Apple's stance on air tags is ridiculous. For one thing, you will only know if someone is criminally tracking you if you are an apple user. Android users have no luck.
Secondly if this is true and you stole a bag, all you need to find the air tag would be to hold an iphone close to it for a few minutes. So what's the point of it then?
Apple's Tracker Detect app for Android does not automatically scan for AirTags. Users must open the app and manually initiate each scan, then wait at least 10 minutes after detecting an AirTag before causing it to emit a noise.
A much better alternative is the free and open source AirGuard app developed by the Technical University of Darmstadt. It automatically scans for AirTags, Tiles, and other Bluetooth tracking devices in the background. When AirGuard detects an AirTag, the user can immediately force the AirTag to emit a sound without having to wait.
I think there is a clear difference between traditional tracking devices and airtags, as the former has always been a lot more shady than the latter, which has more legitimate use-cases.
The airtag will start making noise if its away from its owner too long and moving around. When you find it you can bring it to a police station and they can use the serial number to get the owners details from Apple.
Sure its not bullet proof, but I really don't know they had any better options. Apple is currently by far the best at attempting to stop tracking of all the tracker tile products.
An end game solution would be all the OEMs working together one some anti tracking notification spec but that isn't easy to arrange.
At this point people have worked out how to just reflash the firmware on the devices. It's just not really possible to make something impossible to abuse, its just up to the legal system now.
It's impossible to make a knife that isn't trivial to abuse but we accept that the utility makes it worth allowing them and use the legal system to go after the abusers.
There are technical reasons... Uploading data to Find My requires a connection to apple.com which is authentic (ie. Uses crypto keys from the apple device, and apple won't give those keys to an android manufacturer).
You really think Apple would say "no" if Samsung or Google said they want to connect their devices to the Find My network? They'd give the keys in a heartbeat.
But neither G nor S is willing to provide extra coverage for Apple nor do they want their phones connecting to a system they can't datamine.
I think the crux of the issue is that G & S won't work with A because A runs things like a dictatorship. Which is ironic considering how many international standards/specs A uses for their devices.
Pretty sure Apple would make a special "Apple-Fi" incompatible with standard Wifi if they could get away with it.
Currently it's a unique selling feature of the Apple ecosystem. If every phone could do it, then Apple would lose this benefit, and Apple would still be paying for all the servers.
I think while bad actors now have another thing for their mental checklist and could easily detect an airtag, there would still be a non-zero number of cases where the airtag helps.
> Secondly if this is true and you stole a bag, all you need to find the air tag would be to hold an iphone close to it for a few minutes. So what's the point of it then?
The point appears to be that someone is going to trial for theft.
Some comments suggest this application only works while it is open, and will not passively notify you of trackers in the background. I don't know if that's true, or if it's just due to some phone OS killing the background process to prop up battery metrics.
Secondly if this is true and you stole a bag, all you need to find the air tag would be to hold an iphone close to it for a few minutes. So what's the point of it then?