So you found an Airtag that was sitting in your house. Not on a dog that ran away.
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ElevationLab Debuts AirTag Holder for Pet Collars
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Per you: "I'm also skeptical of it even working that well in urban areas."
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I was talking about how this works with pets… you know, since this post is about pet tracking. The remaining part of my post was about how dogs will move after you’ve been pinged.
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I kinda think that ship has sailed.
It used to be, ankle monitors with transdermal alcohol sensors and GPS on them were the rage. About 10 years ago. Keeping the batteries charged and such is problematic. The anklets themselves are not easily defeated, but have technical drawbacks as does any device designed to forcibly restrict addictive behavior.
The new trend is hand held portable breath tests with GPS and cellular backhaul. The person subject to monitoring is required to have it with them at all times, and it makes somewhat random calls to require a sample. Many of those calls come in the hours past midnight or shortly thereafter.
The trick of the show is the device has facial recognition built into it. So as the subject is providing the sample, the device is not only monitoring the identity of the user, it's transmitting the BAC and the location to a monitoring center.
Any violation triggers a call back response to the monitoring agency, which ends in detention by officers who are more than happy to rack up double OT to come out and do it off hours.
The contracts for these devices, and the agencies that use them change at a glacial pace. The profit margins are pretty slim, and the protocols used are semi proprietary.
The ROI on trying to break into this market would be too slim for Apple to have any interest in it, along with the bad PR for anything CJ related these days.
That's just the Bluetooth range, though. The AirTags should provide location information if within range of an iPhone/iPad, no matter where it is. I'm in an urban area and think this probably would work quite well here, since the lost pet probably would end up near someone's iPhone.I think airtags need at least 5 mile range from home for pets. If you use Nextdoor in your neighborhood... nonstop "missing dog, cat, etc" all day. Hopefully airtags can curb all these missing posts.
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That is pretty dismal, for using airtags for pets... if they leave the house and are only in the yard.
Beats me but they'd be well within their right to do so. Just like how Tile hinges entirely on the device it's paired to via their app when Apple could've updated iOS to block certain Bluetooth connections. Instead they released their own product. Or just like how case manufacturers hinge entirely on a physical design that's subject to change year over year.
Two sentences before your quote,"...she was quick to stress that the company designed the AirTag to track items, not people or pets."
So you're right that she didn't blatantly say you're not allowed to use your product you paid for as you see fit. However, it's strongly implied in the editorial summation that she dismissed the idea. And you're right again, as this editorial summation was an incorrect paraphrase. Upon actually watching the interview myself, she says,
"Well certainly AirTag was designed to track items, you know there's a whole bunch of items you can keep track of..." followed by the quote you posted. Thanks for clearing this up!
I think the use case was pretty clear from the beginning. GPS is also inherently less secure than an Airtag. That being said, those in urban areas have a huge phone network to track their pets if they get out. It’s just another thing to have really but better than nothing, and no ongoing subscription. It also doesn’t need a cellular network to connect to, nor does it need to be charged every day, or every other day like GPS collars.
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i guess the question is more of — why would they want to limit this functionality? i'm sure they can — in fact they could disable the entire 'find my' service, but why would they?..
Why wait? You can get a dog collar tag holder here - it's not waterproof so your dog shouldn't swim in it, but otherwise check it out https://www.ebay.com/itm/133766345981 . Designed on a Mac!
Wonder how bad this is to be strapped to a dogs neck for years. Doesn’t sound safe to me
I will second the others who recommended a GPS collar over AirTags if you really need to keep track of a dog or other large pet, in particular the Fi product. It has quickly and easily helped us recover both of our dogs on a few occasions when they’ve managed to slip away into the woods, no devices for miles but good LTE coverage. The moment a dog left the range of the house wifi I got a notification that the dog was out without an owner (no Bluetooth connection to a registered phone). I set “lost mode” from the phone, which tells the collar to report location more often and makes the collar flash red. Brought up the map, ah, yes, I see where the dog is, went out in the woods and got her. An AirTag isn’t going to give the notification that it’s left the house, it has no idea that’s “wrong behavior,” and you’re going to have to notice the pet is gone, too. As previously noted if the pet’s AirTag isn’t in range of an iOS device that’s participating in the Find My network, you won’t know where they are.
You can argue all day long about whether Apple really said AirTags are not intended as pet trackers or not, but they’re not. If you’re only ever in a congested urban environment with lots of participating devices nearby, then maybe it will perform adequately and get your pet back. If you otherwise wouldn’t put any tracking device on your pet at all, then an AirTag isn’t going to do any harm, but know its limitations.
You can argue all day long about whether Apple really said AirTags are not intended as pet trackers or not, but they’re not. If you’re only ever in a congested urban environment with lots of participating devices nearby, then maybe it will perform adequately and get your pet back. If you otherwise wouldn’t put any tracking device on your pet at all, then an AirTag isn’t going to do any harm, but know its limitations.
Define heavy urban? A city? A town of 10,000+ people? All it needs is one within close proximity. There’s plenty of YouTube videos and tests already showing these work well with even one or limited Apple devices close by. Perhaps do some research on the product and it’s use case experiments done thus far before making such remarks.
In any case, someone who lives in a rural area with no one close by should have proper measures in place anyway to ensure their pet doesn’t escape their property.
I'm sure, then, that you have proper measures in place to ensure you never misplace anything and thus would never have a need for an AirTag or any kind of Find My network.
Don’t be dense. Misplacing an item is far different than having a living situation where a pet could escape easily. That’s just simply being a bad pet owner.
You're clearly not a pet owner. No matter what precautions you take, it can happen. A dog or cat can slip out a door between your feet as you're coming in or out if they really want to. A visitor or child could fail to latch a door. A leash could slip out of your hand. None of these things makes someone a bad pet owner.
What an odd assumption to make. I have two dogs, both of which are rescues and were poorly trained upon adopting them. It doesn’t take much effort to get them to understand acceptable behavior - such as not running through an open door and only going out when a leash is on.
A leash slipping out of your hand is a poor excuse, as that should never happen if you’re a good pet owner - you should always have a strong handle on the leash no matter the situation.
These examples you provided are not within the context of the discussion and are a poor attempt to try to get imply your perspective is more accurate than mine. Since the discussion was about one with pets in a rural area, should one of those things happen to someone in a rural area it would not be much of a concern if there was a proper enclosure surrounding the house. That is what I’m saying. If you’re a good pet owner in a rural area you would ensure there are measures in place to prevent these things from happening so the dog doesn’t get out and roam in the wilderness. Which is exactly what I mentioned in the first comment you responded to.
This is incorrect - you mean if you think your pet will get lost or be stolen by someone who goes anywhere near the bluetooth range of an iPhone, iPad or mac then this product is for you. So basically everyone in metropolitan areas. So come on, that is hardly 'very very niche'. Pets wander off all the time.
Apple are literally only saying that for legal reasons. There is absolutely nothing wrong on a technical level with using it to track a person or pet if you had a need to do that. If you do have a good reason apart from because 'Apple said so' then, please do share with us all. Yes, an Airtag won't perform as well as a gps tracker, but it also costs a lot less, the battery lasts a long time and many people will be find that absolutely sufficient for their use case.
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I can't believe we preordered these four months ago and they still haven't shipped due to "screw problems" 🙄