Call me dumb I still don’t understand what exact problem these clowns were trying to solve

I think the idea was to intentionally disable the speaker in an AirTag you own. The use-case that I think they were describing would be to make it more difficult for a thief to find the AirTag and remove it. Thus, you'd be able to track your stolen bike for longer (and have a better change of finding it).

Of course, this would also make it easier for someone to disable a speaker and track a person without their knowledge, making it more difficult for that person to find a stealthy AirTag.

I'm not surprised that someone didn't think this through. I am surprised at how many people this must have gotten by to make it into production. You'd think that with any AirTag related product, privacy would be more central to the planning.

	▲	dwaite 31 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The audible tone can interfere with other stalking-adjacent use cases - for instance use for pet tags, for tracking children's backpacks, and so on. It actually doesn't help as much for anti-theft, because a thief still might be smart enough at this point to check their phone for AirTag notifications. The audible tone may not even hit in a theft instance.
	▲	cloudie78 38 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Ah okay yeah that makes sense Was missing the “make it more difficult for a thief to find the AirTag and remove it” part. Cheers!
	▲	elictronic an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Probably 2-3 people. From a random search online it looks like the company has about a dozen employees.

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occz an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It says right there in the blog post - bike theft prevention.

AirTags are less useful for that use-case right now since the bike thief will get notified of the existence of the tracker on the bike once they transport it, and are hence prompted to find and remove the tag.

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avhception an hour ago | parent [-]

The blog post said bike theft prevention, yes. I'm not familiar with the ways AirTags work, so I had absolutely no idea how "silencing" an AirTag would help with that. I actually came here to the comments in the hopes of finding an explanation (which you thankfully included).

	▲	TeMPOraL 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think half the comments still miss what the "notified" part means. It's not jut an iPhone notification that a tag is following you. The tag literally beeps loudly, to help the thief locate it.

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valvar an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Theft?