I had just sat down on the train from Zurich to Basel. Suddenly, someone sat down in front of me. He looked suspicious, but I didn't pay much attention. Just before the train departed, he picked up what I thought were his belongings and left.
Twenty minutes later, already on the way to Basel, I looked toward where I had left my suitcase. It was gone. That was when I realized that the person who had sat in front of me was a thief.
However, he hadn't counted on the fact that I have an AirTag in every backpack and suitcase.
So I was able to see where the thief was and where he was moving. I considered going to retrieve my suitcase myself, but while traveling back to Zurich, I called the Zurich Police and, as the thief kept moving, I told them where he was.
Twenty minutes later I received a call from the police informing me that they had found my suitcase with my belongings, matching the description I had given.
But also the thief and his accomplice.
My solution now is to travel very light.
Its sort of a combination of two reasons.
First in many cities, police departments are underfunded. And so running around looking for your stolen phone or whatever minor item is low on their to-do list compared to say, stopping the local drug-gangs from shooting their brains out.
Second, for minor thefts most insurance companies just need a quick box-tick "police crime report number" before paying out. So if the police know they can get you off their backs just by quickly giving you a report number, well....
Also, most of these have usb-c / wireless charging, so I don't have to mess with random cell batteries every 6 months.
I'm no material scientist, but this seems pretty impressive to me that Apple's economy of scale can pull this off, and upgrade the device capabilities, for less than $30 USD.
Wrote my PhD dissertation on this. It would've been in the literature for Apple's engineers to find, but unfortunately I lost institutional support to get this into a journal after my college (Mailorderdegrees.com, an FTX University^TM) folded mid-process.
https://www.belkin.com/p/secure-holder-with-key-ring-for-air...
To be fair, most people I know put their AirTag inside something, e.g. inner pocket of a bag.
At which point the necessity for an attachment point becomes somewhat moot.
I disagree, they could have, they didn’t want to. Beyond the look, this sure panders to their accessory partners.
How big of an industry is the phone case? Should it even exist? The audacity.
By the time you stripped a dumbphone down to be as vulnerable as one of today's is, it'd be a bare PCB. Nah, probably even in that state, I bet it could handle a drop better than a new iPhone straight out of the box.
What you buy today isn't a complete phone, it's just the guts. One tumble to pavement and you're out a grand. Heaven help you if you fumble it while trying to install the case that should've been part of it from the beginning.
And yet, we still buy them, because the alternatives are from shady manufacturers who never provide updates, and there is no third-party hardware that can run up-to-date iOS. If there was, I'd buy an iNokia in a heartbeat.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/02/x-rays-show-how-a...
Does the author lack thumbs? It’s easy to twist the battery open.
Apple could trivially have fit a usable hole if they wanted to. They just don't want to because they get to sell accessories with that now. Also, looking cleaner on its own helps sell even if that is an entirely useless quality for a tag tha tneeds to go into a bloody case.
First-gen AirTags have been on sale on Amazon frequently over the last year, and they’ll probably drop the price again soon.
I keep seeing products in the supermarket with big "Made with REAL ingredients!" labels on them.
As opposed to what? Imaginary ingredients?
Classico pasta sauce is the most recent offender.
Like orange juice: can be from a chemical powder or real oranges.
Highlighting this has been a priority in my parenting. My child is having a great time trying to scare friends about the dangers of the chemical dihydrogen monoxide, which is found in a surprisingly large number of manufactured foods.
I never thought I needed one until my wife lost her car keys, and the Fiat dealer charged $1,200 for a replacement.
And it's not even the electronics that makes them so expensive. Modern car keys aren't like the 1970's where it's just a piece of metal with the edges shaved off. Those little key cutting kiosks at Home Depot can't cope with today's complex engraving.
Mass balance is better than nothing I guess, & I understand the practical challenges with going further, but ultimately it's not what's implied by the marketing.
[0] https://www.iscc-system.org/news/mass-balance-explained/
You can buy 4 third-party trackers for the price of 1 official one.
They do lack UWB, though there are other great form factors such as cards, and cool features such as wireless charging or usb-c charging, which imo is nicer than swapping batteries every few months.
Also, my understanding is that AirTags are only usable if you have an iPhone, am I wrong?
I have a pair of Soundcore buds, and they work well. Unless only one of the two decides to not connect to the phone. Or they randomly decide to change the noise cancellation setting. Or their gesture detection randomly triggers. To be fair, it's pretty rare and easy to fix: put them back in the case and back out, etc. But it's small things that remind me "yeah, I did not shell out for AirPods". (also, their transparency mode for conversations is nigh useless, but it may be because those are a 4 year old model).
I regularily use a pair of Sony headphones too, and they are a bit less troublesome, because it's a much simpler product: a single BT connection, physical buttons for some quick controls, etc. But they still have their warts: can't charge and be used at the same time, handoff between two source devices still don't work after years, etc.
It's an accumulation of details that are not big, happen rarely, and don't need much to get used to. But they still need to get used to.
Any time any of the registered devices needs to emit sound, the AirPods instantly switch to this device (and both devices will show an unobtrusive notification to reverse the auto switch).
And it works every. single. time.
Apple can't make Airdrop work reliably after decades but somehow, they are able to magically and instantly transfer bluetooth audio from a device to another device.
Though, if you use your airpods with anything non apple, it will juste work like a classical bluetooth device, with manual pairing and no magic switching.
I would not call that usable.
Cramming lots of tech into a small footprint is an extremely complex affair.
But that hasn't been true for a decade. Most improvements have been marginal, and they totally missed the boat on LLMs.
I call out Google as an exception because Gemini when it works correctly from an integration point of view can actually do some cool stuff like predictive suggestions in messaging based on context, though I wish it was all on device stuff, as on a privacy level I don’t trust Google
That said, it’s not like they’re so far and above anyone else they blow the competition out of the water either, they simply managed to make the functionality sometimes useful
There was no world where they were going to be the breakthrough leader in LLM development. That's a problem they can catch up on when they need to or license the technology.
Little did I know, GPS jammers around the city make my grandma appear 50km away.
Not Apple's fault of course.
That does come with the risk of Tim Cook falling out of a window.
Does the Sensor Apple uses not use GLONASS in Russia? Or is it cheapo Android Phones picking up the tag and then sending GPS coords into cloud?
edit: Nvm, I might be dumb, I guess unless your jamming includes all commodity GNSS it's pretty useless.
AirTags have no integration with Android devices. There's a shitty app from Apple you can install that allows you to scan for AirTags nearby, one shot. It's supposedly against stalkers, but it's practically useless. There a bunch of other community apps with varying features like finding and notifying you there's an AirTag nearby. But you can't even track your own AirTags from an Android device, because Apple have decided you must do it from an iDevice. No browser, no Android app. You can check your iPhone's location via the browser, but not the AirTag.
The Android ecosystem has an alternative thing, but depending on the phone manufacturer you have to opt in to your device being used to track trackers around you.
When I travel to places with low iPhone market share, I always have one tracker of each ecosystem, just in case.
I think there are other options too
Notably they now support both the Apple and Android ecosystems from a single hardware SKU, although only one at a time, and the formerly disposable battery can now be recharged with a standard Qi wireless charger.
Having recently switched to Android I was tempted to give Chipolo products a try, but this reddit thread disuaded me, as multiple users there are reporting the exact kinds of issues that I experienced previously: https://www.reddit.com/r/Chipolo/comments/1n4m4j3/chipolo_po...
Any recommendations for a rechargable but thin one, AirTag itself is too thick for regular wallets.
I've been using one of these with Find My for over a year. I've not done anything with the Eufy app, just the Find My app itself. It lacks the precision find, but you can play a sound through the Find My app / get directions / share the item / flag the item as lost / do left behind and it works well.
Have one in my wallet. Will probably get some more AirTags.
I think there are also several third-party wallet trackers that integrate with the Find My network.
Interesting to call out that it’s not designed for pets. I know several people with AirTags on their pet collars.
Apple doesn't, maybe, want to explain why these are for tracking the living?
2. they contain small parts that pets might inadvertently eat, and some of the collars that exist for them have been known to snag on things and entrap pets.
They're not great for tracking things that move on their own, or things that avoid people.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2026/01/apple-introduc...
Skeuomorphism is more about making the UI work like the real world, not just look like it.
For example, I let my mother in law use luggage of mine with an airtag still in it and every time she moved it after the first day or so, it would play a noise.
ps, Apple is driving me nuts with their branding. With is AirPods one word and Find My two words?
> For the first time, users can use Precision Finding on Apple Watch Series 9 or later, or Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, to find their AirTag, bringing a powerful experience to the wrist.
"watchOS 26.2.1 is also coming, and it expands Precision Finding to the Apple Watch Series 9 and later, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 and later. We have not yet confirmed if this is for the new AirTag only or also works with the original model."
- Throw one in your checked bag when traveling
- Mount one in a relatively concealed location on your bike
- Keychain (depending on if you're prone to misplacing your keys)
Personally I don’t always have an Apple device in my backpack, and when traveling you can’t put devices in checked luggage, so I use them for those use cases at least.
Curious about getting 2x the distance from 1.5x the "loudness", I would have thought the inverse? Maybe there is nuance to this though.
AirTags are terrible for surreptitious tracking, alerting every iOS user nearby of a tracked product following them around.
I mean, years ago people, such as stalkers, would use it for this purpose, but Apple rightly gimped that. There are a lot of specialized, self-connected trackers that creeps and criminals use.
But if someone steals it, they get an alert that there's an airtag traveling with them, and they can go through their loot to figure out which item it is, and ditch it, or destroy it. In the first case I get my labelmaker back, but I never bust the thief.
They knew what they were doing and I'm sure the stalking aspect helped their sales significantly as it seems to be a very popular behaviour in the US.
while not denying people have done this, I do have problems thinking that it was a significant portion of the sales numbers. exaggerating problems is not necessary and actually reduces the credibility of the people doing the exaggerating
Virtually any tracking or surveillance has a knock-on effect that we often overlook in our enthusiasm, but Apple absolutely should have foreseen the abuse that would happen, and certainly profited off of it.
I don’t have any explanation for how our experiences could be so different, but they are. Mine even did the cool thing where you can watch your luggage move through an airport until you join up with it.
I had to put in a few of my daughter’s pencil pouches and some toys; they are cheaper than the AirTags and, financially, make no sense to lose an AirTag that costs more than the items being tracked. But hey, daughter is happy, and that covers up for the cost.
That's great, but could they do something about what plays on the speaker? It's all pretty in that Apple sort of way, but the fact that its volume goes up and down makes it harder to find. Y'know, exactly the one thing you're trying to do with it?
It's been, what, six years now? The media would pay hand over fist for an airtags stalking story and how many have there actually been?
I mean it was enough of a concern that Android added a "detect airtags" feature to the base android OS.
If only it were usable with an Android phone :(
I've had a set of airtags for a good few years now (shortly before Covid, I think?) and they mostly just kinda work. They don't insist upon a need to upgrade, the only part that ever goes bad is the battery -- which is a standard, user-replaceable CR2032, and while batteries going into the garbage isn't fantastic, there's really only so much you can do as long as depend on them.
Like -- this announcement is technically an upgrade, but I've never been less tempted to actually buy into it because the existing product does what it does plenty well enough for my needs.
I do think it's a bit funny to highlight anything Google does now as privacy-first, though. I can't play back Youtube embeds in Waterfox because the browser's default privacy-preserving setting doesn't send referrer information to those embeds, which Youtube now requires for embeds to work. As much as I take issue with Apple's politics over the past year, they do tend to lean towards on-device logic where possible, and their work in the homomorphic cryptography niche has been interesting to follow.
Attaching these things to anything is their major flaw.
/picard facepalm
Has that ever been demonstrated for a single object, even if allowing the object to be a thousand times as large as this?
Oh come the fuck ON. I'm not installing your silly fuzzy UI, Apple. Get over it.
I've seen these myself for my partner's AirTag when I was carrying her stuff.
Apparently Android 6+ can warn you about AirTags in the same way, since May 2024: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/05/apple-and-google-deli...
I know because I have an android phone and a not-so-used ipad and mine beep all the time.
What stalking scenario are you worried with?
Apple has already done more than enough to discourage stalking. We shouldn’t nerf all our technology to the ground because assholes exist.
For example, meet someone at a convention/fair/job, gift/sell them something which has a hidden tag, and then wait for them to drive to their hotel, or home. Gotcha. With influencer and celebs, you can also send something to their agency, and hope they are re-routed to their home. S** like that happened quite often until people learned to be more careful. Probably still sometimes happens even now.
A phone's stalking detection just looks for a tag that's not yours that has been around you for a while.
But you can modify a tag such that it selectively powers up, or build a tag that changes identifiers, such that the stalking detection tools don't pick it up.
I've written a bit about this here: https://www.hotelexistence.ca/further-thoughts-on-stealth-ai... https://www.hotelexistence.ca/exploring-bluetooth-trackers-a...
