WTH

williamlondon said:

WTH said:

Beats said:

Apple can at least take the blame if they fu** up. I’ve had Apple employees just hand me a refurbished device no questions asked when I’ve dropped my devices and broken them. Great customer service and no bashing original Apple products to promote some spyware cheap knockoff. 

Last month I took my iPhone to the Genius Bar to replace a dying battery.  In the process of replacing the battery, the tech damaged the logic board.

I walked out of the Apple Store with a brand new iPhone for the price of a battery replacement.  A third-party repair shop could never do that.

Another ridiculous fucking statement, absolute drivel. JFC a course in logic is definitely needed around here.

I often have to wonder if the people who post in these forums just sit around trying to think of ways they can get angry at what someone has said.

Allow me to clarify:  if I walk into a third party repair shop, I can just about guarantee that if they destroy my iPhone in the course of a repair, that they are not going to hand me a brand new Apple product on the spot as compensation.  What they will do is apologize and comp the repair, or try to obtain a refurbished unit (which may take a few days), or order more parts to fix it (which again may take a few days).  But they will not give me a brand new iPhone so that I can leave in less than an hour as a happy customer.

You think I need a course a logic?  You should try one in anger management.

Beats said:

Apple can at least take the blame if they fu** up. I’ve had Apple employees just hand me a refurbished device no questions asked when I’ve dropped my devices and broken them. Great customer service and no bashing original Apple products to promote some spyware cheap knockoff. 

Last month I took my iPhone to the Genius Bar to replace a dying battery.  In the process of replacing the battery, the tech damaged the logic board.

I walked out of the Apple Store with a brand new iPhone for the price of a battery replacement.  A third-party repair shop could never do that.

mike1 said:

That seems problematic. So, the tag in my suitcase that is stored in a closet could start to play an alert if I am away for as little as 8 hours?! That would be every single work day. My wife will hit me over the head with the suitcase after she tracks down the annoying sound and I get home from work.

It does seem that Apple is already jumping the shark with the AirTag.  This 8 to 24 hour window won't enhance the AirTag, it will simply make it extremely annoying.  Imagine leaving an AirTag on a set of keys while you go on a business trip, and having it drive your family crazy beeping away because you failed to take it with you.

The irony is that it was the Washington Post that published an extremely damning article on how the AirTag would be used by stalkers - the same Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos, whose own Amazon Sidewalk mesh network is going online next week.  I would bet any amount of money that the Post won't be publishing any stories on how Sidewalk-enabled devices will be abused by stalkers.

sflocal said:

Stalkers abusing this is a valid concern.  I'm hoping to see what the real-world issues are when it comes out.  I live in San Francisco and garage break-in's are common here.  AirTags would be perfect for tagging some of my high-priced items in case of theft.  To think that a stranger's iPhone would get a prompt of an unknown AirTag would seem to me like message overkill has me thinking there's a practical solution to prevent stalking, yet give victims of theft a useful and accurate location for the police.

It all depends on how long the user has to be in the vicinity of the AirTag in order for it to send an alert.  Being around the AirTag for a few hours shouldn't trigger it; otherwise you'd get alerts just by being near coworkers or friends every day, which would be overkill.  If there is (for example) a 72-hour delay before the AirTag starts to alert nearby users, then that's all the time I need to locate my stolen property and report it to the police.  The devil is always in the details.

If a stalker wants to track you, they'll have much better (and more anonymous) tools to do it with than an AirTag.  Apple is trying to head off any criticism about potential abuse,  but this technology is eventually going to be embedded into a lot more than Apple products.

smiffy31 said:

So these are more for lost items than stolen items.  If a thief has an iPhone and gets informed that the stolen item is following them, they can use the instructions to disable the stole items tag !

Which would make them completely useless for what most people would want to buy an AirTag for - to track a stolen item.  So basically Apple would cede that segment of the market to Tile, which is already used for exactly that purpose.

I really hope Apple doesn't deliberately cripple one of its most interesting products in that way.