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What to Know if You Plan to Travel Abroad With AirTags
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The conversion from imperial to metric was an EU directive. This made perfect sense in many markets in order to allow manufacturing to be standardised across EU member states. This way, any given state can manufacture items for use in any other member state.
Certain items were allowed to stay on the imperial system, for example a pint of beer (NB: a UK Imperial pint is not the same as a US pint). This also applied to road signs, notably distances and speed limits. The cost of converting these signs would be in the millions, probably billions. Not to mention that all UK cars have speedometers which are predominantly calibrated in miles per hour - newer vehicles have kph as well. But - can you imagine the carnage when all the 30mph signs are swapped out for 40kph signs? Speeding would suddenly be unimaginable, and extremely dangerous.
It is indeed a very interesting point... and there's probably something buried in the Ts&Cs somewhere. However, I would assume that if your phone detects a lost AirTag, it will simply relay the GPS coordinates to Apple. That's probably only a couple of K of data, if that. It would have to rely on your iPhone having data services enabled, as well as location services, otherwise it couldn't work (as far as I can see), so if you're constantly finding lost AirTags, it could cost you, but if you find one per month, and have xGB of data usage, I can't see that you're going to notice. But... they must tell us somewhere, same as they probably also tell us that we're sending that data to Apple anyway if we have "Find My" switched on at all!
I think it will eventually be a bigger hairball then just assumptions or deeply buried line items in their book like agreements, simply because it has evolved from a “Find My” to “Find Everyones” network which requires much more explicit transparency. “Find My Mac” never relied on other peoples phones…
I like your decision tree, something that Apple should visualize to clear confusion around this. There are some aspects of the tree that I'd like to call out:
* On an airplane, a checked bag is of course moving but then so are you and hopefully that just falls into the left most branch and no alarms are triggered. If that checked bag gets put onto another plane, as numerous lost bags can attest to, then depending on x such a bag could trigger a stalking alarm and/or beeping depending on the proximity of iOS devices to the checked bag at various times.
* An AirTag could be used to track someone with or near an iOS device for up to x hours. Then anti-stalking kicks in.
* An AirTag could NOT be used to track someone who is never near an iOS device after x hours but the AirTag will start beeping after three days.
In addition to Apple publishing such a visualization it would also be good of them to apply the diagram to a real world situation like the checked bag scenario.
Thanks again for putting that together.
Here is an article about using AirTags on luggage.
www.executivetraveller.com
Review: using Apple’s AirTag for tracking checked luggage
Could Apple’s AirTags be the hottest travel accessory since noise-cancelling headphones? We headed to the airport to find out.
I think is extremely unlikely that the stalking alarm is triggered in the airplane scenario. The luggage with the tracker will simply be too far away from any passengers or crew. Remember this is Bluetooth, its signal doesn’t travel that far and Apple can tune the alarm such that only relatively close proximity triggers it.
There might be a situation where a tracker and a phone are travelling together in luggage, but then any alarms on the phone would’t bother its owner during that time and Apple might also be able to tell if a phone is travelling alone (it doesn’t get used at all).
Let me type through this scenario: your checked bag goes to LAX instead of JFK where you're headed. In that case, the bag will ultimately reach LAX, get pulled off the plane and then sit in a lost bags area at/near LAX. Because the bag is stationary after that, no alarm of any kind should trigger whether there are nearby iPhones or not. If someone walks off with the bag, then the movement scenarios take over. I suppose the AirTags have some time threshold that define what "stationary" means. What are the conditions, if any, where a lost bag starts beeping after 3 days?
Thanks for that. Would love to see more anecdotes around travel use. While there may be technical reasons for why the bag carousel scenario did not work for the author, that's not what I was expecting. The other airport scenarios do add value though.Here is an article about using AirTags on luggage.
Review: using Apple’s AirTag for tracking checked luggage
Could Apple’s AirTags be the hottest travel accessory since noise-cancelling headphones? We headed to the airport to find out.
So many questions with AirTags, so few answers... especially around the tagging a luggage or carry-on.
My wife is traveling as we speak and she has an Airtag in her carry-on. I was starting to think about the whole situation and remembered that an AirTag will beep if in proximity of ANOTHER phone than hers, which will invariably happen if she's zealous about turning Airplane mode on and the person behind her does not. At that point, I'm guessing - since there is no documentation on the subject from Apple, thanks, but no thanks! - that the passenger behind her will start seeing an alert saying an AirTag is tracking him/her and may disable it.
Same question with AirTags in luggage that is in the cargo hold at the back of plane if my wife is at the front, too far for her bluetooth to reach but close enough for someone in the back... or are airplanes cargo ceilings made of a material that prevents anything to go through? We can hear dogs barking, so why not Bluetooth?
I also had a few issues setting the AirTags, I had to reset one - remove and reinsert the battery 5 times! - because at the end of the setup phase I asked to see the Airtag in Find My app and the setup app crashed. The second one, the setup went fine but when I said I wanted to see the AirTag in the Find my app, it did not show anything and I thought there was another bug... there was since the Find MY app went to DEVICES and the AirTag dod not show, because they're ITEMS. Basically the setup app should go to "Items" and not "devices".
By the way, because they're items, they CANNOT be tracked by someone else on Family Sharing unlike DEVICES. I'm not sure why, I like to know where my wife's keys are too. As to finding and tracking her, you just track her phone so there's no privacy issue there. I hope that change the settings soon so that the owner of the AirTag can share their locations with anybody in the family.
I wish I could post how the AirTag is behaving during her flight, but she's not technically savvy and can't report. I will be traveling in 2 months yet by that time I'm sure we'll have many answers to the questions and probably an iOS update or two to fix the glitches.
My wife is traveling as we speak and she has an Airtag in her carry-on. I was starting to think about the whole situation and remembered that an AirTag will beep if in proximity of ANOTHER phone than hers, which will invariably happen if she's zealous about turning Airplane mode on and the person behind her does not. At that point, I'm guessing - since there is no documentation on the subject from Apple, thanks, but no thanks! - that the passenger behind her will start seeing an alert saying an AirTag is tracking him/her and may disable it.
Same question with AirTags in luggage that is in the cargo hold at the back of plane if my wife is at the front, too far for her bluetooth to reach but close enough for someone in the back... or are airplanes cargo ceilings made of a material that prevents anything to go through? We can hear dogs barking, so why not Bluetooth?
I also had a few issues setting the AirTags, I had to reset one - remove and reinsert the battery 5 times! - because at the end of the setup phase I asked to see the Airtag in Find My app and the setup app crashed. The second one, the setup went fine but when I said I wanted to see the AirTag in the Find my app, it did not show anything and I thought there was another bug... there was since the Find MY app went to DEVICES and the AirTag dod not show, because they're ITEMS. Basically the setup app should go to "Items" and not "devices".
By the way, because they're items, they CANNOT be tracked by someone else on Family Sharing unlike DEVICES. I'm not sure why, I like to know where my wife's keys are too. As to finding and tracking her, you just track her phone so there's no privacy issue there. I hope that change the settings soon so that the owner of the AirTag can share their locations with anybody in the family.
I wish I could post how the AirTag is behaving during her flight, but she's not technically savvy and can't report. I will be traveling in 2 months yet by that time I'm sure we'll have many answers to the questions and probably an iOS update or two to fix the glitches.
This article is good - to find your luggage outside of a carousel - but does not go over the different scenarios of actual travel and the "beeping' issue.Here is an article about using AirTags on luggage.
Review: using Apple’s AirTag for tracking checked luggage
Could Apple’s AirTags be the hottest travel accessory since noise-cancelling headphones? We headed to the airport to find out.
No, the Airtag will not know, but the phones do, and will shut off the UWB feature (on themselves). Thus, you won’t be able to “precision-find” your Airtag. Regular locating will still work via bluetooth though… And NFC identification of a lost Airtag as well.
Presumably that can be controlled via the AirTags asking first the iPhone via Bluetooth whether it is ok to switch on the UWB radio.
What beeping issue? How many travel for three days straight without seeing their luggage.
Now it won’t, how many times does it have to be repeated that the beeping only starts after three days of separation (plus movement after those three days)?
Like France? Don't think about bring anything valuable on you in Paris.
Those organized burglary, mostly by women in groups, snatches everything.