AirTags: Apple's Item Trackers - Everything We Know

marc1184 said:
“Hey Siri, where is my wallet”?
Siri: “It’s at the Apple Store buying everything in sight”
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I wonder if you will be able to name the tags so you could actually ask a question like that.
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glowplug said:
For tracking children?
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That makes me think of Austin Powers where Felicity shoved the tracker up Fat Bastard's butt, and when they tracked it, it was in the toilet.
 
compwiz1202 said:
I wonder if you will be able to name the tags so you could actually ask a question like that.
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That makes me think of Austin Powers where Felicity shoved the tracker up Fat Bastard's butt, and when they tracked it, it was in the toilet.
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of course you’ll be able to name the tags. It’s not like the interface will just show random hexadecimal strings.
 
carrrrrlos said:
Is this still a thing? Could Apple be punking suppliers, or just giving tile enough time to pivot.
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My guess would be that the increased regulatory scrutiny brought by Tile last year along with the Basecamp Hey fiasco and the Epic lawsuit made them ice the release for the short term for optics/PR reasons.
 
I hope they offer them in silk finish black as well, since the white button is far too visible to locate stolen items.
 
I haven’t been following recently but noticed in “Find My” that it talks about luggage and backpacks and stuff. Did I miss something?
 
julesme said:
Anyone else surprised by AirPods Pro, and now possibly AirTags, being released without a keynote address? These are tentpole releases, not the kind of "minor updates" that normally fly under the radar.

Tim Apple - Let's get a November event on the calendar!
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Tim's Apple is a much different place from the Jobsian days of yore.
 
I've never been so uninterested in an Apple product as I am with this.

There's got to be more than what we're being told here, surely.
 
IMG_1211.JPG
 
are we supposed to attach one of these to the airpods case so our kid doesn't lose his airpods 1 month after he got them?
 
I hope the safe location and boundaries features will be there once the products will be realeased.
 
How do I know which devices are helping expand the searching power of the Find My network? How old of iPhones/Macs will be able to help find other people's AirTags? Will someone walking around with an iPhone 7 help expand the Find My network? Or someone running a 2012 MacBook Pro?
 
Tracking your items in the real world often means tracking stolen items. And for this, the Apple AirTag is unfortunately not suited. It was in the beginning, but it is not anymore, because of the "anti stalking" functions that were added because some people complained. So, the product that was potentially great, was turned into a useless piece of plastic for certain applications.

When the AirTag gets separated from the owner (owner's Apple device, like iPhone), it will enter an "orphaned" mode. After staying in this mode, allegedly for about 8 to 24 hours, it will start beeping loudly. Now, granted, official Apple support pages mention the words "if moved" so technically it could mean that this happens only if the AirTag is moving around after being in "orphaned" mode for 8-24 hours.

If this is the case, then technically, if you simply dropped your wallet (containing an AirTag) onto the ground in a library, it should not start beeping because it is not moving. I have yet to test this scenario. But if somebody picked the wallet up and went home with it, then according to Apple's documentation, this means the AirTag is moving and is away from the owner, so it will eventually start beeping.

But the finder probably already found the AirTag in the wallet if they looked through it so that's not necessarily something you could avoid happening either way.

The problem is if you wanted to hide the AirTag on your scooter or a bicycle because you wanted to be able to track it in case somebody stole it. In this case, the thief would at first not be aware of the AirTag because it was hidden somewhere in the frame or under the seat for example. But, because the bicycle and the AirTag were MOVING along with the thief, the AirTag would (according to Apple) start beeping! This would let even the most stupid thief know that something was up and they could search the bicycle and dispose of the AirTag. And with that, you would lose the ability to track your property.

So, to put it simply, an AirTag can only be useful if you lose an item and you rely on people around to be "good people". They can pick up the wallet, NFC scan the AirTag if they see it, and keep it safe or call you on the number you supply (if you activate the lost mode for the AirTag).

But to track lost items that are found by "bad people", the AirTag is useless because in those situations, the AirTags actually works against the owner and if favor of the thief, because it makes it easier for the thief to become aware of it (because it starts beeping) and therefore makes it easy to find and dispose of.
 
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Perplexer said:
Tracking your items in the real world often means tracking stolen items. And for this, the Apple AirTag is unfortunately not suited. It was in the beginning, but it is not anymore, because of the "anti stalking" functions that were added because some people complained. So, the product that was potentially great, was turned into a useless piece of plastic for certain applications.

When the AirTag gets separated from the owner (owner's Apple device, like iPhone), it will enter an "orphaned" mode. After staying in this mode, allegedly for about 8 to 24 hours, it will start beeping loudly. Now, granted, official Apple support pages mention the words "if moved" so technically it could mean that this happens only if the AirTag is moving around after being in "orphaned" mode for 8-24 hours.

If this is the case, then technically, if you simply dropped your wallet (containing an AirTag) onto the ground in a library, it should not start beeping because it is not moving. I have yet to test this scenario. But if somebody picked the wallet up and went home with it, then according to Apple's documentation, this means the AirTag is moving and is away from the owner, so it will eventually start beeping.

But the finder probably already found the AirTag in the wallet if they looked through it so that's not necessarily something you could avoid happening either way.

The problem is if you wanted to hide the AirTag on your scooter or a bicycle because you wanted to be able to track it in case somebody stole it. In this case, the thief would at first not be aware of the AirTag because it was hidden somewhere in the frame or under the seat for example. But, because the bicycle and the AirTag were MOVING along with the thief, the AirTag would (according to Apple) start beeping! This would let even the most stupid thief know that something was up and they could search the bicycle and dispose of the AirTag. And with that, you would lose the ability to track your property.

So, to put it simply, an AirTag can only be useful if you lose an item and you rely on people around to be "good people". They can pick up the wallet, NFC scan the AirTag if they see it, and keep it safe or call you on the number you supply (if you activate the lost mode for the AirTag).

But to track lost items that are found by "bad people", the AirTag is useless because in those situations, the AirTags actually works against the owner and if favor of the thief, because it makes it easier for the thief to become aware of it (because it starts beeping) and therefore makes it easy to find and dispose of.
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Or, just disengage the speaker.
 
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