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Comment by fblp | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what the internal discussion at Apple was about whether or not to include a loophole in the product.

The fact that fixit has gone out and shown how you can add a loophole rather than wasting $13 on an accessory is a bit of a facepalm moment.

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I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that their guiding principle with this was as it is with every other portable device they have now - make it as small as practically possible and let people extend it if and how they want[1] to.

Saves a little bit of material, makes manufacturing a little less complicated, and makes the accessory ecosystem a whole lot more appealing.

1. I don’t carry a keychain, for example, but I’ll slip one in each of my bags.

> I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that their guiding principle with this was as it is with every other portable device they have now - make it as small as possible and let people extend it if they want

Here I am, desperately clutching my nearly-obsolete iPhone in my small hands, waiting for Apple to return to this principle and make an iPhone that I can comfortably use one-handed again.

> Here I am, desperately clutching my nearly-obsolete iPhone in my small hands, waiting for Apple to return to this principle and make an iPhone that I can comfortably use one-handed again.

I've been using the iPhone12 Mini for months. It works great, one-handed.

I have heard that it has not sold well, and may be discontinued. That would make me sad.

I upgraded from an iPhone SE (5 body) to an iPhone 12 mini.

Here’s the thing: the 12 mini has the same dimensions as the iPhone 6 that I deemed too big originally. I picked up my old phone the other day and holy shit did it feel nice in comparison.

If you were holding out for an iPhone 5 sized phone then this wasn’t it; no wonder it didn’t sell so good in that demographic. I only bought it because I wanted to support smaller phones- but realistically it’s not small enough.

EDIT: I think I’m wrong but it’s closer to the 6 than the 5:

5: H 123.8mm (4.87 inches) W 58.6mm (2.31 inches) D 7.6mm (0.3 inches)

6: H 138.1 mm (5.44 in) W 67.0 mm (2.64 in) D 6.9 mm (0.27 in) (inc. lens, 7.5 mm, 0.30 in)

12 Mini: H 131.5 (5.18 in) W 64.2 (2.53 in) D 7.4 mm (0.29 in)

No, you're right. The screen makes it a LOT bigger than the iPhone SE (what I had used, previously).

But it's just at the upper limit at what I can do one-handed.

I traded in an XS Max for it. I don't miss that big honker, one bit. I use it as a test device, nowadays.

To easily do everything with one hand, swipe down from the bottom (as if unlocking but down), then you pull the upper part of the screen down. Works everywhere. (I also have the 12 mini btw, really like it)

The iPhone 12 Mini is great. I will never go back to a bigger phone again. The lack of all day battery life is a feature in my opinion. I use it more like a fancy tool.

“Lack of all day battery” depends on how you use it. I have 2 day battery (about 2-3 hr screen time/day). Since I got a second sim it decreased somewhat though, negated again to a agree by setting WLAN call.

iPhone mini exists. It has lackluster sales though so I think Apple will kill it in the next iteration.

Which iPhone do you have that is much smaller than the 12 Mini?

I have the 8 (I think? whichever one was the last to have the home button) and it’s only slighty bigger than the 12 Mini in size but it’s actually the screen on the newer phones that are too big. There isn’t a way to comfortably hold it and reach all of the real estate one-handed.

I know I can do the stupid scoot the screen down thing but if you’ve ever tried to use that on a regular basis you’d see how worthless and frustrating it is. It’s a waste of time and sometimes it hides part of the screen that I need to see!

Honestly, if Apple would just let me set a top bar as like a clock or something across the whole iOS and shrink the functional display to the size of the iPhone 4 I’d be a happy camper. It would be ugly as anything but I don’t even care because it would, ironically, be far more functional to me if I could just set the top quarter inch of the screen to be completely non-functional.

Is the 2020 SE still too large? Because I'm pretty sure they're not going smaller than that unless it's for radically cheaper devices targeted at the third world and I don't see that happening.

This was my thought as well. I’d probably never put these in a loop - I’ll place one in my bag, on my measuring tape (ha), and my wife will probably use one too... Most likely without attaching it to anything, just sticking it in a pocket or whatever. It’s fine for all of our use cases.

Beside the size it's probably a tradeoff on mechanical integrity: a keyring can introduce immense mechanical stress. On my last tag the small loophole just broke away after a year on a key that was not used daily or in harsh environments. With the AirTag you can just replace a $2 third party accessory. Apple didn't have to engineer a very durable (maybe milled?) loophole, which would have increased cost.

This is what I would guess. They didn't want to see a bunch of broken look airtags floating around in a year's time and they also didn't want to spring for the metal reinforcement.

Great response. Thank you!

While ifixit did drill a hole, we have no way of knowing how durable that hole will be. The drill point looked pretty close to the edge, simple fatigue may snap the hole quite quickly.

Because it's not going to be $13, you'll surely be able to buy 5 for $6 off Amazon soon for whatever kind of holder-with-loophole you want.

People love customizing their things. Some people will need large holes, other tiny ones, depending on what they're attaching it to. Some will want to make their AirTag bigger and bulkier, others not.

In this case I think Apple made the absolutely right decision.

Put one in your ear as a tunnel. Remember tunnels?

I think it has as many non-loophole uses as loophole uses, so I can see why they chose to cut down on bulk there. I put one in my wallet and one in a small internal pocket in my bag, neither are actually attached.

I can't remember the last time I actually lost my bag or my wallet, but these are definitely pretty fun.

It's really not though. I just bought a four pack, and I only want a loophole on one of them (so I bought the Belkin holder).

Additionally, the nice thing about the keyring is that the airtag is parallel to the keychain loop, while with a keyring its perpendicular - to me this is huge in terms of comfort on my keychain

prettty sure the entire point was so they can make money off accessories

IP67, size, and design. Your comment is more of a facepalm moment.

>add a loophole

Now, throw it in a glass of water for an hour.

I'd be amazed if it didn't trash the IPx7 rating, which is an AirTags differentiator over Tile.

That's a silly argument. There's absolutely no reason that a built-in loophole would have to let water in (unlike iFixit's drilled hole, which might).

i meant that iFixit’s argument that you could be cheeky and drill a hole for a key ring is true, but also would in all likelihood ruin the waterproofing.

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