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Comment by jypepin | Hacker News Reader

This is directly competing with Tile[0] which you can buy 2 for 39.99.

I guess the integration with Find My app would be pretty convenient but probably not worth the price difference?

[0] https://www.thetileapp.com/en-us/store/tiles/sticker

In addition to what the other commenter said, Tile products are very flaky. The price difference doesn't matter to me, since Tile's products just don't work.

Tile has been complaining for some time that their products are flaky because new iOS privacy measures prevent them from accessing location data while running in the background, even if the user sets the app permission to "always allow."

https://9to5mac.com/2020/04/02/apple-breaking-promises/

Android does the same if anyone's wondering

Android has a (functioning?) always allow setting.

I mean this doesn't seem that bad? I share my location with my SO with Google Maps and every so often my phone pops up a thing that's like "hey you wanna keep doing that?", I tap yes, and move on. I do the same with Tile.

I've never had flakiness with Google's implementaion on iOS. What does Tile need in the background that keeps it from working?

Apple's own apps don't ask if you want to keep letting them access your location.

destroy your competition by means of public apis! its great

Yeah it used to be more reliable until a few OS updates ago, so I definitely believe tile on this front.

Used to be more reliable, but also consumed ~10% of my battery on any given day. It's a trade-off

that link says that "always allow" doesn't exist (needs to be reinstated)

IMO the big advantage of AirTags will be that you can locate them if they're near anyone with an iPhone, but Tile is limited just to their own users. Anecdotally I don't know anyone who uses Tile but I know plenty of people with iPhones.

My motorcycle keys had a tile on them, and my dad was driving it around for an extended trip. I got 1 (singular) tile ping, his entire 6 week trip.

The fact that any iPhone (> 11) will ping home with the location of one of these is the croudsourced killer feature in the making for 2 years before release.

I'm in for a 4 pack.

I know a lot of people who with Android phones which makes AirTags the limited item.

Also FWIW Samsung has SmartTags where Samsung phones (forgot which version+ is required) will ping tags if lost in public. There's prob more Samsung phones than Tile users - so what Apple is doing w/ their ecosystem isn't innovative.

I have Samsung, my wife has Apple...so we're sticking with Tile.

The tile ones only have 150-400ft range, which is fine for locating things in your home, but not so great if you lose something out in public

And honestly not even that good in your home. I love their product design, but the functionality never lived up to the promise.

Ah interesting, I've never used Tile so I didn't know it had such a limited range.

Uhm...that's how bluetooth works? It's the same technology as AirTag.

Tile has an ecosystem where other tile users can back to you a tile you reported as lost.

Samsung has their where their SmartTag, anyone with a Samsung phone can report your SmartTag location.

The U1 might be a big differentiator - a lot more fine tuned way of determining the presence (spatially) of where the airtag is

Difference is also that majority of iOS devices people are carrying will be part of the tracking network.

Not sure how widely Tile is used. One issue on iOS with them is that you get these regular prompts ”Tile has been using your location - do you want to disable it”.

yeah but they can’t use apples internal apis to track things. so apple gets to cheat unfairly on ios

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apples-find-my-networ...

Do you think Tile will be allowed to participate? At what cost?

Tile declined to participate...

Interesting. Is it free to join? Would Apple get early looks or veto power over new products? Seems like Tile is in a tough spot no matter what.

It's just different branded AirTags, isn't it?

lol so they can maybe catch up in a year when apple is releasing their product using those apis now

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