I haven't experienced the same issues you describe in terms of random beeping or the like. But I do think one of the most curious and irritating missing pieces from AirTags is no sort of tie-in with Family Sharing or some sort of contacts whitelist. I saw one thing saying that was about privacy but that makes zero sense because Apple doesn't do the same thing elsewhere in "Find My" for people or devices. While it's correctly opt-in, once everyone has done so we can see device locations for all of the family's stuff, which is very helpful when somebody is missing their phone or the like (anyone else can help with it) as well as checking in disasters. I don't see why that would be fine but keys wouldn't. In terms of privacy, someone is more likely to have their watch, phone or airpods on them then an Apple Tag frankly. Indeed that's the core logic of Apple Tags, we put down and misplace other random stuff but still have our phones/wearables. It can't be that rare for a family to have multiple vehicles where a certain amount of sharing happens, particularly if it's a pattern like us where the SO and I each have a car but then there is a single old truck that we both use. Family names are on the insurance, legally it's multidriver property. And even good friends/room mates probably share some kinds of property. Whomever has it is responsible for not losing it and thus has an interest in tracking it.

Yeah it's a v1.0, but even so when Apple already has all this infrastructure up strikes me as an odd omission that significantly detracts from the utility for no good end. Even a basic "ignore this tag for a day/week/year/permanently" would at least help sand down a bit of the most irritating notification spam. And worth noting that this sort of thing is a genuine security/privacy issue too: in real security systems, the human factor matters a lot. If people get spammed with noise, they will inevitably end up ignoring it when an actual signal turns up. We've known this forever.

Apple still has some weird atomization issues for a company which is going all-in on family stuff.

This is the company which ran out a credit card and payments infrastructure with serious fanfare— and, incredibly, no provisions for married people having joint accounts.

None, they added it later when dhh and Steve Wozniak made a stink about it.

Using a shared iPad with a family is a bad experience with all kinds of Apple account issues. Other apps Netflix/Amazon/etc. thankfully provide quick user switching which makes it tolerable.

that's how they get you into buying multiple ipads

A common, shallow, cynical take…no, wait, never mind: it’s correct!

OS X has always supported multiple user accounts and I can’t see that ever changing.

The I-devices on the other hand are explicitly positioned as personal devices. And I don’t really see that changing either.

Nowadays the price of macs has dropped to the point where some of the iPads and phones (!) are more expensive than the cheapest (and perfectly capable) macs (I do my development on a baseline MacBook Air because it’s so conveniently light). So they are still selling (relatively) low cost, multiuser machines.

> And I don’t really see that changing either.

So, crystal-ball-gazing time: I don't think this part is true for iPadOS, but it's going to take them a couple more years to really get it right.

Here's where I think they're skating: watches and phones are personal devices, Macs remain what they are (personal computers, I could define this but it doesn't seem necessary on HN), and iPads (and HomePods) are family devices.

"Modes" and Family Sharing are both brand-new, and I can see effort to merge the two concepts so that you can put the family iPad in "Alice mode" or "Bob mode". Instead of separate user accounts (in MacOS each user sees a personal set of applications, that will never happen on i-anything), iCloud just manages all the login stuff in the background so that each user sees the subset of the system they're allowed, with their personal data and user accounts swapped out transparently.

This is a bad fit for how apps and logins work... right now. But Apple is clearly trying to fix that, like I said, I think this will take a couple years at minimum before we actually see it.

I anticipate a slightly different model:

- Macs: no change.

- iGadgets (phones, tablets, headsets, watches): will remain per-person

- "shared" devices (appletv, homepod, carplay, home iot devices) will take their settings from the per-person devices and will allow multiple per-person devices simultaneously. So the speaker will play songs / respond to requests from people whose phones are on the LAN; the car will take its default settings from the driver (how will it know?) but the passenger can control the map etc.

A former acquaintance got caught cheating when her kid's iPad showed a FaceTime call from her side guy, and the husband saw it ringing...

Lots of problems like this.

In this specific instance I wouldn't call it a problem.

I actually assumed this is how it would work. Had absolutely no reason to believe otherwise until my son lost his coat and we needed to get his phone before anyone could find it. I could have just added his coat to my account, but then he'd get stalking alerts all day long. Arg.

Yeah until they have family tie in I hardly see the point.

Even if you could pair the same airtag on two accounts, that would be useful! I don't care if I can directly share things from Find My, but if my wife could add my cat's airtag to her phone also, that would be nice. Seems like a very important feature to have, people have been complaining for almost a year about it, too!

This is probably because of 1. You have Bluetooth on all the time 2. If BT is off, the tag isn’t moving at all (including drawer moving open shut)

Tile didn't work well enough for stalking.

I bought some Tiles and Trackrs and gave them to friends who agreed to help me test their usefulness, pretending that they had "stolen" these items from me. I would see if I could locate them a few days later when I "noticed them missing".

I got one ping from a Tile once when the friend had apparently stopped for gas, but none from their house. And zero at all from the Trackr. Apparently there just aren't enough users in my area for the networks to accomplish much?

By stealing battery from every iphone user and data from their cellular plan, Apple has built a find-me network that actually works. Therefore it also works for stalking. Therefore Apple is getting the criticism.

Same here, I tried bringing a 'lost' tile with me on the Barcelona subway. It took a month for one ping (it was paired with a smartphone I left at home with the Bluetooth off)

Also tiles don't rotate their BT address so they're an ideal method for shops to track you.

Apple's method actually works because it doesn't need an app installed and they have mitigated the third party tracking problem.

> Apple has built a find-me network that actually works. Therefore it also works for stalking. Therefore Apple is getting the criticism.

Isn’t this criticism a bit like arguing that binoculars/telescopes are bad because they allow people to peep into other peoples windows or cars deserve criticism because they allow you to tail someone(or run from authorities)?

Tools can basically always be misused.

More like the criticism that tiny cameras DO get because they're used for stalking / creepshots.

It would be like criticizing a company for making a new type of telescope that is massively easier to use to spy on people

Yes it is exactly like that.

I love my AirTags because they actually have a functional tracking network. I've lost items outside the house with a Tile tracker attached and it proved to be entirely worthless for actually finding my stuff. They simply don't have a good network.

This is a place for a generic open protocol. To have a real internet of things we need some kind of DNS but for objects.

> This is a place for a generic open protocol.

Not sure if you've seen but Apple opened the Find-My network to other vendors: https://www.apple.com/ee/newsroom/2021/04/apples-find-my-net...

...but didn't open the protocol to third parties. In other words, it's as "open" as the lightning connector is: "pay us $x for every product you ship, and we won't sue you for using it"

Apple's marketing must train in the Matrix for how good they are at dodging bullets...

at the same time, you are using the Apple network/infrastructure of iDevices that track that item for you. Every Apple device that passes your lost product helps find your product. Should they be doing that for free? Serious question.

You have a point about the infrastructure. But the devices themselves aren't Apple's devices, they are owned by Apple customers. I'd bet most of these Apple customers would be fine with you "using" their devices for free to locate your stuff, as long as you don't charge them either when they use your devices to locate their stuff.

Apple is free to charge whatever they want for the use of their servers and infrastructure, and while it's not a good look, they're also welcome to charge again for the use of their intellectual property. However, that's not a reason that third-parties shouldn't be able to access that data. If I've got a Google Pixel in my pocket, the cost is marginal for me to send an API request to Apple's servers and use Find My elsewhere. Hell, Apple could force third-party devices to enable Bluetooth pinging in exchange for their use of the Find My network. It's apparently been lucrative enough on iPhone, I see no reasons besides "muh walled garden" that they shouldn't extend the functionality to other users.

Sounds like you're thinking about how the first pill costs $7 million to make, but pills 2-inf only cost $0.02. Sure, it doesn't cost anything to wiggle some electrons, but it took effort to build out the infrastructure to do something when those electrons move. It takes effort to maintain it as well.

I'm able to see both sides. We all like free things, but free things cost some body some thing some where. If the vendor/maker of a thing needs to pay a license to make it look free to the consumer, that doesn't seem egregious to me. After all, they'll just roll that into the price of the product.

Ultimately, I agree with you. My overall point though is that opening the Find My network to other vendors isn't the same as opening the protocol. What Apple does in B2B sales is none of my concern.

I was really just playing devil's advocate. It just seems like everyone expects things to be given away as charity. Apple is not a 501(c), so if they come up with something, it's because they think there's a revenue stream in it.

The entire thing works so well precisely because there are so many Apple devices in the wild, and Apple is looking to capitalize on that.

They're welcome to do whatever they please. Doesn't change the fact that they're the largest company in the world though, nor does it exempt them from a bit of criticism for being one of the most ruthless forces in capitalism today. I don't think it's wrong to expect them to set a good example for the thousands of organizations that choose to follow their path.

“Setting a good example” is completely and utterly subjective, and should not be left to a company to manage. If society deems something is in the best interests of society, it should be regulated by law. Asking companies to mind themselves in regards to what is best for society at large, while also mandating they maximize value for shareholders, is confusing at best.

That's a pretty fatalistic way to look at things, but I suppose you're entitled to your own opinion on the matter.

You know what they say about opinions and assholes… Mine stink too.

But think about it, how am I wrong? We set these companies up, by law, to put profit first, then hope they also do the right thing.

Those are misaligned incentives at the very least.

> Should they be doing that for free? Serious question.

If they don't provide the network: what value do the tags, you bought with money, provide?

If you buy from Apple they do provide the network.

If you buy from 3rd party and 3rd party doesn’t pay Apple, why should Apple provide the network?

I wasn't saying they should; and I'm not taking a side on anything. I don't have enough information to properly answer you.

Are there third party tracking device manufacturers with free access to these systems?

Are you talking about stolen or bootleg goods?

The latter is a much more complicated topic, for sure.

The question as asked seems pretty clear to me. If Company A builds a product/service, why should Company B be expected to utilize Company A's work without compensation?

What more information do you need?

The questions, as asked, are lacking in tangible reality dynamics and are phrased with bias.

My first response to the first version of that loaded question: "_I wasn't saying they should_..."

You respond with: "If Company A builds a product/service, why should Company B be expected to utilize Company A's work without compensation?"

Am I to believe you're being genuine here? Should I really repeat myself again, in text, to save you a scroll up?

I didn't say that. I never implied that. I stated the exact opposite.

Why are you asking me to rationalize and explain a stance I've never taken, and don't have?

>...why should...

Sure, right after you show me where I mentioned a second company, and that they should be able to access Apple's network without compensation.

Hell, I'll accept you showing where I mentioned a first company by name.

You can do better than low effort trolling.

I reread your posts.

I’ll be charitable, what is your point exactly?

An earlier commenter likened AirTags to DNS. Is DNS a for-profit protocol? Does it need to be?

I don’t think DNS is, but AirTags is… so maybe they aren’t…likenable? likencompatible? Licompatible?

They shouldn't be doing it for free, someone else should have an open tracking service.

And how is that going to be funded?

Donations and hardware sales.

The hard part is convincing anyone to use your open protocol, when the people who are in the best position to implement it are also the ones who would most benefit from a closed-protocol.

Bitcoin used to do this: low value and/or infrequent transfers used to be free.

Only charged money for big transfers and the high frequency traders.

Dunno why it stopped. Seemed sensible to reward hodlers and incentivize use for microtransactions. Ultimately, liquidity comes from being able to trade a big thing easily for lots of small things.

> Bitcoin used to do this: low value and/or infrequent transfers used to be free.

Miners used to include zero-fee transactions in blocks when there was space available. Nowadays, most blocks are full or nearly so, so miners have a financial interest in mining transactions with the highest fee-per-byte first and ignoring anything which has a low or zero fee attached.

There was never any special handling for "infrequent" transfers.

"Input Age" was a factor in determining priority:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Miner_fees#Priority_transactions

Maybe I got it wrong: I thought it meant how long the coins have been sitting around, but maybe it means how long the transaction has been sitting unmined to make sure no transaction is left behind?

But it seems I'm on the right track, in that input_age was a measure of how many confirmations, which suggests it's about how long it's been since the last time they were moved:

note1 here: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/95407/what-were-...

Would anyone be interested in actually building this? I would love to work on something along these lines.

An open protocol would mean trackers could be built right into things, like a keychain flashlight with a tracker.

You also wouldn't need a phone to pick them up, an ESP32 could handle the relaying to WiFi, so something like a school's lost and found could have a fixed base station for $5.

Even better, devices could relay microscopic amounts of data through nearby nodes. It would be like the Things Network, but at a quarter of the cost and with zero new hardware to get started.

The open protocol for universal surveillance of everyone everywhere might not be my first choice, but it would make sense.

Yep, this could be managed by a blockchain-based app, once blockchains are sufficiently scalable of course.

> Yep, this could be managed by a blockchain

no.

Making it blockchain-based would guarantee all parties will have equal access to the application indefinitely. It's ideal for a situation where you want infrastructure to be shared by mutually distrusting parties.

The problem with blockchain-based applications right now is that the blockchain is not scalable in its write-access, so the extent to which such applications can be updated is quite limited.

How is it going to be monetized is a problem. The cost is basically negligible but not zero.

I wouldn’t monetize directly, instead the cost could be subsidized by services built on top of it. For example, naming & discovery, durable log aggregation etc.

Edit: spelling

You expect Apple do make an open protocol? This is the role of a government to mandate standards for their jurisdictions.

Of course, regulation is a bad word for a good number of the electorate so this will never happen.

At the moment, if someone attaches a Airtag on my car and I have an iPhone it will notify me someone is tracking me. If I have an another phone however I don't receive that warning. Apple's put a product out there that benefits them while decreasing the safety of people who don't use their products. An open protocol at least would prevent this.

Genuinely curious:

What are other examples where specific protocols (open or not) are mandated by regulation ?

USB is a (closed!) protocol that's mandated by regulation. Don't like what the USB-IF has done with their data profiles/power profiles/etc? Prefer a lower-cost connector that doesn't require cables to be hand-assembled? Tough shit.

The mandates are often things you don't see as a citizen, but often on government contractors (a huge part of the US economy).

The number of RFCs that are required for basic things like email, storage, security etc are essential standards primarily because USG required contractors and vendors to adhere to those standards.

Cars are required to have an OBD-II port.

They need to switch over to Helium's LoRa network, which has vastly better coverage...

A) LoRa is proprietary so we wouldn't be better off on that axis

B) I don't trust the longevity of infrastructure financed by a shitcoin

LoRa and LoRaWAN don't belong to Helium. They existed long before it.

Yes, the protocols have been around for a very long time. However, do you know of a LoRa network with as much area coverage as Helium...?

Have things changed?

https://youtu.be/nerQCrOam5U

Apple gets a lot of focus on it that other companies do not.

Ex. Headlines often focus on Apple when revealing some of Foxconn's worst labor practices. But stories about Foxconn using child labor to build Alexa devices, and the person who blew the whistle on that being tortured and put in jail for revealing it, went fairly under the radar in comparison. It's definitely a good thin that unethical labor practices being used to build our stuff is discussed, just the headlines and initial focus might lead laymen to believe one American hardware company is causing this, rather than most.

Apple coopted every iPhone into a global surveillance network for the benefit of throwaway keychain tokens. That's why.

Every iPhone (and Android and dumbphone) was coopted into a global surveillance network from the very beginning.

Previously, it didn't help random creeps to find home address of a girl he saw in a grocery store. Now, with AirTags it is rather trivial. Thanks, Apple.

To be fair to Apple, products like [1] - a battery-powered GPS tracker with mobile data connection - have been available for 10+ years.

A 5-day battery life is useless for keeping track of your bicycle, but more than enough for a stalker to find someone's home.

Of course, they were much less widely reported on by the press - so perhaps less known by stalkers? And only available via ebay, not off-the-shelf in reputable retailers.

[1] https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304109556891

It’s been trivial for decades. That’s not on apple.

So trivial it never happens.

It was all over the tech news space back in November that a woman was alerted to one that was moving with her. Someone attached it to her car. And again in January.

https://www.wbrc.com/2021/11/18/woman-discovers-tracking-dev...

https://www.insideedition.com/atlanta-woman-cant-find-apple-...

You'll note that there's never ever a culprit in a single one of these stories, and nobody ever successfully carries out the crime by actually showing up to an apartment or cornering someone in their car. It's classic urban legend stuff.

Would you expect people to sometimes get away with committing a crime like stalking? Yes. Would you expect every single person who commits stalking in this way to always, without exception, get away with it? Of course not. The parsimonious explanation is that the vast majority of these stories are simple misunderstandings, like someone accidentally dropping one somewhere.

> simple misunderstandings, like someone accidentally dropping one somewhere.

The uniquity of technology gives real stalkers this nice excuse. How convenient!

Very convenient. So much so that there must be one story of someone actually being attacked rather than just finding an AirTag, right?

So you are claiming that nobody of the attacked females were stalked and found using AirTags?

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/17272409/how-stay-safe-apple-a...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/20/apple-air...

How many stalking victims never found out they are tracked because they used Android phones? How many perpetrators just covertly removed the AirTag after the attack? This device allows very clandestine surveillance by anyone.

Did you read those articles? Neither of them actually shows someone showing up in a location as a result of using AirTags to track someone. They show someone finding an AirTag that wasn't theirs.

I'm willing to grant that the number of people caught would be lower than the number of people who were actually successful -- we don't catch every murderer, for example. But isn't there one, just one, example of someone actually showing up? Nobody ever gets caught? Like I said, this is classic urban legend material.

> But stories about Foxconn using child labor to build Alexa devices ... went fairly under the radar in comparison

This specific instance might be true, I don't know. But it seems incorrect to base an argument off Apple getting less/more coverage than a company like Amazon.

Apple has scale. Tile has similar functionalities but it doesn't have a large network that Apple's IPhone has.

It's going to be very hard to use Tile to stalk people.

With more power, comes more responsibility.

Apple is going to always be under the magnifying glass because they are just so much "bigger".

For sure. I meant to add that sort of sentiment but spaced. There is definitely a level of "poor Apple, lets break out the tiniest violin for them". It's hard to cry over the world's largest public corporation getting more scrutiny than some others.

Apple has over a hundred million iPhones all across the US and opted them into helping track Airtags without asking for permission (I'm sure it was buried in the middle of pages of terms of service). The only way to opt your iDevice out of tracking is to turn off Find My, so you can't find your phone if you lose it. Nice bit of artificial tying there. Tile and Samsung devices are more for personal use and won't really work outside your own location.

You can opt out of the "Find My network" part separately from the overall Find My system. This does mean that you'd not be able to find your phone if it's fully powered off, of course, but that seems to be a fair trade-off if you don't want to track or be tracked as part of this.

See: https://imgur.com/a/ZY9oBPV

Reminds me of Comcast, ooh sorry, XFINITY (rebranded to try to drop their reputation as the #1 anti-consumer company) enabling public wifi on your modem / AP without your consent, then burying the opt-out.

Not on the same level, but Netflix auto-playing videos and previews is also annoying, and the option to disable it is purposely hidden on their website, not accessible through the app. Ugh.

I could swear that Samsung's find my phone service works exactly the same way. Your phone is automatically used to track every other phone around you. It might not work for whatever their air tag equivalent is though

Samsung trackers do not work nearly as well imo. Or tile for that matter. I’ve tried most of them and AirTags are clearly on another level for better or worse

I do think AirTags should have a button like the Samsung ones, tho.

>> Samsung trackers do not work nearly as well imo.

Well, Apple Airtags use the massive network of iPhones to report the location of nearby airtags to Apple.

Android phones don't intrinsically track tags, they need software specifically installed for this. So almost none of those Android phones can be used to track anything. On the other hand all newer iPhones can track any AirTag out of the box, in what's probably the single biggest tracking network in the world.

Don’t know why they’re being downvoted when your point is irrelevant - the Samsung tracker only uses Samsung Galaxy devices specifically for the network

They work great, it’s just the network effects are smaller for Samsung.

For people at risk, it is meaningless. Your crazy stalker will just drive around locations and confirm where you are remotely.

The whole controversy is both real and bullshit. It is very trivial for people to get tracking devices for modest amounts of money in high threat scenarios.

I think the issue with AirTags is the less malevolent, but creepy scenarios. And to be honest, the issue has existed for years with “Find My Friends”, which I’m sure is widely abused by family members and others to follow people around.

They work ok, but it’s inferior to AirTags specifically because the network effects are (much) smaller.

If you’re using it to find stuff you want the largest possible network

Maybe this a dumb question, but is the AirTag configured to Notify When Left Behind except when left at your home? I've never heard an AirTag beep before.

For me personally, I had to stop using my airtag (a singular one), because I notice that my phone has started draining battery much quicker than it was supposed to, for weeks on end. I checked the battery management page, and it turns out that the airtag functionality was draining most of it (despite my airtag being always near me, pretty much). Neither software updates nor disconnecting and re-pairing the airtag from scratch helped. Once I completely disconnected the airtag, the battery issue went completely away.

I realize that this might not be a common experience and that it could be just some particular quirk about how it works with my phone specifically. But I gave up after that.

I have also not experienced beeping. I do get the occasional alert from family member tag crosstalk but it feels like this is improving.

But the lack of explicit Family cross-view when other devices automagically have it is nigh unto unforgivably bad. I have heard arguments made about privacy but they are not that coherent. Expose an "opt this device out of Family sharing" during config option or whatever.

That friends have attached two different tags to their kid's backpack so both spouses can track is total fail. :|

Tile still isn't getting harped for stalking. I used a Tile to track down a backpack thief 5 years ago, could have easily been a person I was stalking.

Apple's getting a lot of flack because they're enormous, consumers are more aware, and they have a better network... but the fact that they did any stalker alerting is beyond anything the existing products in the market have done. I'd guess the product designers at Apple are probably constantly frustrated with this reality.

Tile also isn't nearly as sensitive because it needs people to install their app to opt-in to their tracking network.

Apple coopted every single phone into a tracker essentially creating a biggest people following and tracking network in the world - plus they use UWB which massively more accurate than what Tile uses.

What Apple created would be Facebooks, NSAs and pretty much every spying entities wet dream to get fingers on.

> What Apple created would be Facebooks, NSAs and pretty much every spying entities wet dream to get fingers on.

No, Apple made it available to you. Police and intelligence agencies can buy this data from various entities or subpoena it.

Yeah I get it, but Tile's network is still good enough to find someone's house in a somewhat densely populated area. I've done it.

>What Apple created would be Facebooks, NSAs and pretty much every spying entities wet dream to get fingers on.

The government already has this with cell phones, no?

At least for family, create a free family sharing account and add your wife. That'll silence the beeping when you're not around.

I had once been standing in a queue of a few hundred people and one of them (maybe several) had an AirTag. I could not silence the warning so I had to endure the huge warning message that doesn’t tell me where the AirTag is nor allows me to disable it.

It’s impressively pointless. Maybe I should buy one and annoy people with it.

Tile is amazing. But all this AirTag stuff has me worried stalkers will switch to Tile, and then Tile will get ruined the same way.

I wish we had a fully open alternative with the same global tracking network.

Considering Tile's new owners, Life360, aren't above selling subscriber information, they're kind of already ruined.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/9/22820381/tile-life360-loc...

I mean, I never had any expectation of any privacy at all from tile to begin with, so I'm Not sure I'd say it's ruined.

It's commercial proprietary tech, I definitely wouldn't be using it if I considered my location history sensitive data.

I haven't experienced any of the rouge alerts with them.

That's very strange, I wonder what is triggering it for you.

For my use case, tracking bags, kids on vacation and etc it has worked fine.

I have not had any issues like this with mine, and I use them all the time to find things. I would buy more if I had anything else to attach them to.

If you have a family Apple account you can avoid having your keys beep at your wife.