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Did you lose your AirPods?
- uberman 2y agoMy kids loose theirs all the time and I say use find my but apparently that does not work if they are in the case at least according to my kids.
- RockRobotRock 2y agoI was surprised they didn't have any idea how to use Find My. That and their iCloud account was all kinds of messed up. I think we take for granted how easily these things come to us as tech people.
- disillusioned 2y agoI'm more surprised that there's not a way to message the owner (or whomever has Find My registered for the airpods) without revealing their full information, but I guess that's a bridge too far, and they figure that Find My is good enough.
- exikyut 2y agoHow was their iCloud account all kinds of messed up?
- RockRobotRock 2y agoDidn’t remember their password, may have been logged in with their mom’s account, etc.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- latchkey 2y agoThis is also someone who loses stuff...
- firesteelrain 2y agoThey aren’t completely wrong. You just can’t use the speaker feature to play a sound. But Find My will still work
- rconti 2y agoIf I remember correctly, my airpods pro (an older model) only show the last location my phone saw them, which I think means, last time they were actually paired. I believe newer ones can be found 'anywhere' like an airtag.
- uberman 2y agoMy kids must have the old ones as they echo what you describe
- deaddodo 2y agoNewer models, the case will make a ping sound when you tap on it.
- temp_account_32 2y agoThat's weird, I use Find My for my AirPods case a lot and it does the "X feet away" thing as I get closer
- charrondev 2y agoIt’s better with the newer AirPod models. The older ones are bad enough that I have an AirTag attached to my AirPods case.
- nick-sta 2y ago[dead]
- tpmoney 2y agoOnly recent generation AirPods have an AirTag embedded in the case. Older models were limited to trying to play a loud sound from the bud if they were out of the case, and IIRC nothing useful for the case itself.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoFind nearby is a godsend.
- lxgr 2y agoThat was true for the initial model(s), but at least the ones I have now can be found (and audibly pinged!) in the case as well. It even works for the case without the AirPods in it. That part is definitely new, since the original cases didn't have any wireless hardware in them (and depended on at least one AirPod being in it to report their battery level, for example); the new ones have their own Bluetooth/UWB chain.
- joshiain 2y agoOn a recent holiday I'd just checked in to my hotel, went to unpack a bit and couldn't find my AirPods. I went to look at Find My to see where they were, but unfortunately I was in South Korea, and little did I know the location function in Find My doesn't work there. I thought it must have fallen out of my pocket while I was in the taxi, as I remembered having them as I got off the plane, and I have a bit of history with my earphones falling out of my pockets. I took a taxi from the taxi rank at the airport, so there was no record of who drove me like with Uber, but luckily I paid by card, and I could see what taxi company I used. I asked the staff at the hotel if they could help me call the taxi company to see if they could find out which driver dropped me off. They somehow managed to contact the driver, but he had not seen my AirPods. I went about the rest of my day while trying to convince myself that I didn't need a new pair. But while the location doesn't work with Find My, I could still play a sound through the case. So I would randomly hit it a few times hoping it was actually hidden away in my things. After losing all hope, later when I returned to my hotel room I found a note had been left for me saying the taxi driver had found my AirPods and turned them in to a local police station! Feeling excited I wouldn't have to go on the rest of my holiday without earphones, I happily made an hour long trip across the city to collect my AirPods, arriving just as the station was closing.
- hackernewds 2y agoCool story
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoIt's interesting how we have become so paranoid about privacy that we don't even give full "if found please contact..." information anymore.
- alcover 2y ago"And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind."
- miunau 2y agoAbout a year ago our cat went up the tree in our backyard and left his snap-off collar with an Airtag in a branch somewhere up there. We could ping it and hear it, but couldn't see it. So it got left up there for a year, rain, shine and hail. A couple of days ago I noticed it on the ground. Still working fine.
- DonHopkins 2y agoAt least if somebody stole the tree, you'd be able to track it down easier than putting up lost tree signs all over the neighborhood.
- floam 2y agoWish I had the courage to branch out into that kind of crime. "my that is a handsome tree" -> do something bold. now wake up with that tree in your yard the next day and every day after. that’s true freedom why track it? if i woke up to discover a freethinking, freewheeling apex man of action took my tree, i would just admire them. and flattered this caliber of person thought i had anything worth seizing. i wouldn’t tell the police. (but if i could track it, i might go visit it to witness the man i wish i was) if i was my girlfriend i might put a tracker into my finest tree, and leave me for any man that might ever take the tree. i couldn’t blame her. i would admire her
- chrisrodrigue 2y agoI love this kind of detective work. It blows my mind how easy it is to pinpoint someone with the smallest bits of identifying info.
- joshuamcginnis 2y agoI've washed (and dried!) my AirPods twice. They're still alive and kicking. Pretty cool.
- j45 2y agoAllowing the lost and found parties to communicate securely (and pseudo-anonymously) through the find my app could be interesting too. In some cases if it’s lost being able to put a reward message on the screen is valuable too beyond the price of the device. Apple could also put an AirTag in the AirPod cases for then those go away. Phone relative tracking is nice until batteries die.
- ErigmolCt 2y agoI feels like detective mission! Loved that
- HeavyStorm 2y agoWish kindles had any functionality like "Find My". I'm on my third Kindle, having forgotten one on a cab (I think) and another on a plane (I know for certain).
- jedberg 2y agoIt feels like Apple could help solve this. Make it a feature that if you find a device you can bring it near your phone and it will automatically set up a two way anonymous iMessage session.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kernelsanderz 2y agoSome heroes don’t wear capes. They wield scripts, API calls, and a bit of luck.
- the_arun 2y ago100%
- ivanjermakov 2y agoI feel like you should've been more careful with your question, unlawful people might answer that they lost AirPods although they didn't. Unless you have a way to verify they're truthful owners, I would ask something like "I have something that might belong to you, did you lose anything in the past few days?" EDIT: I missed the part about verification, my bad.
- nick-sta 2y ago[dead]
- groby_b 2y agoI mean, he said right in the article that they verified they paired. Also, despite all the press hysteria, "unlawful people" aren't so common that a bunch of 80 messages will automatically bring them out of the woodwork. Most people are decent.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- noahchen 2y agoI disagree. The suggested message is so generic, that it looks like spam, even to the person who lost the airpod. Also, the author said they verified that the airpods could pair with the owner's device
- chrisfosterelli 2y ago> "We confirmed that the AirPods paired, which wouldn't be possible if they didn't belong to them."
- RockRobotRock 2y agoTotally good point. I wanted the question to be direct without coming off mysterious or creepy. I knew people might lie, but I took a chance and figured the amount of liars would be manageable. If I hadn’t gotten lucky in finding them in <10 texts, I may have abandoned the idea. Only one other person tried to claim they were the owner.
- lagniappe 2y agoFound them in under 10 attempts? That's wild. Great story!
- adventurer 2y agoSort of find it interesting no one here questions whether or not he found the actual owner.
- sethammons 2y agoThe article explicitly states that they verified the owner and how
- sgerenser 2y agoBlog post said he verified they belonged to the guy when his phone paired with them, which wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t the actual owner.
- 38 2y agoand this folks is why I will never buy airpods. for $249, I can get 8 pairs of these: https://electronics.sony.com/audio/headphones/in-ear/p/mdrex155ap-b https://electronics.sony.com/audio/headphones/in-ear/p/mdrex... have purchased 4 already, happy with my decision
- kaashif 2y agoWhy...why did you purchase 4 pairs of those?
- adamomada 2y agoAnd this is why I will never buy a pomegranate. I can get eight oranges instead
- tourmalinetaco 2y agoLucky for me I love oranges.
- 38 2y agomore like an orange versus a slightly better orange
- userbinator 2y agoFor $249, I can get more than 10 pairs of Chi-Fi TWS.
- 2y ago
- tzm 2y agoHad no idea iMessage API exists
- RockRobotRock 2y agoWhen you enter a number into the messages app, your phone needs to know whether to send an iMessage or SMS. They must have reverse-engineered that call and turned it into a paid service. I don't think it's something Apple provides.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tdeck 2y agoI'm a little surprised you got lucky with the erroe code. For most people my age our area code seems to be tied to where we lived in about 2006, which is often not where we live now.
- tdeck 2y agoWeirdest typo ever. I really wish we could edit comments for dumb things like this.
- LoganVS 2y agoyou are awesome
- ww520 2y agoSpeaking of AirPods, do people have bad experience with their quality? I have an AirPods Pro 1st Gen for about 3 years and the noise cancellation function has degraded to the point of unusable. The Apple store technician said the audio hardware has failed diagnostic and it couldn't be repaired. For a $250 equipment failed after 3 years of moderate usage is pretty disappointing.
- taspeotis 2y agoNo
- opdahl 2y agoI had this issue and I «solved» it by cleaning the tiny microphone at the bottom with a toothprush. It’s a small slit that can get stuffed with dust etc and it impacts how well it can do noise cancellations.
- minimaxir 2y agoThat was a known issue with the 1st-gen AirPods Pro (Apple had a 3 year replacement program for them) but I've heard fewer issues with the 2nd-gen.
- tourmalinetaco 2y agoOne of my AirPods is weirdly quiet. I know it still has the potential to be loud, as I’ve gotten it to be at the same level of noise as the other, but it’s hardly consistent. I’ve tried cleaning it and it didn’t seem to help, but I may just try again. Definitely a shame, but I got them for free so I won’t complain too much though. (If they were fully repairable this wouldn’t be a problem though.)
- MengerSponge 2y agoI had an AirPod pro (2nd gen) become weirdly quiet. Still under warranty, Apple replaced it. It's some weird device failure. I spent a few days wondering if I had just lost hearing in that ear, but no.
- krisoft 2y ago
- refibrillator 2y agoI found some AirPods on a remote trail awhile back, case and all. Batteries were completely dead. Once charged they paired to my iphone with no indication of a previous owner, besides the device name of John’s AirPods or whatever. I tried briefly (not as hard as the author) to figure out who they belonged to but had no luck. I called Apple support and gave the serial number, but they told me there wasn’t anything they could do if the owner did not mark them as lost via the Bluetooth settings page. Even though at that point Apple presumably had all the information necessary to contact the original owner… So I cleaned the AirPods and have been using them since. Is there any way for me to find the owner if I have no info about the owners area code like the author did?
- bombcar 2y agoAirPods are a bit pricey but cheap enough that I wouldn’t even bother reporting them lost to the local park authority. I doubt there’s much you can do besides a sign at the trailheads.
- fsckboy 2y agothey're airtags essentially, aren't they? the person who lost them would report it to apple, not park officials, then they'd be found
- kjkjadksj 2y agoNo they wouldn’t. Apple doesn’t care. I tried.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoAren’t they like $160? That’s not cheap.
- boomboomsubban 2y agoValuing your time at $20 an hour, that's 8 hours worth of time for them. If the remote hiking spot is ~2 hours away, and it takes roughly an hour to deal with the park authorities, that's already 5 hours, plus transport. Add in the inconvenience of not having them for somewhere between a few days and forever, and I'd also say they aren't really cheap but still it probably isn't worth the effort in that situation.
- ThrowawayTestr 2y agoYou did a good deed. You should feel proud of yourself.
- radicality 2y agoSo you scripted sending the message to 84 different numbers, was that from your own personal iMessage account? I would be terrified of doing something like that, I imagine the account could get flagged for spam, and hearing the various tech horror stories, I wouldn’t be surprised if it could end up suspending your iCloud account with everything on it, blacklisting hardware devices linked to it, and who knows what else.
- 72736379 2y agoI'm not the author but my guess is that the API returns whether the number is registered with iMessage or not- like if you type in a number in a new text message it shows whether the message you're sending will be an iMessage or a text message. Don't think the author was spamming random numbers.
- radeeyate 2y agoThe author said that they scripted sending the messages to those numbers on their Mac rather than using something like Twilio.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- schrodinger 2y agoThat’s after screening to see if the number was linked to iMessage —- ie a valid iPhone attached to the number. That’s what that lookup service did. Then they scripted messaging the numbers that worked.
- hk__2 2y agoYes, and after screening they had 84 recipients to contact.
- RockRobotRock 2y agoYeah, I definitely should’ve thought it through more. I was just a little too caffeinated and excited.
- rationalfaith 2y ago[dead]
- modeless 2y agoIf you text 84 random iMessage numbers what are the chances that one of them lost their AirPods? Pretty high I bet.
- adastra22 2y agoThey verified by checking that the AirPods paired with the owners phone.
- ks2048 2y agoI wonder if the non-matches replied and how.
- ks2048 2y agoWouldn’t it make sense for Apple to have a “send anonymous message to the owner” option on that info page?
- peddling-brink 2y agoThere may be liability for Apple when that is inevitably abused.
- lokar 2y agoI wonder what they would do if you “lost” them in an Apple Store?
- hunter2_ 2y agoAt some point, during a meetup the person offering the item would demand a ransom leading to violence. Creators of this tech would much rather you use it only by yourself or with police, not to interact with strangers.
- helipad 2y agoI left my AirPods Pro at a school sports field an hour away, and I didn't realize until the next morning after it been raining heavily. I gave them up for lost and needed headphones for work – so ordered some from Apple with same day delivery. A week later, I got a Find My notification that they had been spotted – at the same sports field. I figured what the hell, put on a podcast and drove the hour to see if I could find them. Worst case scenario, a couple of hours of driving. Using Find My and the directional feature points you in the right direction to within feet, I found them in the tall grass. The case had been perfectly watertight, and they'd barely lost a percent of power in a week. Remarkable really all round.
- thekevan 2y agoI accidentally put mine through the washing machine. The aftermarket case I had them in died but the Airpods themselves survived just fine. That was 2 years ago and I still use them every day.
- furyofantares 2y agoI lost two sets in the snow at my mom's house. Where she lives the snow sticks around for 4 or 5 months. They would have been near the top of a few feet of snow where we were making snow angels and generally frolicking, and then covered up by additional snowfall. We found them once it melted. They both work fine.
- ErigmolCt 2y agoIt’s rare to hear (for my ears) such a perfect outcome when it comes to lost tech
- carstenhag 2y ago(in germany) Friend took multiple trains, Ubahn, Bus. 5 Seconds after leaving the bus, he realized he had forgotten his backpack with id, laptop, etc. We were "hunting" busses for 2h but couldn't find it. He didn't have Find My set up on the mac. Filed police report etc. A week later he got mail saying the bag was found in a train in Augsburg. Which was the 2nd of 4 legs of the trips or something, and he was completely off where he lost it :D
- tamimio 2y agoA while ago, I did something similar but with an AirTag. I found a few at a local thrift store, and whoever donated them still had them linked to their iCloud, so they were useless. But it was easier since the area code was known. I tried a few numbers, and luckily, one answered and removed them from their account.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- aledalgrande 2y agoMy friend left them in a rental car. He spent more than a week seeing them coming on and offline in Find My and moving around in a university area. Assumed someone had stolen them. Finally called the rental company and got access to the car: they were in the glovebox.
- benatkin 2y agoThis seems genuine to me, but I'm sure some unscrupulous people would love a story like this hitting the front page of HN. Props to the author for helping the user find their missing AirPods! I believe your story. If I see another story similar to this I may find it harder to believe.
- tzs 2y ago> I started with the assumption that the owner lived near me in the Portland metropolitan area. With that, I restricted the search to our local area code. Sure, they could be from out of town, but hey, let's give it a shot They could also be local but with a non-Portland area code. Generally, at least if you are using a nationwide cell phone carrier, you can move to another area code and keep your number. I wonder what percent of people do that?
- yieldcrv 2y agoNobody has had to change their cell number while moving across the US for 30 years I would say a high percentage of people do that, but portland may not have as many transplants as other cities Yeah it was a weird assumption and I’m glad it worked
- seabass-labrax 2y agoThis part of the story is even more surprising to me, as I'd never considered the possibility that mobile phone numbers could have area codes. The Portland metropolitan area has a population of just under three million according to Wikipedia[1]; my country has a population of just under seventy million and has only a single block of phone numbers allocated for cellular use. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_metropolitan_area,_Oregon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_metropolitan_area,_Or...
- sgerenser 2y agoThis is not the case in the U.S. (discussed elsewhere in this discussion). All phone numbers, landline or mobile, have an area code associated with a specific city/region. Since number portability became a thing in the early 2000s it’s much more common for cell phone users to just keep their number from decades ago, however, which will often not match the physical area they now live in.
- rootusrootus 2y agoThe US is also somewhat unique (not the only country, but one of a few) in that we can port numbers between landline and mobile. Most places keep them separate. I used this feature recently, after my mom passed. She had the same home number we grew up with, for fifty years. I ported it over as a second line on my mobile. Partly nostalgia (okay, mostly), partly because it was a pretty great number for memorization; it has an excellent number pattern.
- lxgr 2y agoLove the methodology, although they did get lucky that the number (in addition to being local) was not ported from an originally landline-specific block :)
- bandrami 2y agoMy favorite "what the hell are we doing?" moment was when I saw that they now sell lanyards for wireless earbuds because people keep losing them.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoI will never get over how apple figured out how to resell headphones someone already owns for $100+. Brilliant psychologists in their employ I am sure.
- nyanpasu64 2y agoYou could argue that it's less likely to tug your phone off a cable when using a lanyard between headphones compared to a wire to the audio source.
- paul7986 2y agoProbably not a popular opinion but I prefer smart glasses (take calls, listen to audio, ask what you see in front of you like whats that mountain, take pics/videos and more) to Airpods. For me glasses are more comfortable and not as easy to lose, especially since you have to store and charge them in the hard case they come with.
- spacecadet 2y agoI lost mine! Shat them out in the morning. Just in time for sprint planing, but not enough time to clean them out!
- divbzero 2y agoTaking them to an Apple Store might have worked too? Though not nearly as cool.
- mattgreenrocks 2y agoKinda love this. Some people would say it's creepy to do stuff like this, but creatively exercising your talents to reunite people with their lost stuff is a net win in my book.
- mewvn 2y ago[dead]
- mewvn 2y ago[dead]
- AdamJacobMuller 2y agoI lost a pair of AirTags on an international flight (in cargo), fortunately I only lost the AirTags, and not the actual bags they were attached to! One of the AirTags actually flew around internationally for a week or so (London, Amsterdam, back to the US a few times!) but sadly after about a week there were no more updates. Someone must have found the AirTag in whatever baggage container it was stuck in and removed the battery. I still have the AirTag in FindMy, one day I suppose I'll delete it but I sometimes wonder what happened to it. Did the person who found it just throw it out? Do recovered AirTags go back to Apple to be recycled and resold? Does the CEO of American Airlines, Robert Isom, have a scrooge-mc-duck-esque pool of lost AirPods he swims around in? Sometimes I wonder.
- ErigmolCt 2y agoIt must have been both amusing and frustrating to watch your lost AirTag go on its own international adventure
- ancientorange 2y agoWhy not put the airtag inside the bag? My lost tag is (presumably) attached to my keys at the bottom of a lake. I refuse to delete it from findmy.
- AdamJacobMuller 2y agoIt was a pair of scuba tanks in a custom bag which was too small for the tanks, so there was no really secure inside. But, it was attached to the handles with one of these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B34Y5YZS https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B34Y5YZS There are people who dive down and find lost stuff on the bottom of lakes, and people who go magnet fishing, they still might find your keys!
- glitchcrab 2y agoYes this was my reaction too, I can't see any reason to have the airtag on the outside at all.
- theoreticalmal 2y ago
- fallinghawks 2y agoI'm curious about the chances of the owner having the same area code as where the airpods were found. I think in many cases the mobile number is going to be from where you lived when you first got a mobile phone, which could have been (at least in my case) decades ago. But I'm glad you got lucky! I found an airtag in a parking lot last year. It behaved a bit strangely even with a fresh battery and resetting it, and it still seemed the owner had not marked it lost. A friend who was an Apple rep told me it was probably defective and to just throw it away. I put it in the garage meaning to take it to the hazardous waste facility and forgot about it for about 8 months. Came across it again and just for grins and giggles I gave it one more try -- it seems the owner finally did mark it lost, and I was able to pair it to my iPad. So I have an extra airtag now...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- firefoxd 2y agoAlright, so I have a project that is mostly abandoned right now due to various other obligations. The main goal was to contact car owners without having to have their phone numbers and such. But i quickly saw the advantage of tagging all sort of things. So I have it on my keychain, wallet, or several other things I own. If I lose these items, any stranger can contact me without having any of my personal contacts. What is it? It's a QR code. You scan it, and you can send some prewritten notifications to the owner. Once they reply, you can have a conversation. Scanning captures the gps location both for security measures and to help recover it. https://web.ottomon.net/join https://web.ottomon.net/join Landing page is totally misleading, I had big plans, but changing diapers took priority.
- ljlolel 2y agoThis is a great idea for losing stuff and you should finish and ship it.
- firefoxd 2y agoEventually I'll get to it...
- whoami730 2y agoAny plans about abroad shipping?
- throwaway984393 2y ago[dead]
- AndrewKemendo 2y agoBitRip does this exactly: https://www.bitrip.com/shop https://www.bitrip.com/shop
- firefoxd 2y agoExcept they don't have the cutesy startupy mascot that I have.
- doron2402 2y agoYou’re a good man! Awesome story
- someonehere 2y agoThere was a story of a hit and run in Florida recently where the teenager lost one earbud in the car that hit him. Using Find My they found the driver who hit them and arrested them for felony hit and run.
- bartvk 2y agoFound it. Quite amazing story: NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/us/airpod-hit-and-run-florida.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/us/airpod-hit-and-run-flo... Cache: https://archive.ph/sRHFV https://archive.ph/sRHFV
- RockRobotRock 2y agoI’m glad they caught the piece of shit. I’m also a victim of a hit and run.
- heywoods 2y agoIn the spirit of doing this all on an iPhone. Here is an iOS shortcut that is a workaround for the group text problem. https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/49fb6b48ba104885a846ea4f6f2b673a https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/49fb6b48ba104885a846ea4f6f2...
- max_ 2y agoWhat technology does Airpods & AirTags use to allow them to be located when lost? They have no cellular reception hardware. How to they transmit their location to Apple?
- waschl 2y agoI guess broadcasting beacons via Bluetooth to nearby iPhones, same principle like AirTags work
- max_ 2y agoIs it some kind of proprietary P2P mesh network?
- denysvitali 2y agoYes, with a strong emphasis on the proprietary part. Apple and Google both have their own networks. All the Apple devices (and now, rolling out, all the Google Play Services enabled devices) scan for nearby Bluetooth LE beacons (that use their protocol) and upload (with some cryptographic operation) the location of the device who found the beacon, together with the accuracy (signal strength) to a proprietary server (Google or Apple). Then, with the respective apps, the key holder can retrieve the reports for a given key hash and decrypt them to get the previous location. Technically speaking, anyone with the key hash can fetch the encrypted location reports from Apple / Google servers, but they can't decrypt them. On top of that, the key is rotating every 15 minutes (AirTag in paired mode) and there is no way to know that two keys are connected... unless you own the main key that is used to derive the rolling keys (see "update" and "diversify" in the linked paper). Now, all of this is fantastic, until you think of this as a monopoly. Apple and Google get an interesting tax on every device that gets built and joins this network (IIRC it's 4$ for partner devices in the Apple network). My problem with this is that no-one else other than Google and Apple can build an "open" network - you'd have to find a way to push your code to everyone's devices. I'm surprised no-one is investigating this unfair practice. See: https://doi.org/10.2478/popets-2021-0045 https://doi.org/10.2478/popets-2021-0045 and https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack
- kennyloginz 2y agoRandom late night story, my iPhone was lifted while being unattended. Using findmy, I was able to circle in on an apartment complex. After bugging the police for weeks, they finally met with me to look at my evidence. We met directly outside of the apartment. They didn’t leave their SUV. A week later I got the phone back , because you can place a message on the lock screen remotely. The janitor of the apartment called me because I offered ( and paid ) a 100 dollar reward and a number they could reach me at. Not sure if there is a lesson here, except the feature of remotely changing a Lock Screen message is a great feature.
- globular-toast 2y agoYou paid the thief?
- flumpcakes 2y agoIf the police can't help you this is the best you can do. I know lots of stories of people getting back their $1000+ gear only when they offer cash for the person to drop it and walk away or to anonymously return it. $100 to guarantee your device back is a small price to pay apart from the insult of paying the thief.
- sethammons 2y agoA former boss had the idea of fence.io - a digital stolen goods fence service allowing thieves to anonymously sell back goods to their original owners. It was a joke... mostly
- ewoodrich 2y agoA couple apartments ago I had to park on the street and without fail if I ever forgot to lock my car I would wake up the next morning and discover it had been rifled through with 50/50 chance my car charger and cables would be missing. Day dreamed about a system where instead of spending 30 bucks to replace my fancy QC later PD car charger I could pay a bribe of 10 bucks to the homeless person to whom a car charger was completely useless anyway with essentially no resale value.
- lukevp 2y agoPortlanders are the best! My brother was visiting us here and he lost his wallet at a major tourist attraction. He figured it was gone for good. Nope, someone turned it in with the $200 in cash still in it.
- rootusrootus 2y agoI think Portlanders are generally pretty nice, too. But as it turns out, leaving a bit of cash in your wallet works anywhere in the world. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/lost-wallets-are-more-likely-be-returned-if-they-hold-cash https://www.sciencenews.org/article/lost-wallets-are-more-li...
- echoangle 2y agoTIL American cellphone numbers use an area code that represents the actual location. Do you get a new number if you move and then change to a different provider? In Germany the cellphone area code is just out of a range your provider has registered and if you move to a different provider, you typically move over your number.
- rootusrootus 2y agoThe US and Germany both made number portability a thing in 1998. In the US you can port numbers between land lines and mobile. In Germany you cannot.
- bps4484 2y agoThey stay with you if you choose. What's kind of sentimental and nice is that the area code stays with you as marker of where you're originally from no matter where you go. It says "this is where I was from as a teenager when I was first allowed a cell phone." I don't know if this coincided with trend of getting an area code tattoo to signify where you're from, but that also is something that is done by some.
- throwway_278314 2y agoI remember the happy days when a telephone number (also an email) was a ephemeral, changeable thing. Not a permanent unchanging form of ID. Alas, if you move out of the country for a period of time, it is a challenge to maintain the host country phone service. So there are no guarantees that you can hold on to that signifier of "this is where I was the last time I wanted to get a new phone subscription". So the tattoo might be the better choice.
- akaxaka 2y agoJust get a prepaid sim and transfer your number to it, that does the trick for you!
- thowawatp302 2y agoWhen was that? My parent’s landline number stayed unchanged for 20 years. Through moves, too (with the caveat they stayed in the service area of the CO.)
- 8bitme 2y agoGood use of Fermi reasoning
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoI lost AirPods with an AirTag attached to them in my (now former) apartment complex's parking structure. It was Austin and so APD refused to help recover them despite me telling them there was an AirTag on them and they were still in the area, but moved to a vacant building leased by Google. Still no help from APD. Then, I watched them migrate to a residential address in another nearby town. Again, zero help from the Austin Police Department. Calling the police department in the other city was also of no help. tl;dr: Don't live in Austin. That Google building's security people were thieves. Reasons: Nonviolent crimes aren't policed in ATX because they're short ~300 officers. And, it also isn't prosecuted because the DA has the same views as other big cities, leading to more crime and a city death spiral.
- amarcheschi 2y agoA month ago or so I helped a tourist rescue his iPad which was stolen and throw in a field of tall grass. I also found a pair of 1st Gen airpods who weren't his, and I guess they were stolen some time ago. The old models don't have this feature, and bringing them to the police won't do anything here, since someone should voluntarily go to the police and ask for a pair of lost airpods... I've looked for and there aren't alternative ways to localize them or to get back the owner, it sucks
- manmal 2y agoI‘ve accidentally left my AirPods Pro in a safe in a hotel, and forgot about them. Over the next days I tried to get them back, but reception claimed that nobody has them. Now the Find My app reports them in a small town near where I „lost“ them, ca 600km from my home, and clearly someone is using and charging them (with Android? Because otherwise the „Lost“ functionality would be nagging them constantly). I won’t drive there (what would I even do if I found the person?), but this is quite maddening. I‘d rather not know where they are.
- yazaddaruvala 2y agoThe engraving service on Apple’s website is great! I engraved my entire phone number, including the +1, and I’ve had my AirPod returned to me twice now.
- sroussey 2y agoI did the same! Such an easy hack. Also the 1 helps balance/center the phone number.
- Spooky23 2y agoMy iPhone lost the ability to track my AirPods. I replaced my phone, and they don’t show up anymore. Fix is essentially to sign out/sign in to all devices. For me, that’s a real PITA. Apple magic is magic until it ain’t.
- gcanyon 2y agoThis wouldn't work for me; my area code is from Los Angeles, but I haven't lived there for fifteen years. I have lost my airpods, back in 2020 (it was the start of covid and I was taking off a mask in Thailand and flipped them out of my ears). I noticed they were missing twenty minutes later, used find my to get back to where I dropped them, had them make noise and found one of them.
- brirec 2y agoDoes this really only show the last four digits?! I lost my AirPods Pro in an Uber back in January, and they’ve been in Lost Mode ever since, and I regularly see them moving around between three or so different places on the Find My map. Nobody ever reached out to me, but if it doesn’t even show your number I guess they wouldn’t be able to…
- amelius 2y agoWhat if they got 50 responses instead of 1?
- Marciakhan 2y ago[flagged]
- antb123 2y agoLost on pont neuf while biking in Paris…. Found the case neatly put next to a mailbox. Earbud one about 15m / 50 ft away. Earbud 2 appeared in the seine river.. I guess some threw it in the river.
- soygem 2y agoI know a guy who lost his iPod...
- chasd00 2y agoI let my son take mine on a school trip to Japan. They’re still there only now it shows the left and right earbuds are about a block apart. Godspeed AirPod pro heh.
- osigurdson 2y agoWired earbuds: one hard to lose thing. AirPods: three easy to lose things.
- rootusrootus 2y agoSo you gain a bit of protection against losing them, and lose a bunch of convenience. It is a trade-off. I have precisely zero desire to ever go back to corded headphones. Between the cord noise and catching it on things, wireless headphones have been a marked improvement in the quality of my listening experience.