Never Lose Your Stuff Again thanks to Apple AirTags!
You ever lose your keys at the most in-opportune time such as right before you are getting ready to leave for a job interview? Did you leave your wallet back at that coffee shop while on a long road trip? Or did your bags get lost at the airport upon arrival at your destination? Well, Apple’s newest product, called AirTag may help you find your items easier than ever.
You may be thinking to yourself, “What’s the difference between this and the already widely-known Tile that I can get?” Well, to be honest, they are not particularly different. Where they differ is with how deeply they integrate with Apple’s “Find My” system, which for some is a huge plus if they already have other things that take advantage of the feature is recent versions of iOS.
One of the nice things about AirTags is that unlike Tile, you do not need a separate App just to use them. However, you do need to have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to use them. You just must make sure that the device you wish to use them with is running iOS 14.5 or later. If you also wish to have the Precision Finding feature, you need to have an iPhone with Apple’s U1 chip, which can be found in the iPhone 11 and higher. The Precision Finding feature gives you an arrow with precise directions as to where your AirTags are.
Some users have also mentioned worries about privacy. Just like other devices that use Apple’s Find My network, no personally identifiable information is shared with anyone at any time thanks to their end-to-end encryption and use of random and unique identifiers. This means that only your devices know which identifiers are yours. Further reinforcing the importance to privacy, Apple only sends out the location information when you request it and even then, they only keep it around on their servers for 24 hours. The only exception to this is when you have placed your AirTags in Lost Mode. Because of the vast amounts of iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, Apple users the devices of others to help you find your AirTag by having the devices anonymously send the location of the AirTag to the Find My network which sends it back to you. Pretty neat way to make use of the devices that users already have if you ask me.
If you are someone who loves to personalize your devices, Apple allows you to customize your AirTags with free engraving which includes over 31 different Emoji as well. Just be aware that Apple has recently started to deny some of the engraving requests as some people have tried to send profane and obscene words and Emoji combinations.
To further add to the longevity of the devices, Apple also allows users the ability to be able to replace the AirTag’s batteries thanks to their use of a standard CR2032 Coin-Cell battery, which is honestly an unexpected, but welcomed surprise from Apple. Another unexpected, but welcomed surprise is that Apple added the ability for Lost AirTags can be touched by other iPhones as well as Android Devices with NFC to get the ownership information such as a phone number or something similar.
AirTags are currently $29 each, but you can get a 4-pack of them for $99. You can order them now and expect them to start shipping by April 30th.
