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Comment by aleph_naught | Hacker News Reader

It is more than just following around, you need to be followed home or to a known location in order to be alerted:

(Unrelated, but kind of sad that I got more information on how airtags actually work from a bike components review channel than dedicated tech reviewers)

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Most tech reviewers publish the reviews right after the Apple embargo ends or just a couple of days after getting the product. For something like AirTags, where you want to try more complex usage scenarios, this is not optimal.

Keep in mind the idea of "other iPhones will help you find your tags" was not even a thing you could test for when the first reviews came in, since iOS 14.5 was not out yet. Testing Airtags, therefore, was extremely complex for some edge cases and the experience was not as serendipitous as it would be now.

It didn't help that Apple was not very open on how the anti-stalking features work exactly, for obvious reasons (you don't want people to figure out how to bypass them).

> Keep in mind the idea of "other iPhones will help you find your tags" was not even a thing you could test for when the first reviews came in, since iOS 14.5 was not out yet

My understanding is that this is not actually true. AirTags using the existing "Find My" network of devices and iOS 14.5 is not required for Airtags to be tracked in the wild. iOS 14.5 is required, however, to pair to an AirTag as the owner or get the "this AirTag is stalking you" notification.

>It didn't help that Apple was not very open on how the anti-stalking features work exactly, for obvious reasons (you don't want people to figure out how to bypass them).

This is not a very good reason at all. People have already worked out basically every detail a week later as well as how to remove the speaker.

All this did was spam the internet with billions of questions confused about these features and if they will be left with a bunch of ringing tags if they go on a holiday or take a bus.

so it's nice that it notifies me there's an airtag on me but only when i get home - however if someone's nefariously tracking me, at that point it's too late.

If i have an Android i wouldn't even know that.

Well, the problem here is that there's no easy way to prevent false positives otherwise. Imagine if you leave your phone at home but take your keys with an AirTag to go shopping using public transportation. Everyone on the bus or the train will be getting notifications about an AirTag that is following them. Same if you lost an item with an AirTag in that bus or train even if you had your phone with you when you boarded it in the first place.

That's why the alert only pops up when you get to a known location (home/office).

As for Android, I wonder if an app could be made for phones equipped with UWB radios that alerts you if a tag is always in close proximity, just based on the tags radio activity.

You don't need UWB for safety alerts. Simply bluetooth is enough. These tags send out a message every 2 seconds and have a predictable part of the rotating key so if you see the same fixed portion multiple times in a row, its very likely to be the same tag (unlikely that multiple different tags were near you one at a time with exactly the same fixed part) but if you do something like set up tracking stations at malls, there will be too many duplicates.

Or if you have an iphone and someone plants a samsung tag on you, you also get no notification. Someone could also just follow you home. Airtags at least prevent long term stalking which is difficult to pull off without them.

The cat is well out of the bag now. I think Apple, Google and Samsung all need to get together and standardize safety alerts.

Tech reviewers are too busy praising Apple and calling everything they make magical. There are very few real tech review sites that test devices based on objective criteria. They don't get as much traffic compared to websites like The Verge.

The Verge still has quality content as long as you keep in mind almost all of their reviewers live in the US, they are all in the Apple ecosystem, and they wouldn't be able to talk their family and friends if they switched to Android anyway.

They have no reason to be enthusiastic about anything that's not an iPhone or an iPhone accessory.

> There are very few real tech review sites that test devices based on objective criteria. They don't get as much traffic compared to websites like The Verge.

The industry has a very carrot-stick mentality. Gamers Nexus for example gets shit on by everyone especially when they call this shit out while the "real gaming" channels just go along with anything to get review copies.

The riser short-circuit fire hazard fiasco made me respect them quite heavily.

Well that’s about 50% of the US market that you’re describing and honestly the US market is the number 1 priority for companies, followed by China. Other countries are faaaar behind in third+ place.

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