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Apple Releases New Firmware for AirTags

When are they going to fix excessive battery drain to the connected iPhone? I now have to always turn my Bluetooth off when not using it for music, otherwise Find My keeps running in the background and draining my phone like loco.
 
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Yes, the stalking features are not required and are just troublesome.

The leave things behind feature is a good idea, but the implementation makes it useless. by the time I get the notification, I could have drive 50km away.. its basically useless. Its needs to ping you the moment you are out of BT range.
 
Itinj24 said:
Not meant to track people. Yet they implement a bunch of counter-measures against people tracking. What’s the deal? It’s obviously very good at tracking people if they need to implement these counter-measures. Absolutely nothing wrong with sticking one in your toddler child’s pocket. If that labels me a stalker, then so be it. If you need extreme privacy from your family and spouse, then I don’t know what to tell ya. Family sharing is a huge miss on this product.
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The issue is the ant stalking feature also makes it an issue in normal implemented use. Lots of un required and unwanted notifications.
 
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4jasontv said:
Can you prevent an update until they clarify what it does?
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The only way I can think of is to remove the battery, or, come to think of a second way: unpair.
Apple has gotten into a bad habit of not providing release notes, same happened with Big Sur 11.5.2
 
Marli said:
The issue is the ant stalking feature also makes it an issue in normal implemented use. Lots of un required and unwanted notifications.
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Family members can already disable *permanently* the anti-stalking alerts. Does anybody read the manual?
 
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AgentWalker said:
👏🏽This👏🏽Is👏🏽Not👏🏽Meant👏🏽To👏🏽Track👏🏽People!!!👏🏽👏🏽

don’t be upset if it’s not working the way you want if you’re using it outside of designed use!!
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Nothing in her post said she was using them to track people. She said the AirTag was her son’s — as in, attached to his item (such as a backpack), not that she was using it to track her son. Likely what’s happening is her son is moving with friends from class-to-class and they have iPhones too.
 
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nitramluap said:
Family members can already disable *permanently* the anti-stalking alerts. Does anybody read the manual?
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But doesn’t that remove stalking alerts from any airtag device, even those of strangers? Most people would want to remove them from devices owned by your family only…

the solution seems pretty easy to me. On the first stalking alert you get the option to allow that specific airtag for 1 day, 1 week, or permanently.
 
nutmac said:
Just out of curiosity, how much battery is Find My sucking up on Settings | Batteries report? Mine reads 2%, which isn't great but hardly exponential.
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nutmac said:
Just out of curiosity, how much battery is Find My sucking up on Settings | Batteries report? Mine reads 2%, which isn't great but hardly exponential.
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Could be exponentially exaggerating as mine is 2% also
 
has anyone noticed the battery drain on air tags? i bought mine on the launch day and 1 out of 4 reports 50% battery now which i dont think it would last a year by the looks of it..
 
gfurry said:
Anyone else annoyed by the lack of family sharing & overzealous stalking notifications for airtags? My kids complain they go off in class, & I can't find my other car keys because the airtag is my son's. We need family sharing now! This is just silly. The stalking features should be turned way down. How about 24 or 48 hours? If someone wants to stalk you they won't use airtags! It would also give you a little time to find your stolen items before the thieves are notified there is an airtag they need to destroy.
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Family sharing is a must have. There are a lot of objects that are used by more than one person, so everyone needs to find it, e.g. the cat, car keys or the family umbrella. The air tags should be usable not only for thing`s (legal) owner, also for all users.
 
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gfurry said:
Anyone else annoyed by the lack of family sharing & overzealous stalking notifications for airtags? My kids complain they go off in class, & I can't find my other car keys because the airtag is my son's. We need family sharing now! This is just silly. The stalking features should be turned way down. How about 24 or 48 hours? If someone wants to stalk you they won't use airtags! It would also give you a little time to find your stolen items before the thieves are notified there is an airtag they need to destroy.
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Family sharing is required, otherwise the Airtags are going into a drawer here.
 
BromoCop said:
Apple has specifically said over and over that AirTags are not intended for putting on children or pets to track them. It sounds like they’re functioning exactly as intended. Family sharing however, I could get on board with
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No, it does not work as intended.

You buy an AirTag and tag it to your children's keys because children are those little goofy creatures who lose stuff easily. And you want to be able to track the keys in case they misplace them or lose them.

Then, while they sit during the lesson, the alarm goes off because the AirTag was separated from the original buyer. However, it's a shared set of keys (between children, family, etc.).
 
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nitramluap said:
Family members can already disable *permanently* the anti-stalking alerts. Does anybody read the manual?
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OK, but non family? I just want to be able to leave my stuff where I want to, and not have it beep.. Just like I have for years with tile. Like air port baggage, work, hotel room. Is this possible. from the statements in the tread, it seems not.
 
There's definitely a few problems when it comes to multi-account households. My wife can't ask Siri on a homepod registered to my account to find her keys, even though Siri knows who she is, for example.

BromoCop said:
Apple has specifically said over and over that AirTags are not intended for putting on children or pets to track them. It sounds like they’re functioning exactly as intended. Family sharing however, I could get on board with
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I think OP was implying that his son takes the spare car keys, usually, but sometimes he'd like to find them too, which is perfectly reasonable IMO.
 
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Apple needs to have

1) family sharing of tags, so you Can share tagged items with each other, eg car keys
2) an option not to “stalker” alert for tags used by the family

I’m Surprised they never though of these before releasing AirTags
 
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For anyone wondering how to update their AirTags, I know on a Mac you can go to the FindMy App and then Items, and then select your AirTag, then tap the "i" icon, and then the Battery icon. At that point when it shows you the Serial & Firmware Version, it's supposed to sort of queue up any updates at that point. Last time they updated their firmware I did this and sometime within the hour they were updated. No way to see the progress, though. And who cares, anyway.. These updates are really going to be about bug fixes and the like. These things do one thing. They're not adding any new features.
 
I get that stalking is bad, but we can't design products and use them with the worst in our society in mind. Everything around us can be used for bad purposes by evil people. My dogs HAD airtags on their collars. It was nice incase one of them wondered off. The notifications were so annoying we took them off. My wife would like airtags in our young children's backpacks but they go off.

Point being, there are very real and not evil uses for tracking someone/thing and Apple makes it impossible. Why not make iPhone unable to display any form of image so that illegal images of children can't possibly be displayed? Why not make the MacBooks unable to store a file (locally or in the cloud) so that no illegal files can be stored? This is the absurdity of what they've done with airtags IMO.

If you're single and only tracking your stuff, this is a nonissue, but if you're in a family and trying to use airtags is a total failure.
 
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AgentWalker said:
👏🏽This👏🏽Is👏🏽Not👏🏽Meant👏🏽To👏🏽Track👏🏽People!!!👏🏽👏🏽

don’t be upset if it’s not working the way you want if you’re using it outside of designed use!!
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It's not working for its designed use for tons of people either... Plus this guy never said he is using it to track people.

Personally I'm annoyed that every time I take my wife's car, her keys send me an alert that I'm being tracked by someone else's Airtag, even though we use family sharing for everything else. There's been a couple times my wife gets alerted because my camera bag's tag is still at home with her when I'm out working..

There's also the glaring issue when items are stolen. If someone that owns an iPhone were to steal my camera, the tag would alert them that there's a hidden tracker in the bag, and give them the option to disable it.
 
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