Make me one that I can put in the battery compartment of my TV remote, and take my money!!!
Apple is developing a Tile-like accessory that will help users keep track of their personal belongings, such as their keys, wallets, and backpacks, according to an internal build of iOS 13 seen by MacRumors.
The internal build contains an image of the accessory that suggests it will be a small, circular tag with an Apple logo in the center, similar to many other Bluetooth trackers. The image could be a mockup or placeholder, however, so the final design of the tag may vary at least slightly.
This image looks similar to one shared by 9to5Mac's Guilherme Rambo, who was first to reveal Apple's plans for this product in April.
MacRumors can confirm the tags are codenamed "B389" within Apple, and there are many strings that are a dead giveaway as to what this product's purpose will be, such as "tag your everyday items with B389 and never lose them again."
The tags will be closely integrated with the new Find My app in iOS 13, which merged Apple's previous Find My iPhone and Find My Friends apps into one. While not available in public betas of iOS 13, the internal build contains a new "Items" tab in the Find My app for tracking the location of personal belongings.
Users will receive a notification when they are separated from a tagged item, according to strings in the internal Find My app bundle. If necessary, users can then tap a button in the Find My app that will cause Apple's tag to start emitting an audible chime to help locate the lost item.
"Safe Locations" can be set where the user will not be notified if this item is left in those locations, and users will also be able to share the location of items with friends and family members, based on iOS 13 strings.
If users are unable to find an item, they can place the attached tag into a "Lost Mode." Then, if another iPhone user comes across the lost item, they will be able to view contact info for the item's owner and contact them by phone or text message. Perhaps the stranger will be alerted with a Find My notification on their iPhone when they have found a lost item. The item's owner will also be notified.
After digging further into the code, we remain confident that augmented reality will play a role in Apple's item tracking feature.
Like the Pixie Tracker, the Find My app will likely incorporate functionality from Apple's ARKit platform. The internal build of iOS 13 includes an asset for a 3D red balloon that could help a user pinpoint a lost item after scanning a room with their iPhone. There's also an image of a 2D orange balloon.
"Walk around several feet and move your iPhone up and down until a balloon comes into view," a string in the internal Find My app bundle reads.
There are also strings that suggest Apple's tags will be equipped with a removable battery, which would likely be a button cell, aka the small, circular batteries found in many watches and the latest Tile trackers. A low battery warning appears to prompt the tag to send a final location of the item it is attached to.
"Unscrew the back of the item and remove the battery," another string in the internal Find My app bundle reads.
While we were not able to proceed any further with the "Items" tab, it should be similar to the "Devices" tab in the Find My app, with a map at the top and a list of items at the bottom. It is possible the "Me" tab will be relocated to an avatar hovering over the map, although there could simply end up being four tabs.
Here's the image that should appear in the "Items" tab prior to any items being added, in line with the "People" and "Devices" tabs when empty:
This internal build of iOS 13 is from June, so we cannot guarantee that the "Items" tab or all of the details presented above will be exactly as described. The icon for the "People" tab has already been tweaked slightly in subsequent iOS 13 betas, for example, so there will be at least some minor changes.
Apple is hosting a September 10 event at Steve Jobs Theater, where it is widely expected to unveil new iPhone and Apple Watch models, but it is unclear if its item tracker tags will be unveiled at that time or later.
Article Link: Exclusive: Apple's Tile Competitor Will Include 'Items' Tab in iOS 13's Find My App and Much More
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Exclusive: Apple's Tile Competitor Will Include 'Items' Tab in iOS 13's Find My App and Much More
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If this is done correctly it’s actually kind of a big deal! If Apple can create a mesh of devices that locate each other they may do more for society than any police and law could ever imagine to do.
This is exciting and innovative!
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Fair? Do you mean that big companies can’t invent/improve things that make worse products go away?
Yeah but they're $15 each if you buy a 4 pack direct ($12.50 on Amazon). Good luck with that.
I'd honestly pay $40-$50 if I knew they weren't going to come out with a new one a year later.
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Tile suuuuucks anyway. Super unreliable and background refresh absolutely destroys your battery life. They're dead no matter what. The only thing they have going for them is Android support which Apple probably won't have.
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Apple will sell billions of these devices if the price is lower than $50 and have a decent battery life of 2 or more years.
Think logically everyone. These are not going to be cheaper than an Apple Watch Sport band - a rubber strap!
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Hey, thanks for joining in!
The key point though is that Tile require you to join their community via an App. Apple will just simply create a worldwide beacon using all Apple devices without you needing to action anything. Perhaps just an update to their Privacy policy.
So it is vastly different, much more powerful and will have a reach of many billions of people.
I’d also rather trust Apple than Tile if you read their privacy policy.
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Oh gosh. What a heated debate.
With information pieces provided by both of you before doing any research myself, my understanding is either Apple or Tiles will rely on some form of software to control Bluetooth and send anonymous location data. Apple can do this on a system level, providing deeper integration, while Tiles needs to use whatever API iOS or Android provides to achieve the same thing.
And I just realise WIRED has gone subscription mode. It was not back in 2016 and 2017.
After reading that WIRED article, it seems that Apple’s underlying idea of tracking item using iPhone works similarly than Tiles in a higher level. It’s a bit more about Apple’s approach to maintain anonymity to a greater extent because this same feature is backed into iOS 13 (and above) rather than running over an app. I cannot fully understand the basic idea of the encryption, but I consider that part more of a bonus than something that defines the major difference between Apple’s implementation and Tiles app-based solution.
Hey, thanks for joining in!
The key point though is that Tile require you to join their community via an App. Apple will just simply create a worldwide beacon using all Apple devices without you needing to action anything. Perhaps just an update to their Privacy policy.
So it is vastly different, much more powerful and will have a reach of many billions of people.
I’d also rather trust Apple than Tile if you read their privacy policy.
It will be a giant missed opportunity if you can’t wirelessly charge these tags, especially if this next iPhone lets you charge things on the back of it.
If this product releases with swappable batteries, it would be a failure on a few fronts: ease of use, future-proof, and environment.
If this product releases with swappable batteries, it would be a failure on a few fronts: ease of use, future-proof, and environment.
Wireless charging on the back of the iPhone would be awesome. It would also up the price!
Batteries are harmful to the environment either way. Non-swappable in this case only has an added bonus of allowing the device to remain powered all the time. Can’t argue future proof thing but I suspect the effect is minimal.
Well - I've studied it for several years actually.
TrackR and some others sell for less than $10.00. Batteries last 1 month.
Let's say Apple makes their own ASIC for this and shy's away from disposable button cell batteries.
They have the privacy issues covered in their own good way, and they know they have an absolute slam dunk product.
This would be one of the products to sell in super high volumes for dirt cheap.
$20.00 is the magic price, and making bulk sets for $10.00/pc really makes sense.
Maybe $24.99 is more realistic for you?
What do you think the price will be?
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Yes, the batteries are probably the big sin here that Apple would try to avoid.
They are going to sell 100 Million of them probably in the first couple of years. That's a lot of button cells. Maybe they will have a recycling program at Apple Stores - get a free battery when you return a dead battery - complete with a vending machine style battery exchanger. Maybe THAT is the way they can do the button cells and feel environmentally friendly about it. MAYBE that means the price would be a bit higher than my prediction of $20.
Rechargeable batteries kinda works too. They might make several models. Some tiny one's and some bigger ones.
Or 15 year old daughters handbags, this is going to be used to spy on everybody, no doubt about that.
Some $60 GPS trackers already last 6 months with 10 location updates per day, it can be done already but Apple will mainstream it on a very large scale.
If you ask to find your keys, you might see something like that. I wonder if they can make the balloon graphic turn in to a "keys" graphic....
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haha. You can sue someone for anything you want at any time I guess.
One of the best things about Find Me beacons is that it's going to be another reason for people to upgrade from their older model iPhones.
It’s going to be sold/marketed as the ultimate anti-theft device. Not a crappy Tile throwaway.
At least $99 per unit. I’d say $129 for one or $200 for two.
If this is the price to go, I would stay away from it at all costs. Think about it. $100 is 1/10 the cost of baseline iPhone XS Max. To invest that much money on securing a device, that device must be extremely critical to the owner. For example, that device is the only approved one to access secret company data on the go.
My guess would a tile costing $20 or so, or even cheaper. This tile thing is clearly IoT oriented, and high cost is not what IoT is aiming at. We all know Apple don’t make cheap products, but $200 for a pair is way too much.
Probably as many as the number of people who went around chopping off the fingers of other iPhone users (if you believe the hysteria here surrounding Touch ID when the feature was first announced) or making 3D Face replicas to get around Face ID.
None.
If you want to track your partner, that technology already exists (GPS), and is likely more accurate and more readily concealable.
I do expect to see a few clickbait articles surrounding this “issue” though. Such is the fate of being an Apple product user.
I don’t think $10 is a good estimate, and there are reports of strings being found in iOS which reference replacing a battery.
Price is hard to predict, it depends on what kind of volume they’re shooting for. Could be $39 with a 3 for $99 deal, or maybe $59/each with 2 for $99. If I had to guess, I’d say the latter is more likely.
"The internal build contains an image of the accessory that suggests it will be a small, circular tag with an Apple logo" and will cost 50x that of a Tile?
So I would risk putting a $100 tracker device on my $200 CCM 10-speed when I park it downtown?
They might just take the tracker device and leave my bicycle!
I need a $24.99 or $15.00 tracker, and so does everyone. It's the biggest company in the world. They lock you into the ecosystem even tighter if they give you an honest deal on these things.
We shall see though - but $100 seems way high to me - for that you can make a GSM tracker with it's own GPS yourself.
It should be tiny and cheap.
Look at AirPods - they can do tiny.
Cheap? Well - with huge volumes like 100M - yes. Cheap. Cheap Tiny and Good!
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Yeah, they should just build these things into AA/AAA batteries.
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You aren’t making a $100 GSM/GPS tracker the size of one of those tiny discs. And you are assuming GSM connectivity is free.
No, if we make our own it would be like what TrackR tried to do - just a "bit" larger. like 5cm x 5cm x 2cm. And the GSM is another discussion.
My point is mainly that this idea of $100 for Apple's BT tracker is too high. My bet is $20, and some bulk deal pack of 5 or 10 pcs for lower. Reality price could be higher, like $24.99, but that's my bet.
Apple can make a BT tracker with almost all the power management and features on a single chip.
Tiny and cheap and good.
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Those 2320 or whatever batteries and other button cell dimensions are a few pennies each. Companies pay out more for a click on an advert. If you walk into a store, what is that worth? More than 2 cents of battery give-away. The biggest cost is your time and attention from my perspective.
Who knows, maybe the innovation is that they make a new biodegradable or greener battery even - too much metal in those coin cells anyway. 100 Million of those - surely a happy green solution would be thought about.
PIA to remove those batteries from the device as well - so maybe Apple has a better way?
Rechargeable
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