Killer feature missing.

[Maconplasma]

Imagine being on the subway, getting up with your keys on the seat, you walk to the door as your stop is approaching and your iPhone tells you right then that you're separated from your keys.

Also imagine being on the subway sitting right near the door to the train and when the train stops you get off but your seat was right by the door of the train so you're still within BT range when you step off the train. The train leaves and once your iPhone understands that it's no longer connected to their Airtag via BT THEN it alerts you. The train has been long gone. This is why your idea doesn't work because the execution will never be ideal. Furthermore people will try and blame Apple for the alert not happening fast enough to prevent them losing their keys.

I don't understand why people keep coming up with these less than ideal scenarios. The Airtags are only $30 USD. At that price they should be used for simple and ideal situations.

 

[Lerxt]

The problem is that if you’re at work and you leave your wallet in your bag in a locker or somewhere. It would go off every day.

 

[Deguello]

Also imagine being on the subway sitting right near the door to the train and when the train stops you get off but your seat was right by the door of the train so you're still within BT range when you step off the train. The train leaves and once your iPhone understands that it's no longer connected to their Airtag via BT THEN it alerts you. The train has been long gone. This is why your idea doesn't work because the execution will never be ideal. Furthermore people will try and blame Apple for the alert not happening fast enough to prevent them losing their keys.

I don't understand why people keep coming up with these less than ideal scenarios. The Airtags are only $30 USD. At that price they should be used for simple and ideal situations.

That execution can’t be perfect doesn‘t mean it can’t be useful.

OK, the train or subway is probably gone too quickly. Leaving something at a restaurant, store, airport gate, or even a cab, etc. could still work and be useful.

 

[MattX123]

I´m missing this feature as well. It was the first usecase I´ve tested and really disappointed me. A battery issue is not the reason why it is not implemented. Maybe it could be annoying to get everytime a notification in some cases but a simple switch for guys like me in the settings would be so "amazing". Apple has now 14 days time to bring this update otherwise this little bug/tag will quickly get back to the manufacturer

 

[8CoreWhore]

Also imagine being on the subway sitting right near the door to the train and when the train stops you get off but your seat was right by the door of the train so you're still within BT range when you step off the train. The train leaves and once your iPhone understands that it's no longer connected to their Airtag via BT THEN it alerts you. The train has been long gone. This is why your idea doesn't work because the execution will never be ideal. Furthermore people will try and blame Apple for the alert not happening fast enough to prevent them losing their keys.

I don't understand why people keep coming up with these less than ideal scenarios. The Airtags are only $30 USD. At that price they should be used for simple and ideal situations.

Would you rather learn your item is missing sooner or later?

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

I meant your iPhone daily battery life.

It would do almost no damage to battery life.

 

[haruhiko]

Sounds like something easier said than done. It will need constant monitoring. Likely battery life of you phone will greatly suffer when do that all day.

More that the AirTags battery will be drained than the one on your phone.

 

[matrix07]

More that the AirTags battery will be drained than the one on your phone.

Huh? It will affect BOTH but AirTag already designed with this task. The battery life is already very long. It's the iPhone that will have extra job of trying to keep up with AirTag locations if it need to pull that info regularly to see if the AirTag move and whether it will be out of setting range.
The range will be set on iPhone and it will be iPhone that will monitor it. AirTag is just a dumb coin sending locations back to Apple servers. All the monitoring will be done on the phone that right now lasts only 10+ hours.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

I think it would be annoying in some ways for it to be constantly telling you what you are purposely walking away from sometimes. But I see your point that it could be handy too.

This can be geotagged to prevent false alarms at say home. Tiles do this I beleive. So you won't get notified if you are at home and leave something but will if away from home.

I had a similar device to a tile some years back which supposedly had this feature but it didn't work all the time so I'd forever be getting alerts at home, and ended up for switching off amd then binning, the devices.
But there must be a big drain in the battery. Say to be useful it has to ping every 30 seconds instead of the 15 minutes as now (so I read) . So battery life would be one thirtieth as now, eg just ten days. I don't think people would be wanting to replace the battery that often . Not sure how Tile fix that. Maybe it's every 2 or 3 minutes? The train example would be worst for needing very short ping time, but perhaps for leaving restaurant or office or house, every 5 mins would be a good compromise?

 

[Tumbleweed666]

My tile has this feature with zero impact to my device’s battery life. I don’t really need it now because I use the MagSafe wallet as my main wallet, but it was a godsend when I’d leave the house but forget my Wallet.

What's the delay in the time it takes you to be alerted? Eg do you think the tile is pinging it's location every few minutes but not seconds? I do agree with OP this is the one big differentiator tile has. Along with a hole in it !

 

[macOS Lynx]

What's the delay in the time it takes you to be alerted? Eg do you think the tile is pinging it's location every few minutes but not seconds? I do agree with OP this is the one big differentiator tile has. Along with a hole in it !

When I had my Tile is was pretty instant. I wouldn’t get very far out the door before it warned me. I eventually stopped using the feature because I stopped carrying my Wallet, but it worked well.