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Apple Releases Firmware Update for AirTags

JLD94 said:
So I've got a question, I am thinking about purchasing some for luggage on an upcoming trip (not sure how often I will actually use them beyond that) and was checking out ebay. So If they happen to be purchased say a year ago, they would be a different firmware than something I purchased in store?

Just don't want to get something that is not going to be latest firmware as I bought some refurbished ipod pro's that I could never get to update the firmware and get the feature I was wanting.

I hope this makes sense to someone. :)
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Shouldn’t matter, your AirPods and AirTags should update if genuine.

I had some extremely convincing fakes off eBay, serial number, all features, (handoff, transparency, Siri) packaging everything looked totally authentic, including looking in settings at the model number and firmware etc. Until I tried to update, and it took until Apple asked me to send them in for a warranty repair that they told me they were fake.
 
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nicolas17 said:
The way the cryptography works, it would be easy to give someone else access (just give them the keys to decrypt location reports), but hard to revoke it later. Unless you were to reset the AirTag, which you won't be able to do if it's not with you. I hope Apple will figure out a way to do it, but it's not that simple.

Note that "sharing your phone and watch location" when they're offline (via other phones nearby anonymously reporting the location) probably won't work for the same reason as AirTag. Only you can locate your offline phone from another device in your account, not your family.
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Maybe I don't understand the technical explanation, but I can revoke or give access to my phone or watch location to anyone on my Apple Shared family plan at any time. Why can't I do the same for airtags?
 
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yetanotherdave said:
Shouldn’t matter, your AirPods and AirTags should update if genuine.

I had some extremely convincing fakes off eBay, serial number, all features, (handoff, transparency, Siri) packaging everything looked totally authentic, including looking in settings at the model number and firmware etc. Until I tried to update, and it took until Apple asked me to send them in for a warranty repair that they told me they were fake.
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The airpods I purchased from Walmart so I was hoping they were genuine. Pretty scary that the fake can be that good.
 
Robert.Walter said:
Are your APP’s shown in your device list? Have you checked them lately? I’ve never heard of them failing to ever update.

My tags haven’t updated yet but they, like my APP’s have always managed to do so.

If you get a good price on eBay (after factoring in possible battery replacement cost) then I’d recommend you set aside your fears and just buy them.
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I really didn't check to see if they showed up on my device list, after messing with them for maybe a few days I forgot about them and then ended up selling them.
 
JLD94 said:
The airpods I purchased from Walmart so I was hoping they were genuine. Pretty scary that the fake can be that good.
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You mentioned refurbished, so I'm guessing you bought online from Walmart.com ?

Be aware that is a platform for third party sellers not just Walmart. Always check the "Sold and shipped by" on stuff - both there and Amazon. See example below.

To your original question, legitimate AirTags should update firmware just fine. Be aware that year old ones may need battery replacement sooner than ones purchased new in store. The batteries aren't terribly expensive though.



1651067838447.png
 
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deeddawg said:
You mentioned refurbished, so I'm guessing you bought online from Walmart.com ?

Be aware that is a platform for third party sellers not just Walmart. Always check the "Sold and shipped by" on stuff - both there and Amazon. See example below.

To your original question, legitimate AirTags should update firmware just fine. Be aware that year old ones may need battery replacement sooner than ones purchased new in store. The batteries aren't terribly expensive though.



View attachment 1997385
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Ah, nice. I get all my tech from DongguanshiYuangullaishangmaoYouxiangonsl
 
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bag99001 said:
Seriously…this is one of the most obvious features that I can’t figure out why they don’t add. We have one in a remote case for our Apple TV remote we always lose but only my wife can access since we had to choose one person to associate it with. We have two cars/sets of house keys but we can only see one each. Yet it’s ok to share our phone and watch locations which are literally in our pockets or strapped to our wrist?
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Watches and iPhones and iPads are a bit more conspicuous then AirTags, IMO. While AirTags have great legitimate utility - others have voiced and demonstrated considerable and non-trivial illegitimate utility, too. I'd suggest this obvious feature you desire is, at least, delayed for likely obvious reasons.

Gonna play devil's advocate for a min. I have an iPhone (or iDevice) that isn't part of any real, actual family. I purchase a speaker disabled airtag add it to my iPhone and the place it, or give it to someone to place on someone who I know only uses an android phone.

Then I invite some stalker to my "family" so they can track the person I want stalked or whatever. Afterwords, I remove said person from the "family".

This doesn't mean you couldn't just hand said iDevice to said other person or stalker. But, I think this is a valid reason to, at least, delay nor not implement said "obvious" feature.

In the meantime, I'm sure there are inferior trackers that can provide said functionality either because of their inferiority or the provider is less concerned about any problems.
 
Hopefully this fixes the very slow notifications I receive from my Airtags. If someone actually stole something of mine, I might not know it until they're 100 miles away!
 
31 Flavas said:
Watches and iPhones and iPads are a bit more conspicuous then AirTags, IMO. While AirTags have great legitimate utility - others have voiced and demonstrated considerable and non-trivial illegitimate utility, too. I'd suggest this obvious feature you desire is, at least, delayed for likely obvious reasons.

Gonna play devil's advocate for a min. I have an iPhone (or iDevice) that isn't part of any real, actual family. I purchase a speaker disabled airtag add it to my iPhone and the place it, or give it to someone to place on someone who I know only uses an android phone.

Then I invite some stalker to my "family" so they can track the person I want stalked or whatever. Afterwords, I remove said person from the "family".

This doesn't mean you couldn't just hand said iDevice to said other person or stalker. But, I think this is a valid reason to, at least, delay nor not implement said "obvious" feature.

In the meantime, I'm sure there are inferior trackers that can provide said functionality either because of their inferiority or the provider is less concerned about any problems.
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Unless I'm not following clearly - Your scenario is possible with an airtag with a family share or not. There are alerts if it's not associated with you but one is found near you. So, an airtag whether on a family plan being shared or not, will send an alert after a time if it's put in your bag and you have no association with it. If family share planning was possible on airtags, you wouldn't get that alert, and you'd see in your Find My app that you have access to that airtag anyways.
 
bag99001 said:
Unless I'm not following clearly - Your scenario is possible with an airtag with a family share or not. There are alerts if it's not associated with you but one is found near you. So, an airtag whether on a family plan being shared or not, will send an alert after a time if it's put in your bag and you have no association with it. If family share planning was possible on airtags, you wouldn't get that alert, and you'd see in your Find My app that you have access to that airtag anyways.
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Right you can track an AirTag without a family account. Just as you don't need a family account to track an iPhone or iPad or Apple Watch, etc... Placing those into or allowing "family sharing" sharing of those allows for multiple people to track them though. Likewise, you want AirTags to be able to be "shared" by the family - so that anyone family member can track or locate the family remote. Which I can understand and see as an absolute obvious or ligitmate desire or use case scenario. I don't think we're in any disagreement there.

Whereas, I'm suggesting that this quite obvious and useful option or capability has either been, at least, delayed or just won't be implemented for similarly reasonable, if not obvious, reason. That being if an AirTag is being used for a nefarious or illegitimate reason - it's likely best to not allow multiple people to track it. I mean, isn't the jury is still out whether the good of AirTags is better then the bad? While anti-tracking measures are in place on AirTags: 1) auto popup notifications won't be displayed on -any- Android based device 2) Even on Apple devices those auto popup tracking notifications aren't perfect and still today, may not ever be displayed 3) people have disabled / do sell speaker disabled AirTags.

Where as including iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches, AirPods, MacBooks, iMacs, Mac Pro in Family Sharing is much less of a problem because they're far more conspicuous or non-sensical / illogical as surreptitious tracking devices.

So, IMO, to me it would seem that Apple is likely, at least, taking a delayed view on including AirTags in family based tracking / Family Share. Of course, I could be wrong. I just think this is a far more reasonable explanation then Apple not seeing the obvious / being dumb / blind / hostile etc.
 
31 Flavas said:
Right you can track an AirTag without a family account. Just as you don't need a family account to track an iPhone or iPad or Apple Watch, etc... Placing those into or allowing "family sharing" sharing of those allows for multiple people to track them though. Likewise, you want AirTags to be able to be "shared" by the family - so that anyone family member can track or locate the family remote. Which I can understand and see as an absolute obvious or ligitmate desire or use case scenario. I don't think we're in any disagreement there.

Whereas, I'm suggesting that this quite obvious and useful option or capability has either been, at least, delayed or just won't be implemented for similarly reasonable, if not obvious, reason. That being if an AirTag is being used for a nefarious or illegitimate reason - it's likely best to not allow multiple people to track it. I mean, isn't the jury is still out whether the good of AirTags is better then the bad? While anti-tracking measures are in place on AirTags: 1) auto popup notifications won't be displayed on -any- Android based device 2) Even on Apple devices those auto popup tracking notifications aren't perfect and still today, may not ever be displayed 3) people have disabled / do sell speaker disabled AirTags.

Where as including iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches, AirPods, MacBooks, iMacs, Mac Pro in Family Sharing is much less of a problem because they're far more conspicuous or non-sensical / illogical as surreptitious tracking devices.

So, IMO, to me it would seem that Apple is likely, at least, taking a delayed view on including AirTags in family based tracking / Family Share. Of course, I could be wrong. I just think this is a far more reasonable explanation then Apple not seeing the obvious / being dumb / blind / hostile etc.
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Ok - so I understand the argument, but I think it's a stretch. You're talking about protections from a coordinated effort to stalk someone, rather than just idea of individual stalking - which the current Airtag setup allows, and I'm sure it's always going to be FAR more common that an individual, not a TEAM will be stalking someone.

Honestly, I think it's more to do with Apple just not doing it *YET*. They have a strange way of not adding certain features on products that seem obvious because they claim they don't have the staff to focus on it or solve the software implementation questions. Some strange examples of that exact issue is when it's been reported for a multi-trillion dollar company where they took iOS staff and put them on MacOS for instance to get them to meet deadlines...they don't have enough staff to do both apparently?
 
For those having update issues - remember, the AirTags only have Bluetooth and UWB radios - so the only data path is Bluetooth. Your AirTags need to be within BlueTooth range of your phone for a defined period of time (only Apple would know what time that is) - suggest you also have your phone on a charger - to make sure it's not one of the gating criteria.

Only the ones we have in our cars haven't updated yet (I suspect that'll happen the next time I'm driving somewhere for more than 15 minutes) :)
 
Kwikyy said:
Unfortunately never maybe because of "privacy"…
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Family Sharing is a trusted relationship. I can already see just about every major Apple products registered to my family through Find My app already -- AirPods/Beats, iPads, iPhones, Macs.

My guess is that AirTags is currently locked to 1 user because Apple wants to get stalking issues ironed out first.
 
nutmac said:
Family Sharing is a trusted relationship. I can already see just about every major Apple products registered to my family through Find My app already -- AirPods/Beats, iPads, iPhones, Macs.

My guess is that AirTags is currently locked to 1 user because Apple wants to get stalking issues ironed out first.
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Still doesn't make sense to me. That trusted relationship needs to be affirmed by the other parties to the relationship, right?

What would be the logic of your ability to see their phone location and not share an AirTag on a dog collar or in a kids backpack?
 
deeddawg said:
Still doesn't make sense to me. That trusted relationship needs to be affirmed by the other parties to the relationship, right?

What would be the logic of your ability to see their phone location and not share an AirTag on a dog collar or in a kids backpack?
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There isn't. AirTags cries out for Family Sharing.

When I am at the airport, I should be able to use my iPhone to locate luggages for the entire family. My wife shouldn't be alerted with "AirTag found moving with you" notification and ping sound when driving my car with my keys. I really hope the feature is in iOS 16, ideally 15.5.
 
I was on the original firmware since I purchased the AirTag on its release day.

I noticed the battery level was quite low when I was checking my firmware version so I changed it with a new one and within an hour I received the new 1.0.301 firmware.

I don’t know if it’s coincidence, the battery removal and powering off of the AirTag triggering the update, or a low battery issue that wouldn’t let the AirTag update but one of these updated the the firmware almost instantly for me.
 
bag99001 said:
Maybe I don't understand the technical explanation, but I can revoke or give access to my phone or watch location to anyone on my Apple Shared family plan at any time. Why can't I do the same for airtags?
Click to expand...

If your phone is disconnected from the Internet entirely, you can still find it from another Apple device on your account, via a similar mechanism as AirTag (other Apple devices nearby will anonymously report its location). But your family members probably can't find your phone in that case. Same as AirTags...
 
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