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This is surprisingly powerful anti-marketing from Apple. I got some AirTags to keep track of our keys without realizing that AirTags can’t be shared within a fa

This is surprisingly powerful anti-marketing from Apple. I got some AirTags to keep track of our keys without realizing that AirTags can’t be shared within a family. I hoped they’d be useful to my wife, who sometimes forgets her purse, but she absolutely hates them as they’re always giving her warnings. I loaned my car to my sister and now she and her husband are off the list of potential customers, too. I get the stalking concerns, but I’m surprised that the solution was to make the product completely unusable for anyone but single people.

croutonwagon 4y ago
Interesting point you make. My wife and I have shared an icloud account since before family sharing was an option but i was way too cheap to by multiple copies of a weather app etc. It works fine short of having to make some new tweaks each time i update/restore/add a device (mostly around setting options in iMessage and Facetime to uncheck my numbers on her device and vice versa on mine.). I have been increasingly mulling over setting up family sharing. But I am also planning a longer trip to another country and bought some airtags for luggage etc, but also to use for our keys/wallet etc. These comments have me saying sticking with the current setup would be preferred. Specifically for the airtags.
- rtkwe 4y ago
  AFAIK if you setup a family the notifications go away. What would solve this for couples that aren't quite that committed would be a way to share the location info on an AirTag or at least be able to mark a particular tag as 'known' or 'safe'. I think with either of those but particularly the former all of the stalking concerns kind of go away. If you can also access and see the location for an AirTag in particular if you do need to get away for some reason you can find and dump the offending tag(s) or potentially disable them. I don't really get why Apple doesn't have an option to do that already. It seems much better for shared objects and people like the Author and it doesn't seem like there are any technical hurdles to providing that.
  - el_benhameen 4y ago
    The notifications do not go away. My wife is on my iCloud family plan and she still gets them constantly. That’s what’s so bizarre about the whole setup.

croutonwagon 4y ago

Interesting point you make. My wife and I have shared an icloud account since before family sharing was an option but i was way too cheap to by multiple copies of a weather app etc. It works fine short of having to make some new tweaks each time i update/restore/add a device (mostly around setting options in iMessage and Facetime to uncheck my numbers on her device and vice versa on mine.). I have been increasingly mulling over setting up family sharing. But I am also planning a longer trip to another country and bought some airtags for luggage etc, but also to use for our keys/wallet etc. These comments have me saying sticking with the current setup would be preferred. Specifically for the airtags.

rtkwe 4y ago
AFAIK if you setup a family the notifications go away. What would solve this for couples that aren't quite that committed would be a way to share the location info on an AirTag or at least be able to mark a particular tag as 'known' or 'safe'. I think with either of those but particularly the former all of the stalking concerns kind of go away. If you can also access and see the location for an AirTag in particular if you do need to get away for some reason you can find and dump the offending tag(s) or potentially disable them. I don't really get why Apple doesn't have an option to do that already. It seems much better for shared objects and people like the Author and it doesn't seem like there are any technical hurdles to providing that.
- el_benhameen 4y ago
  The notifications do not go away. My wife is on my iCloud family plan and she still gets them constantly. That’s what’s so bizarre about the whole setup.