be less likely to do it so quickly. As far as I know, Apple haven’t announced any plans to deprecate the original…

Specific to my comment, Apple removed code that supports audio over Firewire. It doesn't matter if adapters are available, cameras and microphones that used Firewire no longer work on MacOS 13+.

Again, it had a long run, I'm not upset that they "only" supported it for 10 years... but let's be very clear, the devices don't work. Also, this is them removing support for a protocol that is part of the base MacOS, so it's exactly like what will eventually happen when Apple stops supporting the original Airpods protocols.

I don't think that's any time soon, and if you're in the Apple ecosystem, go ham... let's just be very clear about the comparisons here.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#542

Post by hatsix »

samatman wrote: post #117
hatsix wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly how Apple operates. The last Apple device with Firewire was produced in 2012, though it was sold for several more years. MacOS 13 (2022) dropped the Firewire CoreAudio driver (as well as other, more niche support for Firewire). So... exactly 10 years. If you're going to put me in a bucket, I'd be in the "Apple Hater" bucket, but I honestly think that the way that they do this is fine. It would have been…

Apple sold the first widely-available computer with USB connections, the iMac G3. > To replace the removed ports, the iMac has Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports, which were faster and cheaper than Apple Desktop Bus and serial ports but were very new—the standard was not finalized until after the iMac's release—and unsupported by any third-party Mac peripheral. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3#Design It would no…

Maybe you missed the part where I said "this is fine". I don't have a problem with what they're doing, I have a problem with people saying that Apple doesn't do something that they very clearly do.

Also, I thought I was fairly clear in my comment, but Apple removed support in MacOS 13 for Firewire Audio... so it doesn't matter what kind of dongles you have, as soon as you update to 13, your firewire camera no longer works.

It's weird that Apple is removing driver-level support for a protocol. It's unexpected. It's also a dead tech that nobody cares about. The person I was responding to wanted an example of accessories that Apple stopped supporting, and "Anything with Firewire Audio" falls into that category. It is completely, utterly unusable with stock MacOS 13, though it's likely that some people have found a way to put it back in.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#543

Post by toss1 »

chii wrote: post #358
neilv wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think the police will give bad advice, if you call them up and ask what to do?

> How do you think the police will give bad advice the police will give you any advice, good or bad. They're not legally responsible for anything they said to you, as long as they're not telling you to commit a crime (in which case, if they did they will deny it). You can still call 'em up of course - but don't 100% just trust their words blindly.

At this point in the US, it seems we are far better off asking ChatGPT or Claude than the average police station.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#544

Post by TomatoCo »

wat10000 wrote: post #504
michaelt wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are people imagining that the police will say that you can go take the bike, but then turn around and arrest you for theft? People are imagining the police will tell you that you can't steal it back, when legally you can. After all, it's the police's job to keep the peace. And things are more peaceful if I'm not busting up thieves' hideouts all guns blazing like Rambo.

I’m also imagining the police telling you that you can do something that is actually illegal, and then you get prosecuted for it. “The cops said it was ok” may not be an adequate defense.

A cop telling you it's okay to do something, and then getting arrested for it, might be one of the only times you can correctly claim entrapment.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#545

Post by quitit »

drdaeman wrote: post #56

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?

For small items where the airtag is merely present, it can be useful from the perspective of being alerted when an item is left behind or taken away from your surroundings. Much theft crime is opportunistic, such as forgetting a wallet behind in a restaurant, or dropping it in a street. Airtags are useful in that regard as the "left behind" alerts are reasonably timely, and tracking an item down works well. This works because you realise it's gone and find it before someone else does.

While there are still plenty of examples of people using airtags for recovery of stolen goods, that's not the main product intention as it is very easy to discover and disable a loose airtag. Some larger items however (e.g. certain bikes) have airtags built in which aren't easily disabled, there are also mounting cages which serve a similar purpose - in these circumstances it is a legitimate antitheft device because the ability to easily disable it is removed.

I use airtags and my most common use of it is to ask siri to "jingle my keys", which alerts me to whichever coat or pair of jeans I've left them in (my second most common use is receiving an alert that I've left my umbrella behind somewhere).

I also remember one occasion of leaving my keys in a taxi, realising immediately, and chasing it down the road - the taxi never saw me, and I never saw my keys again, with an airtag that would have played out differently. These kinds of situations are far more common than dealing with thievery.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#546

Post by fragmede »

TomatoCo wrote: post #544
wat10000 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m also imagining the police telling you that you can do something that is actually illegal, and then you get prosecuted for it. “The cops said it was ok” may not be an adequate defense.

A cop telling you it's okay to do something, and then getting arrested for it, might be one of the only times you can correctly claim entrapment.

So all Jessie Pinkman's got to do is ask the under cover police if it's okay to sell them meth and then they can't be arrested for it?

Entrapment is reserved for the police going above and beyond, eg "sell me meth or I'll kill your dog" where it can be argued that the entrapped normally would not do the crime.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#547

Post by true_religion »

joshuahaglund wrote: post #317
neilv wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most useful advice: call the police non-emergency number, explain concisely, and ask them what to do. A bunch of the other suggestions, here on HN Streetwise ProTips, can get self and/or friends beaten, stabbed, and/or arrested.

IDK where you live but where I am, unless it's an actively life threatening emergency, the Police will say they're busy. I watched a drunk driver try to drive away after smashing into a parked car, ripping a wheel off the parked car. The drunk driver kept trying to start his car to get away. People called the police but they said they're busy. Fortunately his car was totaled and wouldn't start either. Over an hour la…

I live in Arlington, VA where I once saw a purse snatcher being chased by 5 cops. Only to have 3 more show up after the guy was on the ground. They all had their own cars too.

During COVID, I called the non emergency line police for a break in on my car parked on the street and the police showed up in minutes then searched the area frantically to see if the guy was still around.

I don’t know if they are over funded or just bored.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#548

Post by wat10000 »

fragmede wrote: post #546
TomatoCo wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cop telling you it's okay to do something, and then getting arrested for it, might be one of the only times you can correctly claim entrapment.

So all Jessie Pinkman's got to do is ask the under cover police if it's okay to sell them meth and then they can't be arrested for it? Entrapment is reserved for the police going above and beyond, eg "sell me meth or I'll kill your dog" where it can be argued that the entrapped normally would not do the crime.

Apparently there is “entrapment by estoppel” in which a government official tells you an act is legal when it isn’t. They have to be acting as a representative of the government, though; undercover cops wouldn’t count.

I still wouldn’t be very excited to try this defense in court.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#549

Post by garof »

encoderer wrote: post #102
jmull wrote: post #81

I know this is useful (for something), but I'm stuck on the plot holes in the motivating story... Why didn't they replace the battery when the app complained? How long would a thief really keep the AirTag anyway? If the thief did keep the AirTag and you tracked them down, then what? A confrontation has a fairly high chance to have a worse result than losing some equipment. You could try to get the police to do it, bu…

There exists a small percentage of men who will go absolutely savage on somebody for stealing from them, and the existence of those people is probably a bigger crime deterrent than the police. So I say, shine on you crazy air tag tracking vigilante diamonds.

I totally believe this, but now I want to check my assumption. Can anyone offer pointers to supporting evidence or research on it? Thanks

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#550

Post by wyager »

0xffff2 wrote: post #530
wyager wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in the trunk, not on the backseat! Also, never put these expensive items or really any kind of bag in the trunk after you park... You don't want your window broken for a sport bag A frustrating thing is that it's completely optional to live in a society where this is a problem. We know how to stop this from happening. There are places where you just don't have to live in fear of some low-life breaking your window,…

Can you elaborate? I'm honestly at a loss as to what you're suggesting? Is it just that we should have extremely long jail sentences and/or executions for petty crimes, or is there some other option I'm missing?

Crime, as with most things, follows a power law distribution. Almost all crime is from extremely predictable repeat offenders. You could eliminate over 80% of crime just by enforcing a 3-strikes policy. https://inquisitivebird.xyz/p/when-few-do-great-harm
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