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Comment by jjcm | Hacker News Reader

One thing I found curious from the event was that they added a "find my" feature to the mag wallet. They advertised it by saying something along the lines of "find where your wallet was last detached". This was likely a response to just how bad the magnetic attachment for these wallets was. It just slides off when you put your phone in your pocket. You can see how much these slide around in these clips:

Low grip strength: https://youtu.be/HNX1v-mJmEA?t=141

Coming off when pocketing: https://youtu.be/HNX1v-mJmEA?t=225

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That was one of the more curious announcements. Presumably Apple will release a new SKU that has an integrated AirTag?

EDIT: Yes they did add a new SKU. https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MM0Q3ZM/A/iphone-leather-...

As replies note, there's no new tech, just tracks last detached.

Weird footnote:

Requires iPhone Leather Wallet with MagSafe and iPhone 12 or later with Find My enabled in iOS 15. Not supported on Clear Case with MagSafe.

No from saying “last detached” I’m betting it’s just adding a hook into the phone that logs the current location each time the wallet is removed from the back of the phone. There’s really not space in the current design of the wallet that you could squeeze an AirTag into.

Just think when all the "find my" features are baked into everything Apple. They will know that you are 30 feet away from your Apple TV. And they will know if when your family is away from the HomePods...

This will give Apple insight spatially how you move and interact in your home, compared to other devices and each other. Lots of insights to be gleaned.

> This will give Apple insight spatially how you move and interact in your home, compared to other devices and each other. Lots of insights to be gleaned.

True, but the explicitly do not collect any of that data, so it’s useless to “Apple” as a whole.

You seem to be unaware of how Find My works. Only the user has access to the data. *

* Unless they build in another backdoor.

I conclude there’s no airtag-tech in the wallet. If there were they would have said something like ‘find my will locate your wallet’ But they specifically say the LAST place it disconnected from your phone. So they must be tracking when it disconnects and updating find my…

I’ve been using a 3rd party magnetic wallet and one of the challenges is that the magnet is so strong that sometimes I struggle to pull the phone out of my jeans pocket.

Do you have a link to the one you use? I've been looking for one with strong magnetism

The PopSocket MagSafe wallet is crazy strong - I can fling my phone around by the PopSocket without fear….

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