Packaging Reveals Apple Was Preparing to Ship AirTags as Early as 2019

[Carmenia83]

Sooo are the batteries inside not at 100% then?

The shelf life of Lithium coin batteries is about 10 years, so even if these have been sitting around for 1-2 years, you realistically shouldn't see any noticeable reduction of battery life. Energizer claims that their CR2032 loses about 1% per year in storage, resulting in 90% capacity at the end of the 10 year shelf life. I don't know what brand is inside AirTags but I assume they're pretty similar.

Lot of info in this document. Page 7 is about shelf life:

https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/lithiumcoin_appman.pdf

 

[magicschoolbus]

Now where’s my Apple Pencil 3 with find my built in; and AirPods with find my built in?

 

[shady825]

My box actually says 2021 and battery is at 100%

 

[amartinez1660]

I would like to hope the delay was over improving the support software. If it's because of lawyers... what am I saying it's always about the lawyers. Sucks.

Umm... What about waiting for Find My ecosystem to be, I would say launched but perhaps matured... Not sure it was all that sinister.

A certain version of airtags might have been ready. The scrutiny likely played some role but I wouldn’t be surprised if they waited for more U1 capable devices to be out there plus adding some new capabilities to have a stronger product at launch.

I’m a bit torn on this... not like the world ended because the AirTags shipped 2 years later than expected, granted, but can understand where both the cynicism vs the waiting for maturity come from.
There’s definitely something fishy and it doesn’t feel right if it was just a case of stalling innovation just because.

What I would like to know (and hopefully in future new articles shine a light on this) if the delays did happen because of weird laws, loopholes and/or companies just scared of losing market share or if it was legit “let’s wait and iron this out”.

Me as a costumer never saw interest on Tile devices however AirTags did pick my interest (maybe it’s the way Apple presents it or my expectations of the just works™️), maybe I would also have found them interesting then.
Imagine if Apple had made the M1 chip and then Intel/AMD/Nvidia/Qualcomm/etc halt the release of that for several years, the laws and bureaucracy are used to hamper that, meanwhile customers are non the wiser.

For all intent and purposes it sounds to me that Apple can be sued for doing things for their own ecosystem where me as consumer would like to see it continue going however apple feels like it’s gonna be best. I’ll vote later on with my own wallet.

 

[deevey]

Good point - a battery sitting in a warehouse for some time isn't good is it.

CR2032 batteries are good stored for 10+ years.

 

[HK-Dragon]

The label on my key ring box says it has been manufactured in August 2020.

View attachment 1767356

And the leaflet says 2019 lol

 

[hg0428]

Everyone was stuck at home. No one needed to start finding anything until now.

Why was everyone stuck at home...
Staying at home was a choice some people made, not something that everyone did.
I personally ignored the whole covid thing, some other people may choose differently but thats ok.

Apple likely delayed it to wait for the technology for precsion finding and then had to delay again because of covid.

 

[NMBob]

Why was everyone stuck at home...
Staying at home was a choice some people made, not something that everyone did.
I personally ignored the whole covid thing, some other people may choose differently but thats ok.

Apple likely delayed it to wait for the technology for precsion finding and then had to delay again because of covid.

Around here things were shutdown so there wasn’t any place to go, and for a while if you did you had to self quarantine before you could go back to work. Three of us got to work every day, while the other 35 or so got to “work” from home. They finally all came back July 1. Yay. I’ve been careful about it all, but not crazy careful. The first cases in this part of New Mexico were people that I knew. I’m pretty sure I had symptoms, like a mild cold, for about three weeks before anyone even knew what was going on. Have been fine throughout the whole thing since.

It‘s funny that Apple kinda had to scramble to keep people from ‘getting tracked’ right after they came out after having so much time to think about the tags.