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Comment by jclardy | Hacker News Reader

This is super annoying for me, as I bought a tag for our shared mailbox key thinking we both could find it when needed, but only my devices can. It seems crazy to me that this still hasn't been implemented in over a year now - iCloud family plans exist, CloudKit sharing zones exist since last year (In public API form, so likely they existed internally for even longer.)

Also the device ID's are already shared internally in some fashion across an iCloud family, as my key tracker doesn't make my wife's phone detect an unknown tag and vice versa.

Ideally you should be able to share beyond the family, IE I let my parents borrow the car, I should be able to "loan" the tag to their account (And I guess choose whether I can see tracking or not.) But if we don't have family plans we obviously won't get to this point any time soon.

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Why does it seem crazy to you?

Here's what likely happened -- they built the entire system from the ground-up based on a single-user because integrating with iCloud family wasn't part of the MVP.

By the time someone got around to asking about it, they realized that their data model was so thoroughly fucked it would take several weeks of risky migrations in order to add multi-user support.

So stakeholders are punting on it left and right. The things are selling, so is multi-user support really that important? It's an "edge case".

Alternate interpretation: Any multi-user support will be wielded by abusers, and no other use cases deserve precedence over inhibiting abuse, so all multi-user cases result in unpredictable sound and/or push notifications to inhibit abuse.

I expect Apple will eventually add “This AirTag has been traveling with you for a while, are you okay with that?” random pop-up notifications, the same way that it randomly confirms “Always Allow” location access and “Time-sensitive” notifications access.

I explain the little chirping sound the one in my glovebox sometimes makes when I start my car to anyone riding with me who doesn’t recognize it, so that they understand what that sound is and to pay attention and be conscious of what it means whenever they hear it.

If occasional chirps are the price I have to pay to inhibit abuse by a global tracking network, then that’s a small annoyance paid for a great good for others.

There’s also the obvious privacy problem of family members stalking each other.

that's already the case if the have iphones...

On the iCloud family settings page you can enable/disable sharing your location with the rest of your family. I imagine AirTags would be the same.

That being said, if you aren't comfortable with family members knowing your location, then why would you want to share AirTags or an iCloud with them in the first place?

That’s the point. I don’t want to share AirTags with them.

I’m not saying it’s impossible, just that it’s a difficult and tricky use case.

While I wouldn't want to do so too, it should at least be possible to have an option to ignore the AirTags from family members travelling with you.

Not to mention that Apple, in general, isn’t really known for their multiuser-friendly ways.

Meanwhile someone else is working on multi user support for AirTags v2 for a nice promotion packet.

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