Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The world has changed so much that its made this product of kind of redundant. No wonder Apple delayed and delayed it. Until I go back to the office (can see us working from home for at least another year), it will be the tracking of keys and that's it for me.
 
I have a bunch of power tools from German tool manufacurer, Festool. These come in interlocking "systainers" and when you get a bunch of them, they all start to look alike. With the 16 airtag cap, I have to choose carefully which tools will get tagged, but doing so will let me figure out which of these putty & green boxes is the one with the tool I want without having to aimlessly read the content label when I have them scattered around the garage or worksite. Also keys and work badge. Bought a couple extra 4-packs for my better half and my brother (who's Bday is coming up).

A couple thoughts:

it would be nice if an airtag could be shared: i.e. a tag on our dog could be searched on both my wife's AppleID accounts/iOS devices.

Any word if airtags can work with shortcuts? A couple times a year, I head out the door without my work badge, it would be nice if my iPhone (in my pocket) would alert if I got a distance away from the badge on a M-F and alert me that my badge is out of range. Maybe some kind of day of week based geofencing? I don't play in shortcuts so don't know if this is a no-brainer?
ZERO offense intended to others, but this is the first truly innovative idea I’ve read yet.
 
Nobody have mentioned Bikes. I’m planning to attach 2 tags to my bikes place them under the seat and wish the thief is dumb enough to not check. Also planning to put one on my son’s backpack as well.
With some kind of stopper, you might be able to get one into the seat tube / some other frame cavity depending on your frame. This might limit the range though, but it's worth checking out. I know Datatag used to make a chip for the seat tube - that's going back to 2003 or before! It kind of wedged in, not too unlike that thing on headsets that goes into the fork.
 
Hey everyone - great thread. I've enjoyed reading it. Not for nothing... but you guys all realize that, if you use these things to thwart thieves... and the thief has an iPhone, the AirTag is going to "narc on itself". Right? The thief's iPhone is going to report that there is an unattached AirTag following or "in proximity" or whatever the Apple warning is.

Apple built that in to stop people from using AirTags to stalk each other. If a thief hops on your AirTagged bike, they're going to get a warning on their iPhone that it has an AirTag. I guess you could hope the thief has an Android... or no iPhone.

These things are really meant to find something you've misplaced or has been lost. It's not a LoJac (for you older people) or other anti-theft device. Apple has set these up to make it super easy for thieves to identify its presence and potentially defeat.
Yes, but if the thief moves the bike or object with the Airtag(s) on it, the location may be tracked and registered and reported to the airtag owner. I doubt that the notification is instantaneous - so how does that affect a thief or the owner?

There are endless specific examples of how things play out, so it’s a bit early for anyone to Pooh-Pooh about what they think they know for sure - even with “multiple likes” on a forum. People often chide in with what they think - but that herd is often wrong here :)
 
  • Love
Reactions: DotCom2
Ordered a 4 pack so...
1. Part of keychain
2. In car’s glove compartment.. should make it easier to find car in large parking lot especially at night
3. Not sure yet about the other two
No room in wallet to hold an airtag
 
  • Like
Reactions: trigf
Ordered a four pack and one keychain holder. So one obviously is for my keys. Another will go in my bag I carry daily.

Not really sure what I'll use the other two for but figured since I'm buying more than one I might as well get the four pack because I'm sure I'll find a use for them at some point and having them around will come in handy.

I also have multiple bags, a small one that I basically just use to carry weed and a big backpack for travelling (when that's a thing again), will chuck one in a hidden compartment of the big bag for sure since it often contains valuables.

Was also idly wondering about putting one on my cat's collar. I know you're officially not meant to use it for tracking pets but in the past some weird **** has happened like a cat of mine got locked in somewhere for over a week, or at least that's what the assumption was. Someone trapped him somewhere and cut his whiskers off anyway. And sometimes they just wonder off and go missing for a bit cuz they're cats. Loads of iPhones around my area so AirTags could come in very handy in such situations instead of hanging up missing pet posters everywhere.
 
  • Like
Reactions: petrosil
Now that I think more about it. If someone puts these in their luggage, are these things going to be beeping like crazy in an airplane while it thinks it's being used to anonymously track 100 strangers at 30,000 feet?
Well - 2 things
1 - if it's on a plane, if all goes well, the owner should also be on the plane, so it wouldn't be flagged as tracking anyone. It's not separated from the owner.
2 - shouldn't you and everyone else on the plane be in airplane mode so no tracking should be capable anyway.
 
Ordered a 4-pack. One for my keys, one for my everyday bag, and 2 for my luggage when I travel.

The only question/issue I have is that Apple seems to have all of these tags/loops meant to hold the AirTags outside of the bag/luggage. I still feel leery putting it on the outside of luggage that may be checked and was planning on just hiding it inside the bag somewhere - probably with my "old man undies" ;)
 
Airplane mode on iOS does not disable bluetooth.
But don't you still need either wifi or cell service to communicate with the apple mothership to trigger the alerting mechanism? I thought bluetooth was just for determining the physical location but in order to start pinging people in the location, you'd need some sort of wifi/cell service.
 
Tracking pets? I guess it could work. But if the dog / cat is wandering the streets how often will they have a close encounter with an idevice ? And is there a delay? How long would you think your pet would stick around? I guess it's better than nothing and may ping a general location. But it definitely won't give real-time updates.
 
But don't you still need either wifi or cell service to communicate with the apple mothership to trigger the alerting mechanism? I thought bluetooth was just for determining the physical location but in order to start pinging people in the location, you'd need some sort of wifi/cell service.

Yes I imagine you'd need some form of internet connection to "ping" the AirTag and GPS would have to be on to share location info to AirTags, but the actual tracking is done through bluetooth, the AirTag knows where it is by connecting via bluetooth to the iOS devices around it. If no current location can be given (because airplane mode disables GPS) the last current location will be stored instead.

So the actual tracking side of things will still be running. Sort of.
 
People must really lose their keys and wallets.....

I must be in the rare club to have never or misplaced either of those in my life

Yeah, I don't really either -anymore-. Back in my college days being hung over and fuzzy memory about the night before, this would have saved me tons of time.

Regardless, I'll still probably buy them since they have user replaceable batteries and won't become e-waste in a couple years like AirPods.
 
But then there’s instance when the checked luggage doesn’t make the owner’s plane. I had one before when I waited at the luggage belt until all picked up and customer service told me it would arrive with the next flight......
Exactly what do you expect Apple to do in such a random scenario??
 
  • Like
Reactions: reggers
Tracking pets? I guess it could work. But if the dog / cat is wandering the streets how often will they have a close encounter with an idevice ? And is there a delay? How long would you think your pet would stick around? I guess it's better than nothing and may ping a general location. But it definitely won't give real-time updates.

I live in a major city so they're almost certain to pass several iOS devices. Even a rough location is better than nothing.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.