Similar story for me. Except in Rome, and the ending wasn't happy because all I could do is watch my wife's iPhone go to Tunisia where it disappeared.

Still, in those very early days of "Find my" I could see how this was going to eventually change things.

Switzerland is the Singapore of Europe (I mean this in a good way!) - the state just functions in a way that other European countries can only dream of

The police in Spain will also not care, in my experience. They acted completely helpless regardless of how much information I gave them.

My solution now is to travel very light.

Depends on the jurisdiction.

One time I was driving down a twoo-lane road with a police car a few hundred feet behind me. An oncoming pickup truck veered several feet over the center line and almost hit me. I flagged the police down to tell them and they were nonplussed even though they literally saw it happen. Drunk driving, a greater threat than property theft, was of little consequence to them.

On the other side of the country my motorcycle got stolen and the police found it the next day. I picked it up from the tow yard shortly thereafter.

YMMV.

My car got broken into in Oakland, California. Multiple pieces of luggage stolen (yes, my fault for leaving it in the car in the first place). Luckily I had an AirTag that showed the exact location of the stolen items. I called the police but they said they couldn't do anything. Apparently, even if I had the location the thief would have to invite them in. Regardless, I was put on a waiting list, they finally called me back 3 days later. I promptly left the state a few months later.

I also know from experience that Zurich police will chase an AirTag location with vigor.

> most police departments won't pay the slightest bit of attention to your reports

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....

Switzerland sends in swat for noise complaints, they would definitely care about a thief that could be caught.

Given that the battery in my Airtag lasts about a year, I'd rather have to exchange a CR2032 once per year than to buy a new tracker whenever the built-in rechargeable battery inevitably dies. (I think there are actually rechargeable CR2032s too – best of both worlds?)

The fundamental issue preventing keyring aperture integration stems from the AirTag’s reliance on inverse-phase magnetic reluctance in the structural substrate. You see, the enclosure maintains a precisely calibrated coefficient offramular expansion. Introducing a penetrative void would destabilize the sinusoidal depleneration required for proper UWB phase conjugation. The resulting spurving bearing misalignment could induce up to 40 millidarkness of signal attenuation. Apple’s engineers attempted to compensate using prefabulated amulite in the magneto-reluctance housing, but this only exacerbated the side-fumbling in the hyperboloid waveform generators. Early prototypes with keyring holes exhibited catastrophic unilateral dingle-arm failure within mere minutes of deployment. Until we develop lotus-o-delta-type bearings capable of withstanding the differential girdle spring modulation, I’m afraid keyring integration remains firmly in the realm of theoretical engineering—right up there with perpetual motion machines and TypeScript projects that compile without any // @ts-ignore comments. The technology simply isn’t there yet.

I think the point is to make the smallest unit of functionality possible and then people can integrate that into their use case using attachments, casings, etc. in a way they see fit. It's a good approach for this product in my opinion.

this is the smallest attachment loop i've found. It's rock solid https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CPTS8JG?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_...

> Building an attachment point into the tag

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.

Different people want different attachment types (or no attachment point at all), so it makes sense for that to be external. I've used other trackers with integrated attachment points, and because the attachment point has to be very compact it tends to be flimsy or hard to fit.. vs the Apple one where you can add a larger attachment point that makes sense to you.

This is a great question. For example, the Pixel 10 has a similar recycling profile, although with less recycled plastic.

What level of materials recycling would be required for you to not consider it green washing?

It’s a genuine question, since I don’t like Apple and agree that we buy tons of stuff we don’t really need. That said, our bicycles can’t be insured anymore, but having AirTags at least alleviates some of the angst over leaving them in public places.

This is just green washing on the level of “93.65% natural ingredients”.

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.

Apple rarely offers direct discounts of closeout or excess merchandise. Instead to clear out back stock they’ll work with partner retailers (Amazon, Best Buy, etc.) who don’t mind the brand perception associated with offering deeper discounts.

First-gen AirTags have been on sale on Amazon frequently over the last year, and they’ll probably drop the price again soon.

Just stating the obvious that not buying one of these thing that we never seemed to need until they told us we needed it

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.

I have a third-party tracker and the AirTag in my bicycle. The third-party tracker has no clue what it’s doing or meant to do. But then again, the AirTag is completely inaudible in a decently-sized bicycle parking garage.

Do they plug into the Find My network that iOS devices use?

I'm not convinced AirPods are that "simple" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB_8dGKh9JI

I can see it in AirTags, but, haven't used AirPods myself, what is so "magical" about them?

Also, my understanding is that AirTags are only usable if you have an iPhone, am I wrong?

How are Airtags or Airpods simple?

Cramming lots of tech into a small footprint is an extremely complex affair.

Apple is a big company. I’d be more surprised if they were completely consistent.

I've started to dislike the narrative that "Apple never leads the pack, but it waits to release the best product."

But that hasn't been true for a decade. Most improvements have been marginal, and they totally missed the boat on LLMs.

I would assume the inaccuracy is due to the various phones that pick up the airtag pings GPS being jammed, reporting AirTags nowhere near where they actually are.

Russia does pretty widespread GPS jamming and spoofing both in their country as well as across the Baltics and Nordics (and others). If a phone is receiving bad GPS data when it reports sensing the tag, the tag location will reflect that bad GPS data and not reality.

There's a newer version: https://chipolo.net/en-us/products/chipolo-card

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.

I'm interested to hear this. I had very mixed experience a few years ago with the Seinxon finder card; it wasn't reliably in contact to make it beep, even when I was standing right beside it, but worse it would semi-regularly go into anti-stalker mode and start beeping and spamming iPhones around me with scary-looking notices. This second behaviour was obviously a deal-breaker so I discontinued use of them. (Looks like the company still exists but is now selling newer versions of the cards I bought from them)

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...

Does it tell a thief a chipolo is following them around like the apple tag?

Do the third party ones have UWB/"Precision Finding"?

I'm always tempted to buy one of these but most of them seem to be one time usage, and don't have a way to recharge. That always seems very wasteful to me.

Any recommendations for a rechargable but thin one, AirTag itself is too thick for regular wallets.

I could be wrong but third party tags bet a subset of the tracking capabilities? Ie less accurate/less likely to be found.

Atuvos one at 1.6mm and UGreen one at 1.7mm are great, though one time battery is annoying. There are some that have wireless charging, though thicker.

Do these have the ultra wide band chip? you lose a lot of utility without it.

They work best for things that a human has to move, and since a good chunk of humans (at least in US/CA) have iPhones, the movement of the physical thing will be tracked by an iPhone fairly reliably. Any time the critter is outside the range of an i-device picking it up the location will be stale. There isn't really a way around that, since GPS/5G radios are a lot more power hungry than the occasional bluetooth pings an airtag broadcasts.

I think mostly it's a chew risk for dogs and won't help if the dog is far from the AirTag network. I still have one on my dog anyway (he's not a chewer) and my daughter puts one on her cat occasionally. (Both pets are microchipped too, of course.)

1. they way the network works, it works better for inanimate objects that don't move around

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.

I bought one for my cat, never did help with finding him, just the general area.

They're not great for tracking things that move on their own, or things that avoid people.

In addition to your first use case, multiple airlines are now supporting AirTag for bag tracking.

The battery life of AirPods in a case (what GP is referring to) is quite long. I don't know how long, but I'd guess weeks/months if you're not using them. Obviously a single AirPod out of the case would last much less time (though still days, IME).

I have them on my dogs' collars, because squirrels exist.

I had the thought too, but there is no way anyone else could have gotten physical control over this and shouldn't I see that AirTag when I scan for things in my surrounding as an anti-tracking protection?

Changing the battery was the first thing I did. No change. But if that is the official signal for "battery low", I can try a few more. Thanks.

I've only been notified about a device traveling with me one time, and it was when a relative was riding home with me in my car. When we got home, I received a notification that there were AirPods Pro traveling with me.

This is consistent with my understanding that it only goes off if it travels with you for a very long time, or to your house. (Of course, at that point it's too late because they know where you live already.)

And simultaneously gimped the theft-alert use case. I embedded one into my labelmaker, which is a notoriously high-theft item on jobsites. I can still track it in case I leave it behind, which is great.

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.

Well, to be historically accurate: Apple has pretty much been forced by the backlash to notify people that they're being tracked and even then it only worked if you had an iPhone.

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.

I could return them. But I wonder how long it will take before the new AirTags are available in stores?

Not all retailers take returns. But the old ones were likely on sale, have been for a while.

not in all countries

I once bought 4 air tags, never got to work them in any useful sense. I keep getting warnings about leaving my keys behind, which are in my pocket. I don't recall any time being warned about leaving things behind when I did. Can't really locate things a few meters away.

Apple had its version of "stalking detection" (that equivalent of Android's "detect airtags") from early rollout. (There's a screenshot in the attached article even.) Some of the scrutiny and early complaints was that ecosystem divide that needed Android to also support at least a basic form of that same feature before people would feel safe, and everyone knew that Apple themselves weren't going to build the Android version.

Pet trackers in which situation though? The times I’ve wanted a tracker on my dog is when we’re out in the woods for a hike and I worry he bolts after an animal or similar. I can’t see how an AirTag would help in that scenario.

They're great if you're in a populated area. If you're tracking pets in the country, you'll never see them, as there aren't any relay devices out in the woods.

Please don't put your CR2032 in the garbage. Use battery disposal points for that.

Have you not seen the stories? Put one of these on the underside of an ex's car

Isn't it easy to disable the speaker?