We initially used a Tile which I hated and would constantly try to get us to buy more tiles in their crappy app.
After 4 months of the air tag we're looking to switch back. The larger network is barely noticeable. Most of what the tags do is allow us to know when we're within X number of feet of our cat. The Tile had a better range and was lighter. But most importantly, we could have multiple accounts track the same Tile. Somehow Apple's airtags are missing this really critical feature that has come up again and again for us. If one of us is not home we need to be able to have another one of us be able to track her down but we simply cannot
I'm not a big fan of Tile as a company, but I'm sad to see AirTag's inevitable dominance rise. I would love to see an open-source solution to this problem. Especially if it can somehow hack into the Apple, Tile, etc networks. From what I've read the Apple AirTag network is actually quite insecure and can even be used to send arbitrary HTTP packets. Apple has a huge built-in advantage but also a ceiling that competitors don't have since Android phones can't tap into the network. A community-driven solution could be really effective, especially if it focused on a particular subcommunity like dogwalkers and outdoor cats