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The Find My network can be opted out of in the settings [1]. And if I remember correctly, it asks you to opt in (but I might be remembering wrong)

I have somewhat the opposite opinion though that there are way too many settings in iOS now and it does get difficult to dive through all the menus. Best thing I can recommend is to use the search in the settings.

[1] https://www.howtogeek.com/725664/how-to-opt-out-of-apples-fi...

Seems kind of ridiculous that in order to opt out of Apple's airtag network you essentially have to give up the ability to find your phone if it gets lost.

They use the same system

They didn't use to, though. And you can't get that old functionality back while disabling the new.

Yes you can, they have different toggles.

There are currently two independent systems for finding your phone that work in different but complementary fashions.

Well arguably 3 systems, an iPhone can also be set to report it’s location when the battery is low.

No this will just turn off the ability to find your phone by using other people's phone. You will still have the phone report its location and be able to locate it in "Find My" but lose features such as being able to find the phone if its out of battery/turned off/not in cell reception range.

Image of the current settings and explanation: https://imgur.com/a/TepOqb2

It's not ridiculous at all - you don't get to reap the benefits of the network without participating.

Find My iPhone primarily uses the phone to self-report its position when requested over the Internet.

This new "Find My" network (what a stupid name, btw) also allows to use other devices to report positions of nearby devices for those that don't have a data connection (AirTags or iPhones that were powered off).

The problem seems to be that a single toggle controls both features, while the first feature doesn't rely the community network and should remain available even if you opted out.

Thats actually how it is set up.

Current settings screen: https://imgur.com/a/TepOqb2

As others are mentioning, I see two toggles, and the second toggle is "Find My network" which is the one that works by other people's iPhones detecting your iPhone even when it's offline, in power reserve mode, or powered off.

As I understand it, Airtags are low-power Bluetooth devices with no GPS capability.

If your Bluetooth transceiver is disabled, your iOS device will not see nor report the locations of any Airtags that are otherwise in range.

If you do enable Bluetooth on an iOS device, any Airtags detected will be reported to Apple over any available data connection, and this cannot be disabled in iOS as far as I know.

Disabling Bluetooth will likely save any device's battery. This is separate from GPS and mobile data.

> If you do enable Bluetooth on an iOS device, any Airtags detected will be reported to Apple over any available data connection, and this cannot be disabled in iOS as far as I know.

That certainly seems to contradict Apple's own documentation on the Find My network. At least according to my interpretation, it seems very clear that disabling the "Find My network" toggle will disable your device's participation in the network.

I don't think it's clear. It's clear that it will disable the ability for _your device_ to be a _findable target_ device in the network.

It doesn't particularly imply that your device isn't still acting as a 'base' for other devices in the network.

It seems pretty clear to me that the setting is symmetrical, and disabling it prevents your device from being discovered by other devices and from sending messages about other devices it discovers:

> Find My can use the Find My network to help find devices even if they are not connected to the internet and, for supported devices, even if they are turned off or erased. Devices in the Find My network use Bluetooth wireless technology to detect missing devices or compatible items nearby, including AirTags and compatible third-party products registered to your Apple ID, and report their approximate location back to the owner. If a device is turned off or erased, that location is also visible to members of the owner’s Family Sharing group with whom they have chosen to share the location. The interaction is end-to-end encrypted, and Apple cannot see the location of any offline device or reporting device. When your device participates in the Find My network, it can both be located by the network and anonymously help locate other missing devices. You can choose to have your iOS or iPadOS device not participate in the Find My network by going to Settings > [your name] > Find My > Find My [device] and tapping to disable Find My network.

This is not how it works. There are two different toggles, one for the Find My system, and one for just having your iPhone report its last condition. If you dont care about being able to find your phone/devices when theyre off, then you can simply opt out of the Find My network and rely on the basic position reporting.

Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Content Restrictions is an example of a nested settings labyrinth that is somewhat hard to navigate for parents just trying to keep their kids from seeing bad stuff, esp. as it interacts with individual app behaviors. Ex: set TV restrictions to 9+ and the Netflix app entirely vanishes, instead of just filtering its content. Scalable trustworthy content filtering delegation for families seems unsolved.

I’m not sure if this an Apple or Netflix issue . Is there an api that Netflix could use to determine if content restriction is enabled ?

> Read the media rating on a device and determine what media to display on your app.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/managedsettings/re...

On the apps, yes a ton of wildly popular services will vanish below 13yo.

I understand the calculation on the companies side, and there’s also a widespread “children shouldn’t be using/doing/viewing anything mildly risky” kind of mentality spreading around that makes it a no-risk move to just ban kids from a platform.

I recently wanted to move a youtube account inside the family management umbrella, and setting it’s age at 11 meant the account couldn’t see nor write comments on any video anymore. And there’s no authorization the parent can give to lift the restriction. Of course to move the age back you need an official ID as proof, so it was a one way move…

Isn’t that because of COPPA, which makes it illegal to retain any personally identifying information about or from people under age 13?

Yes and no. COPPA has a direct role in the 13 yo cut-off, but it’s not the whole story.

For instance I’m directly mentioning Youtube, but outside of comments it’s still somewhat usable for a 13- yo kid.

Twitter could have set a mode for 13yo (idk, have parents pre-vet the tweets if they are really into controlling ?) but it looks like it was simpler for them to just ban pre-teen accounts.

I’m not sure facebook can deal with pre-13 yo either.

Basically the shittier the company, the less it will be able to handle the pre 13yo case, and I wouldn’t put the blame on COPPA.

A prompt of "these apps will now be hidden" sounds like a start.

Getting more specific and explaining *why* certain apps are being hidden for a given age setting would be even better. Each app would probably provide its own explanatory string to be displayed (so the liability and complaints can be shifted to the apps, and the whole idea could actually get off the ground ;) ).

I'm honestly curious why Netflix is being hidden in particular. I immediately thought of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COPPA, but then realized that law is around data collection and privacy. Is Netflix just checking out completely because of that, or is there some more nuanced media-specific thing they're avoiding falling afoul of by disappearing for 9+?

This is partially tongue an cheek, but have you considered playing instructions on how to properly setup security to your neighbors airplay speakers?

They might never even realize what happened and think the message was automatic

    > sometimes radically modify the behavior of the device you purchased and may make it unsuitable for the original purpose you bought it for.

This is one of the reasons (along with price) that I try to stick to Apple products that are too old for them to care about. I'd like to see them try to remove functionality from my iBook G4! (Granted, it didn't have as much functionality to begin with, but what it does it's stuck with for now.)

I tend to research purchases extensively before I buy, and it's incredibly frustrating when the manufacturer decides that actually, the product I bought wasn't finished yet, let's have an update to add/change new and exciting features. I chose to buy a specific device with specific features, and if I decide I want new features I'll trade it in for next year's model.

(Incidentally, is it possible to get security updates for Apple devices without getting feature updates? Not for the G4 of course, but my iPad mini keeps asking me to upgrade iOS and I don't want functionality to change.)

> (Incidentally, is it possible to get security updates for Apple devices without getting feature updates? Not for the G4 of course, but my iPad mini keeps asking me to upgrade iOS and I don't want functionality to change.)

No, and then yes, and then no again:

No, if it's older than iOS 14.

And then yes, if it is:

https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/apple-will-let-users-stay-on-...

And then no again :-(

https://www.techspot.com/news/93052-apple-stops-issuing-ios-...

Unfortunately that doesn't really work for devices that connect to the internet and/or deal with untrusted data - those have to be kept up to date.

re: AirPlay speakers, if you really never want to use AirPlay you can apply a configuration profile that disables it entirely. These are the profiles that allow IT departments to enforce all sorts of policies on employee computers. You could use ProfileCreator to make one: https://github.com/ProfileCreator/ProfileCreator

Increasingly it feels like powerful configuration settings are only available via IT management profiles like these. I use one to enabling full system logging since that’s the only way.

Oh thanks, I'll definitely do that. I use profiles on iOS and am fairly familiar with them but didn't bother checking as I assumed macOS not being so locked down wouldn't have "profile-only" settings.

I'll also use the opportunity to disable Apple News, TV+, widgets and similar bloat I'm not using.

Wow I’m glad to meet someone else that does this as well! Next iOS device I get I’m going to set it up as “managed” from the start so I’ll have access to the more powerful security configuration profile settings.

It’s telling that these days corporate IT departments have more powerful configuration options available to them than us mere users.

> It’s telling that these days corporate IT departments have more powerful configuration options available to them than us mere users.

If it was purely up to Apple they'd rather not give anyone these options at all, however that won't fly in the enterprise so they have to compromise.

> In my case, the audio devices menu on Mac/iOS displays nearby AirPlay targets, including those not on the LAN. My neighbors got their misconfigured so it always pollutes my menus with no way to disable this even though I never use AirPlay and don't have any compatible hardware (nor intend to get any).

Make it play Rick Astley until they fix it.

Play the russian national anthem on loop if you really want to make them hustle

Or the shitty fluted version to extra grating (and extra speed!).

Could be a fun wardriving project to do.

> In my case, the audio devices menu on Mac/iOS displays nearby AirPlay targets, including those not on the LAN. My neighbors got their misconfigured so it always pollutes my menus with no way to disable this even though I never use AirPlay and don't have any compatible hardware (nor intend to get any). Every time there's a risk of misclicking and accidentally broadcasting a meeting's audio or (if they have auth enabled) annoying the neighbor by waking up their Apple TV (or taking over whatever they've been watching)

"Accidentally" broadcasting a few times is probably all you need to do to get them to fix their stuff... They probably don't even know.

1. I empathize with all your pain points

2. "forcing me to buy a USB headset." --> If it has a boom, everybody on the meeting, unknowingly, thanks you :)

I haven't found anything that compares to even a middling wired boom mic. Wireless has too much latency and non-boom has too much noise.

The only thing better is an actual VoIP phone (eg Polycom).

It is polarizing though. There are a lot of people who will get positively offended at the notion that their wireless earbuds are not perfect.

One of the things that biases is that they hear the others OK, so assume the earbuds are fine. What needs digging is to understand that when somebody has open mike like that, most meeting software engages heavy noise reduction or even half-duplex conversation; so there's a lot of interruptions and "what did you say" and garbled voices for other people, that is hard to trace to root cause of that open busy mike.

Oh man, the half-duplex conversation is terrible. If people start cutting off whenever someone else speaks, I tell them to wear headphones, but I really don't understand how headphones + push-to-talk isn't standard for everyone by now.

It's the difference between:

1. Grouchy geek who wants to optimize

2. Cheerful regular person who thinks everything is great (*and doesn't really want to bother)

As well, it reminds me of how everybody believes themselves to be a great driver. Try getting advanced driving school gift certificate to a friend, family or special someone - they almost universally find it insulting and offensive. "I've been driving for 20 years!". (sure, what new skill have you learned or worked on in last 19.8 years?)

Similarly, no matter how kindly I suggest headset, I invariably hear some variation of angry "I do this for a living, trust me" or a strangely patronizing "No, this works great".

Hmm, the "oh you're cutting out, you aren't using headphones, right?" works great for me, because the accurate prediction of non-headphoneness is enough to make them believe that that's the problem.

Vendor lock in means vendor upgrades. The last time I used google maps (maybe 6 years ago?) you couldn't have any history of your recent destinations if you also turned of google search history...

Now I run CalyxOS, haven't used google maps in a long time, and maybe i'm worse for not knowing about speed traps or the fastest route, but... I feel fine.

Have you considered blasting them with the most annoying music you can find until they fix it? Deny all culpability of course.

I believe there is a billboard which even ranks the most annoying tracks every year. I remember Frozen's "Let it go" & James Blunt's "You're Beautiful" were on it too. Not recommending GP should do it - just found it an interesting fact to add here.

> Some things are worse, but at the very least I can be confident that once I do get a setup that works it'll likely stay working for years without breaking overnight because someone at

Microsoft are working on fixing this soon

Leave now before turning off secure boot is disabled

Reminds me of the "Songs of Innocence" U2 debacle.

You get less and less control over what you can do with Apple. They run a good PR game but they really like to micro manage so much.

> I can be confident that once I do get a setup that works it'll likely stay working for years without breaking overnight

I feel the opposite. I switched to Pop!_OS a year ago, and had a fairly standard setup. A recent update broke my dock and my launcher and made the whole machine unusable for days. I eventually fixed it, but the dock kept crashing and the launcher was acting wonky, so I've switched back to Mac. I don't like everything about Mac philosophically, but at least It Just Works!

May I ask you why Pop OS! I think there are much more stable distros out there. But sure, you do have to tinker with linux the first time to make sure every hardware is properly supported, but afterwards I have to say it may be the most stable out of all three. I have really nasty software bugs on Mac as well, random process going 99% CPU, slow downs, etc.

Pop!_OS is presently based on gnome a broken mish mash of c and JavaScript and extensions which rather than being written to an actual extension API merely monkey patches the JavaScript.

When the underlying JavaScript to be patched created by gnome changes extensions can silently break.

Outside of gnome land this really isn't at all normal. One could for example have used i3wm without issue for the last 12 years, awesomewm for 14, compiz for 16, KDE for 25 years and if you really hate change there is a fork of KDE 3 so you could have pretended its still 2002 for the last 20 years if you like while still actually making use of current versions of everything from the kernel to your web browser.

I just updated from Catalina to Monterey and the airpod switching is magical. Always plays from the device I want.