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Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

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Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#141

Post by newaccount74 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #125
bleah1000 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, you've fallen into the same trap. One person says they don't have a problem, you believe them and start saying the first statement must be misinformation. It's possible that both people are correct and the circumstances that cause the battery to drain require being connected to a AirTag, not just near any old AirTag. Or there are other circumstances that cause the battery to drain.

I don't think I have. I also have an iPad, and I have AirTags, and it does not have a battery drain problem, which is one additional data point for me. Plus, this is the default, expected behavior, and the post that started this discussion is disputing that. Without adequate evidence to back it up. The onus is on them to put forth convincing evidence, or it is nothing but another conspiracy theory. Presuming the stat…

My experience dealing with customer support is that there is almost always an actual problem when a customer complains.

They often don't know the right words to use, and have no idea why an issue is happening, or they might come up with a completely wrong explanation. So it's easy to dismiss their concerns by saying things like "this doesn't make sense" or "it works on my machine".

It's only when you start digging deeper, investigating what exactly the customer could mean, that you eventually discover the root of the issue.

Of course, these investigations are time consuming an expensive, often the customer stops following up with you, or you might not understand the behaviour well enough on your own. So very often you don't find the underlying cause.

But calling someone a liar just because you can't reproduce their problem is short-sighted and stupid.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#142

Post by RobertMiller »

_g5q8 wrote: post #27
Krasnol wrote: post #23

How far are we from the moment where everybody admits that those things were a bad idea?

There's no reason to believe these are a bad idea beyond lowering entry cost to GPS trackers. It seems like there's a bug going on here - otherwise everyone would have the same issue. This is something that can be fixed and isn't really related to these existing overall.

> There's no reason to believe these are a bad idea beyond lowering entry cost to GPS trackers.

That's not something to be glossed over. Lowering the price of abusable technology makes that abuse a lot more prevalent. Take for instance guns, there is a strong inverse relationship between the price of a gun and the likelihood that it will be used for murder. The guns most often used for crimes are the cheapest handguns that you could get for a hundred dollars or so. More expensive guns, like rifles or higher quality handguns, still get used in crimes but a lot less often. And the most expensive guns, machine guns with collector value, are virtually never used for crime.

In making GPS trackers extremely cheap, it will be abused far more often. It's no longer esoteric technology that most people except cops or PIs wouldn't even think to use; it's dirt cheap and prevalent. Prevalence is a big part of it; it used to be that most people were unfamiliar with the specifics of GPS tracking. Maybe they heard about it in the news or in movies, but they wouldn't know where to start looking to buy one for themselves and certainly didn't have one laying around in their home already. But now that every other person seems to have a dozen of them laying around their home, the risk of impulsive use has become very real. Planting GPS trackers on people has become something the general population can do on a whim. It wasn't like this before.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#143

Post by Shared404 »

kristiandupont wrote: post #139
walrus01 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The day that I install any amazon sidewalk enabled device in my home is the day I hang up my hat and resign in shame, as a network engineer who's been building internet infrastructure since 1999. It's so gross and wrong. amazon doesn't get a free ride on my residential internet service or arbitrary use of radio spectrum in my home. note: I also have no smart doorbells, cloud connected security cameras, internet enabl…

I have a similar feeling and I am quite pessimistic about the future in this regard. Currently, I have been able to avoid it pretty well, but appliances break and need replacing, and I suspect there will be a day where I cannot find a washing machine that isn't "smart", much less a car!

This is what I'm worried about.

Sooner or later we'll need regulation to prevent devices from requiring network connection.

I don't think we'll ever get it though.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#144

Post by ksec »

bgro wrote: post #95

This was a concern I had since day 0. I have been asking about things like this and been talked down to constantly as if I don't know how bluetooth works... My other concern was if these are hijacking your data plan. Maybe it's not that significant amount if you have a huge plan but like Ting for example gives you 100MB of data usage each month on their basic plan. That's MEGAbytes. I checked my system clock app for…

>I have been asking about things like this and been talked down to constantly as if I don't know how bluetooth works

I am still unsure how to deal with these people. It would be rude to quote them and name them.

And that is especially true with Modern Apple. I say modern as in those who joined the cult after iPhone. These Apple apologist and fanatics thinks Apple could do no wrong.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#145

Post by least »

FireBeyond wrote: post #131
least wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dislike how companies are not only pushing proprietary mesh networks, but also making them automatically enabled for their users and opt-out. I actually quite like that this particular feature is opt out because the goal is to make the mesh network actually useful and not just a white paper theoretical application with zero adoption. Requiring labor of any kind will exclude much of the population from the start,…

> I actually quite like that this particular feature is opt out because the goal is to make the mesh network actually useful and not just a white paper theoretical application with zero adoption. Requiring labor of any kind will exclude much of the population from the start, which, for this particular utility, is not tenable. And people nearby you? Apple is draining your battery for their benefit, using your cellular…

Yes, everyone who has the feature turned on is pooling their resources together to create a common utility that everyone with the feature benefits from. I fail to see how this is an issue. This is not like Apple exfiltrating data from your phone back to them that can incriminate you like the CSAM debacle that's still unresolved, this is a tool that has a quite easy to understand benefit for those that are using it. I pool the resources of using some of my battery and data and in return I get access to a giant mesh network that helps in locating my devices. If I don't want to participate in this network, I can turn it off.

I get that a lot of people seem to have the issue with it being opt-out rather than opt-in. I think that this sort of feature needs to be opt-out because it better aligns with human behavior.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#146

Post by andybak »

agentgumshoe wrote: post #140
least wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dislike how companies are not only pushing proprietary mesh networks, but also making them automatically enabled for their users and opt-out. I actually quite like that this particular feature is opt out because the goal is to make the mesh network actually useful and not just a white paper theoretical application with zero adoption. Requiring labor of any kind will exclude much of the population from the start,…

If no one would use it if it was opt-in, that says something about the actual demand for such a thing, aside the product makers.

No it doesn't. It says something about network effects and the psychology of opt-in vs opt-out.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#147

Post by sharken »

The title is rather inaccurate, a better and less attention seeking title would be:

"Apple AirTags draining battery of your Apple devices close by".

And then you can talk about Apple AirTags draining your Apple devices, e.g. in order to locate the Apple device of someone else your devices will use of a lot of battery in the process.

My hunch is that users want to be able to locate their lost Apple device at all times and AirTags improve that capability.

But most users will not pay the price of increased battery drain to help others locate their Apple device.

So Apple decides to make the feature opt-out, otherwise very few would actually enable the feature.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#149

Post by callmemclovin »

RF_Savage wrote: post #105
redleader55 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do this easily with an Android phone. These are the apps I use: Lightblue nRFConnect BLE Scanner

Thanks! nRFConnect looks like a legitimately usefull tool for debugging and fiddling with BLE devices. The nRF51 and nRF52 OTA firmware upgrades also look usefull, has anybody done something arduino like with this?

For the Arduino route I'd heavily recommend the Adafruit Bluefruit boards over the official Arduino BLE boards. Some of the Bluefruit boards are based on the nRF52 and therefore support OTA. The BLE implementation on the official Arduino boards (for example Nano 33 BLE) is okay but IMO Adafruit is doing a better job there.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#150

Post by sharken »

newaccount74 wrote: post #141
rootusrootus wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I have. I also have an iPad, and I have AirTags, and it does not have a battery drain problem, which is one additional data point for me. Plus, this is the default, expected behavior, and the post that started this discussion is disputing that. Without adequate evidence to back it up. The onus is on them to put forth convincing evidence, or it is nothing but another conspiracy theory. Presuming the stat…

My experience dealing with customer support is that there is almost always an actual problem when a customer complains. They often don't know the right words to use, and have no idea why an issue is happening, or they might come up with a completely wrong explanation. So it's easy to dismiss their concerns by saying things like "this doesn't make sense" or "it works on my machine". It's only when you start digging de…

You have better chances of resolving issues within a company, but the mechanics are exactly as you describe.

Being someone who likes to solve these problems, I'm aware that cost sometimes require you to walk away from solving a problem.

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