the more i think about it, the less convinced i am of airtags being an apple product, rather than being internal development units for the creation of the find

the more i think about it, the less convinced i am of airtags being an apple product, rather than being internal development units for the creation of the find my network (as others have posited). apple is generally allergic to low-price, low-volume hardware products, which i think airtags might turn out to be, since there's an inherent tension between price and volume, and capital costs and margins. in other product lines, apple builds enough differentiation to alleviate those tensions in its favor, but there isn't that sort of opportunity in airtags (as much as i wish there were). the utility of airtags is not insignificant, but is limited by loss incidence/recovery rates and network reach, and potentially has significant support costs and customer-facing risk. so instead, the cost-benefit analysis points to developing the network, which supplements the moat around their flagship, the iphone, provides further lock-in into their existing icloud infrastructure, and provides some modest high-margin income to boot, without incurring the added capital costs and other risks.