The only thing that intrigued me about this early morning’s event was the new addition, AirTag, the fourth Apple product with Air in its name? The iMac 24 with M1, iPad Pro with M1 & Mini LED and the purple iPhone 12 are all pointless updates, especially the iMac 24, which is so small that I can’t think of any selling points if it’s not backed up by the M1. Back to AirTag, in fact, there are teams in China that have been doing this kind of anti-loss device for more than 5 years, but Apple’s powerful iCloud network can help you find items over long distances, so let’s take a look at how AirTag works.
What is AirTag?
AirTag is a small electronic device that makes it easy to keep track of all sorts of things. For example, you can attach one to your door keys, car keys or wallet, and when you open the Find app, you can see where these items are, so you don’t have to search the world for them.
The AirTag is inexpensive, retailing at 229 RMB per unit and comes with a CR2032 coin cell battery when purchased, and can be ordered from 23 April at 8pm on the official website, while it will go on sale online on 30 April. It’s also a very safe option when you take the elderly, children or pets out with you, or put one in your car or bike, so you don’t have to spend time looking for your car in public car parks, and you don’t have to remember the exact location of the parking space.
How to use AirTag
AirTag is easy to use, just open the ‘Items’ tab in the ‘Find app’ or say something like ‘Hey Siri, where did I put my wallet’ and it will automatically trigger the AirTag’s built-in speaker to play a voice to show you where it is, so if it’s nearby, like under the sofa or in the next room, you can listen to the voice and find it.
If the AirTag is in your vicinity, iPhone can also guide you to it step by step through the Pinpoint Find feature, which relies on ultra-wide band technology and allows you to find the item on the Find.app screen by following the direction of the arrows and showing you the distance to the item in real time as you search for it.
This exact find feature is available on iPhone 11 and iPhone 12.
Setting up AirTag for the first time is also simple – one touch instantly connects AirTag to iPhone and iPad, and Apple Watch receives notifications from AirTag.
What if the item is lost a long way away? Of course Apple’s product managers have thought of this for you, as Apple’s own Find network will help you track down your AirTag, as all iPhones, iPads and Macs with Find enabled will form a sort of relay spider network structure, with your AirTag sending out a Bluetooth signal to Your AirTag emits a Bluetooth signal that can be sensed by devices close to it in this ‘spider web’, which then sends the location of your AirTag to iCloud, where you can see it on the map in the Find app. The whole process is anonymous and encrypted to protect your privacy, and this relayed lookup doesn’t affect AirTag’s battery life or cellular data traffic consumption.
Finally, the AirTag can be set to ‘lost mode’ like all Apple devices, so you’ll automatically be notified when other devices in the ‘Find’ network detect it, and one small detail is that you can choose a default setting before using it, so that when someone taps your AirTag with an NFC-enabled smartphone, they can get your contact details and get in touch with you.
Does AirTag protect our location privacy?
According to Apple’s official promise, AirTag locations are only visible to us, location data and history are never stored in AirTag, the device that delivers AirTag location data remains anonymous, and location data is encrypted at every step of the lookup process. Even Apple doesn’t know the location of your AirTag.
The structure of AirTag
The official picture and video show that the device is just one ring larger than a button battery.
This little device is splash, water and dust resistant, with built-in Bluetooth, a U1 chip (for ultra-wide band technology + pinpoint find) and NFC light touch; there is a small speaker inside for sound, and to use AirTag you need to have an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad model with iOS 14.5 or later as a minimum start, and support for pinpoint find. Find requires an iPhone 11 family or iPhone 12 family device.
According to Apple, the button cell battery lasts for over a year, but that’s a vague concept – a year and a month is over a year, and a year and 11 months is over a year, so how long does it last? But on the iPhone you can be alerted in advance that your device is running low.
My AirTag purchase idea
The AirTag is only available in white, as Cook wants to leave plenty of room for profit in the back end of the market. The device itself is not expensive, at only $229, and the four-pack is only $779, which translates to only $195 each.
The device doesn’t earn you money, what really earns you money is the various rings and keychains, Apple’s website these accessories are really expensive, a leather keychain is sold for 279 yuan, in the end is not to buy a box to return the pearl? A keychain like the Hermes one costs $2599 and a luggage tag costs $3299. You can’t even play Versailles like that, it’s a socialist country. The cheapest AirTag accessory on the official website is the Belkin one for $98, which I don’t think many people will buy, and there will be plenty of Taobao $10 packages in the future.
When you buy an AirTag from the Apple website/Apple Store app, you can choose to have it engraved with free text and Emoji, which you can mix and match, but you can only put four characters on it, in English directly, and in Chinese you need to copy and paste them in.
