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Airtag what a letdown
- Thread starter Airtagsareuseless
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UWB only works at around 2 meters, at most 3 ie within 10ft. bluetooth works in longer range but it doesn’t tell you the direction.
Correct, but at least you know you are close.. with the AirTag you have to keep trying the sound to know if you are in BT range.. Seems dumb not to have a BT indicator.
It doesn’t have GPS in it. It needs a “Find My” participating Apple device to be able to “see it” and update its location. So if the last known location was updated five hours ago, was that around the last time a Bluetooth Apple device was within Bluetooth range of the keys’ AirTag?
That’s how this works in the wild. Had you left them in, say a restaurant, anyone with an Apple “Find My” enabled Bluetooth device (iPhone, iPad, I think Mac) that comes within Bluetooth range of it will update its location.
yep. The “Find my…”-network requires devices which can participate. If my brother puts an airtag on some tree somewhere in the forest behind my house I will have real problems finding it because the local fauna commonly does not use U1-equipped devices. Heck, elks, deers&co. do not use any! 😂🤣😎
which means the is no “Find my…”-network. Which makes finding the tagged tree a little bit tedious. 🤓
Same for putting an airtag in a household with a few “Find my..”-capable devices. While there seems to be anecdotical evidence that detection range has quite some variance, finding an airtag with an e.g. single iPhone (which in this example is the only U1-device) will require to walk through the rooms and the “airbag visibility”-range will depend on the building structure.
Who would expect something else?
I fully agree with the OP. Precision Finding kicks in at 2 -3 meter from the object. At that point tapping the sound button is much more useful than looking at an arrow that's not 100% sure which direction to point. But....the sound of both my Airtags is pretty weak compared to my Tile Pro, 66 dB versus 85 dB at approximately 1 meter.
I understand that. Problem is, it was within a foot of two Apple devices all day and at the point the keys were “lost”. I understand it doesn’t have a gps… but it has a U1 chip… just like both devices that were with it.
just seems amazing to me that it didn’t catch that.
It probably doesn’t update unless the item is moved. Although in my experience as soon as I’m on The find my app it does ping for an update.
It should be updating regardless of movement. I have a tag sitting still at home in my bedroom right now. My bedroom is in the basement, door is locked. People with iPhones on the first floor are picking up pings from it and updating the location. I left the house 5 hours ago, and the location of the (not moving) AirTag was updated 17 minutes ago.
I still love having Airtags, And I’m still often an apple apologist, but you guys are funny with the excuses about this. Obviously the keys were moving all day and yes, I had multiple Apple devices that were within a foot of the air tag the entire day. I’m not sure why you guys need the explanation of the fact the keys were moving and I had Apple devices with me. I figured that was self-explanatory.
Only having the location update when you open find my would be a joke. Think about it, so it only updates the last time you couldn’t find it? I hope they tweak the software.
What I have found is that the Find My app will cache the last location the app was aware of so that it can display that location the instant the app opens. Then it updates soon afterward with a more recent location. So if I leave something at home, with none of MY iOS devices around, then when I first open the app it shows that location and text that it was last updated whenever I last opened the app (perhaps hours ago). But then it will update soon after and say it was last seen just a few minutes ago. I assume because someone walking past my house had an iOS device with them. I see this same behavior, by the way, with my non-cellular iPad if it isn't connected to WiFi but is being used.
When you stop and think about it this makes sense. Find My is more than just the app on your phone, there are services on Apple's servers which are constantly storing and updating data related to Find My devices. There's a difference between iOS devices proving updates to the Find My network, and the actual Find My app. The Find My app isn't running in the background, constantly pulling updates on all of your devices, even though your device is still sending those updates along. The app caches the last location that it was aware of. Then, when you start the app it contacts Apple's servers to retrieve the latest data. But that's not instantaneous. Apple could have decided to not show any location at all until the app pulled down the update, but they clearly decided that showing something (even if it's using outdated data) is better than showing nothing. This makes sense to me, since you may be opening the Find My app when you either have no network connectivity or very poor signal. At least this way you can see some location, and perhaps retrace your steps, even without an internet connection.
Sure. This is exactly what I’m describing. The question is “Why?”
Why doesn’t the Find My app update locations occasionally? Why doesn’t it occasionally run in the background at least when the tags are within Bluetooth range. Short updates that don’t constantly run every 1-2 hours would be all it took, so battery life shouldn’t be an issue. If the phone knows where it’s at, which it does, the Bluetooth connection should be able to assume the device is within 30 ft of that location. Periodic updates while the devices are away from “home” with your tagged device is the least they could do with their closed system.
Again, battery life of the tracker may be shortened but come on, 6 months would totally be worth the added functionality.
Like I tried to explain, just because the APP isn't pulling the latest locations of you devices from the server, that doesn't mean your phone is not sending updates to the SERVER.
I laid out the example I did to illustrate a situation where my phone (nor any other device attached to my account) had not been in proximity of my AirTag for several hours. It was miles away in fact. And yet once it got the update it displayed that the AirTag was seen by the network just a few minutes ago. Yes, the app took a few seconds to update, but I don't see a problem in that. I was also trying to illustrate that just because the APP had not received an update that doesn't mean that my AirTag had not been seen by the NETWORK.
So to boil it down further. I went to work. Stayed there all day. 8 hours later I opened Find My while walking to my car. Within a second or two it updated to say that my AirTag was last ween 10 minutes ago and that it's at home. How is this different than what you were expecting?
I guess the difference is that that’s not how it works for me. I don’t know what to tell ya. Same scenario. No updates…
Surely making it beep will help…..even if you have to use a process of elimination going to different rooms.
The scenario you described was different, where your AirTag was with you the entire time. Unless a misunderstand.
I have to agree right now. I stuck one in another room of my house sitting right next to another iPhone. Walked about 20 feet away and it told me I didn’t have a good signal. Precision finding is pretty much useless in any practical application. Your only hope is hoping you can hear the beep it makes.
The problem is that beep isn’t gonna be audible in a loud restaurant or any number of places.
I guess we are both misunderstanding. i didn't expect this post to be this complicated.
I just want the airtag to talk to the phone or whatever it is near throughout the day while they are together so that if they become separated, YOUR phone recognizes the last place, or more recently, that the connection was there - without another phone if necessary. Because while we can expect other people to be around eventually, we almost ALL have an iPhone with us which could track these tags while they are near our phones.
and no, the network will not always work. If you leave your keys on the subway, great. The network will find them. But if you go walking through a park and set your keys down and leave, there isn’t a device nearby at that time to use the network. You may have to wait hours or even days before someone walks by and with an iPhone.
It should be pinging your phone occasionally or at least trigger the app when you move too far away from your airtag so that the location is saved. no notifications, just semi regular updates that the machine learning can learn to recognize as normal traffic and such. that way you can open the app and see the last time your phone was within contact with the tag... or sometime more recently than 8 hours ago.
this could be active only when away from “home” to save battery or use machine learning to recognize regular locations that your keys are sitting somewhere (ie an office) etc.
your example only works if you happened to leave your tag near Apple devices. My example is where it was not left near Apple devices, however, it didn’t register ANY allocation data since I had left home. Pretty darn useless if I had lost them. Even if it had pinged my tag once that day, it may have been enough for me to deduce where they were. The way it worked, the tag simply told me I had the keys when I left the house that morning... DUH.
And no amount of waiting allowed my location of the keys to update.
You keep talking about the network. I’m talking about using the devices you carry to occasionally record location and possibly make a note of the location the tag is no longer within Bluetooth...
I know I know... battery life, but there is a sweet spot between NO data, and pinging every minute or every hour.
Something.
My car is parked in an underground parking lot right under my apartment with absolutely zero network access. Nevertheless, I put an AirTag in the sun visor and its location updates every 2-3 hours.
The Find My network is great, just the Bluetooth and UWB range being too short if you need any precision finding.
Sorry, but anyone who creates an account with the single purpose of slamming a product, and even names their account thusly, is hardly someone who I feel has an opinion with listening to...
There’s definitely things this product is missing :
- flatter form factor for certain use cases. And could it have killed them to design a hole in the product itself ?
- louder alarm
- Apple Watch integration
- the biggest omitted feature : alerts when you part with certain items. It’s kind of dumb I can’t set my keys or wallet to an alert mode to warn me if they’re being left behind. Hopefully this feature arrives in a future update.
They can’t wait a few years to fix these things - gotta do it soon or these may go the way of the HomePod.
- flatter form factor for certain use cases. And could it have killed them to design a hole in the product itself ?
- louder alarm
- Apple Watch integration
- the biggest omitted feature : alerts when you part with certain items. It’s kind of dumb I can’t set my keys or wallet to an alert mode to warn me if they’re being left behind. Hopefully this feature arrives in a future update.
They can’t wait a few years to fix these things - gotta do it soon or these may go the way of the HomePod.