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This is a great response - very happy to hear Apple's involvement with various groups to make things better. Some noteworthy bits: > we innovated with the fir

by oxplot 5y ago

This is a great response - very happy to hear Apple's involvement with various groups to make things better. Some noteworthy bits: > we innovated with the first-ever proactive system to alert you of unwanted tracking If that's true, then Apple just raised the privacy bar and now Tile and other small players need to up their game to stay relevant. There is also lesson to learn here: whoever makes a tech/product popular is the one who gets the heat for all its shortcomings/problems. It doesn't matter how many existing small players were doing a horrible job for years. > As an iPhone user moves, Precision Finding fuses input from the camera, ARKit, accelerometer, and gyroscope to guide them to the AirTag This is something that's not appreciated. The UWB chip on the Airtag can only help iPhone know how far away it is from the tag. It's 3D modelling of the world through camera vision that helps triangulate and guide the user via live on-screen direction. Next time you think why we need tech X, just remember that you can't foresee what it'll enable in the future - (and before you comment "all AR stuff to find my keys faster?", re-read the previous sentence again).

Kye 5y ago
Imagine: Bluetooth beacons for helping you find stuff in stores rather than for tracking your movements without permission.
- oxplot 5y ago
  Coins have flip sides :) But tech wise, I think UWB combined with AR is the tipping point for the application you mention. Bluetooth is unfortunately too coarse to be very useful in locating items. It's still useful in locating stores in a shopping mall though, and that we haven't seen yet.
phire 5y ago
> The UWB chip on the Airtag can only help iPhone know how far away it is from the tag. I thought the MMIO antenna array would have indicated a rough direction of the signal. But perhaps that isn't accurate enough to be useful? Since the distance is accurate to a few cm and the iphone is moving, it can use it's own calculated position from the computer vision data to apply multilateration to multiple UWB distance samples over time.
barake 5y ago
UWB can measure distance within 10 cm/4 inches. In ideal scenarios it doesn't take much movement to locate a target, even without a vision component.
kortilla 5y ago
> If that's true, then Apple just raised the privacy bar and now Tile and other small players need to up their game to stay relevant. No they didn’t. This “feature” is garbage for the people who actually buy it. It makes putting air tags on things shared by a bunch of people a huge pain in the ass. “Freaking people out who are on the bus with you because you forgot your phone but have your keys” is not a selling feature.
- ec109685 5y ago
  You can chose to stop getting an alert if a particular device is following you, so that should handle the communal device with an AirTag?
  - wpearse 5y ago
    Can you? I was away with work for a week and left all my keys (with AirTags) at home. Got home and they were all in the fridge.
    - filoleg 5y ago
      >I was away with work for a week and left all my keys (with AirTags) at home The parent comment said "You can chose to stop getting an alert if a particular device is following you". I don't see how what they said applies to your scenario, given your scenario is literally the opposite. Since you weren't near the airtags, you couldn't have stopped them from beeping/following you. But whoever was at your home near the airtags (presumably the person who put them in the fridge) had the ability to disable them from beeping/following them.
  - nomel 5y ago
    Last I tried, it only disables it temporarily.
- oxplot 5y ago
  > This “feature” is garbage for the people who actually buy it. I'm one of those people who has 10 Airtag, who lives with others and haven't had this problem. As far as I (and many others) am concerned, "Apple just raised the privacy bar and now Tile and other small players need to up their game to stay relevant."
tomxor 5y ago
>> we innovated with the first-ever proactive system to alert you of unwanted tracking > If that's true, then Apple just raised the privacy bar Except that's only true for Apple users. Fuck everyone else I guess. subtext: buy Apple, lest you get robbed or stalked because of Apple
- moooo99 5y ago
  I mean Android only has a market share 70%, practically nobody uses it anyways /s The fact that there were open source unwanted AirTag finder Apps on the PlayStore way before Apples official app arrived perfectly demonstrates how much Apple really cares about privacy. They only „care“ about the privacy of the people who pay them to care.
- oxplot 5y ago
  > Fuck everyone else I guess. They do seem to have dropped the ball on their Android app. Majority of reviews on that app is people complaining that it doesn't do background scans! Not sure if there is a technical limitation in doing so on Android, but if not, I hope they make, what seems to be a small effort to make things better for Android users.
  - machrider 5y ago
    There's an open source app that does it, AirGuard: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.seemoo.at_tracking_detection.release&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.seemoo.at_t... So I don't think it's a technical limitation.
coolspot 5y ago
> It's 3D modelling of the world through camera vision that helps triangulate and guide the user via live on-screen direction. Aaahh, that is why Apple’s app refuses to help me find my cat in dark apartment at night! It just says “It is too dark” and provides a button to turn on flashlight.

by oxplot 5y ago

Kye 5y ago

Imagine: Bluetooth beacons for helping you find stuff in stores rather than for tracking your movements without permission.

oxplot 5y ago
Coins have flip sides :) But tech wise, I think UWB combined with AR is the tipping point for the application you mention. Bluetooth is unfortunately too coarse to be very useful in locating items. It's still useful in locating stores in a shopping mall though, and that we haven't seen yet.

phire 5y ago

> The UWB chip on the Airtag can only help iPhone know how far away it is from the tag. I thought the MMIO antenna array would have indicated a rough direction of the signal. But perhaps that isn't accurate enough to be useful? Since the distance is accurate to a few cm and the iphone is moving, it can use it's own calculated position from the computer vision data to apply multilateration to multiple UWB distance samples over time.

barake 5y ago

UWB can measure distance within 10 cm/4 inches. In ideal scenarios it doesn't take much movement to locate a target, even without a vision component.

kortilla 5y ago

> If that's true, then Apple just raised the privacy bar and now Tile and other small players need to up their game to stay relevant. No they didn’t. This “feature” is garbage for the people who actually buy it. It makes putting air tags on things shared by a bunch of people a huge pain in the ass. “Freaking people out who are on the bus with you because you forgot your phone but have your keys” is not a selling feature.

ec109685 5y ago
You can chose to stop getting an alert if a particular device is following you, so that should handle the communal device with an AirTag?
- wpearse 5y ago
  Can you? I was away with work for a week and left all my keys (with AirTags) at home. Got home and they were all in the fridge.
  - filoleg 5y ago
    >I was away with work for a week and left all my keys (with AirTags) at home The parent comment said "You can chose to stop getting an alert if a particular device is following you". I don't see how what they said applies to your scenario, given your scenario is literally the opposite. Since you weren't near the airtags, you couldn't have stopped them from beeping/following you. But whoever was at your home near the airtags (presumably the person who put them in the fridge) had the ability to disable them from beeping/following them.
- nomel 5y ago
  Last I tried, it only disables it temporarily.
oxplot 5y ago
> This “feature” is garbage for the people who actually buy it. I'm one of those people who has 10 Airtag, who lives with others and haven't had this problem. As far as I (and many others) am concerned, "Apple just raised the privacy bar and now Tile and other small players need to up their game to stay relevant."

tomxor 5y ago

>> we innovated with the first-ever proactive system to alert you of unwanted tracking > If that's true, then Apple just raised the privacy bar Except that's only true for Apple users. Fuck everyone else I guess. subtext: buy Apple, lest you get robbed or stalked because of Apple

moooo99 5y ago
I mean Android only has a market share 70%, practically nobody uses it anyways /s The fact that there were open source unwanted AirTag finder Apps on the PlayStore way before Apples official app arrived perfectly demonstrates how much Apple really cares about privacy. They only „care“ about the privacy of the people who pay them to care.
oxplot 5y ago
> Fuck everyone else I guess. They do seem to have dropped the ball on their Android app. Majority of reviews on that app is people complaining that it doesn't do background scans! Not sure if there is a technical limitation in doing so on Android, but if not, I hope they make, what seems to be a small effort to make things better for Android users.
- machrider 5y ago
  There's an open source app that does it, AirGuard: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.seemoo.at_tracking_detection.release&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.seemoo.at_t... So I don't think it's a technical limitation.

coolspot 5y ago

> It's 3D modelling of the world through camera vision that helps triangulate and guide the user via live on-screen direction. Aaahh, that is why Apple’s app refuses to help me find my cat in dark apartment at night! It just says “It is too dark” and provides a button to turn on flashlight.