Into Thin AirPods | Hacker News Reader

Into Thin AirPods

defector.com

184 pointsthrowaway2037187 comments

The AirPods location as shown on the map is not the actual location, it is the location of the phone that last reported “hearing” the signal from the AirPods.

When you are close to them and connected to them, the map will show your own location not the AirPods.

This explains why the AirPods tracked the authors own location at times. Possibly also why the map showed the boys location. He was using Bluetooth so his phone was actively listening, and actively connected to the internet and due to this, the boys iPhone was quick to post it’s location when it heard the authors AirPods. Where as other people in the museum was not using their iPhones so their phones would not be actively listening or if they where would not upload the position in real-time.

Yes! Some may feel the author was excessively cautious but in this case it actually compensated for the author also not understanding exactly how Find My Device works, and the two cancelled out and resulted in the correct decisions being made!

In trying to troubleshoot annoying “lost AirPods” notifications without turning off Find My Device, I ended up learning a bit about how the system seems to work.

The way Find My Device works is that there’s a broad class of “child” devices like AirPods that basically only have the ability to say “hello, I’m <Apple ID/serial>” and perhaps the ability to say “help, I’m lost, my name is <Apple ID/serial>” - but crucially they do not have any kind of location data themselves. Then there’s a narrower class of “adult” devices (iPads, iPhones, and Mac) that have location data (GPS on iPads/iPhones, geolocated IP on Macs) and network connectivity. They have the ability to hear any child devices and report “I’m at this location, and I heard a [lost] child with this ID” to the central service, which can then report that information to the parent of that ID. (Incidentally, this let me figure out how to fix my spurious “lost device” notifications - I leave my old MacBook Air on, at my house, connected to wifi, to act as a “stay at home parent” device that can report on child devices, no issues since then.)

If someone trusts the location dot too much and uses it to “find the thief”, there is a possibility they will end up instead accosting the iPhone-bearer who happens to be closest to their device. In the “lost child / responsible adult” analogy, this is sort of an adult reporting they saw a lost child in the museum and being accused of kidnapping the child themselves. (Seeing the same person associated with the device in multiple locations is a much stronger signal, of course.)

> I leave my old MacBook Air on, at my house, connected to wifi, to act as a “stay at home parent” device that can report on child devices, no issues since then.

A solution that does not involve leaving a computer on all the time is to configure Find My to not report devices at certain locations.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212765

I did try this method first and it achieved about an 80% reduction, still had a few issues. I don’t know what the Bluetooth range of AirPods is but my phone was apparently able to hear them from the end of the street and report that I’d left my AirPods about 100m from my house. Presumably Bluetooth doesn’t actually go that far and it’s just reporting “current location at the time it realizes it can’t hear the AirPods anymore”.

I'm an edge case here. I live full-time on an RV, and whenever I move the RV I get the fun task of adding that new spot to the "trusted locations" for Find My. I expect to find out there's a limit to trusted locations at some point.

This is true and also speaks to confusion around AirPods: second generation AirPod Pros are "adult devices" (or at least their case is) while all other generations are child devices.

Indeed, the case is "adult device" !

> A new U1 chip enables Find My with Precision Finding for your case, so you can exactly locate it. You can also use Find My with proximity view if you lose track of your AirPods Pro

https://www.apple.com/uk/airpods-pro/

Between AirTags’ ultra-wideband and a dedicated U1 chip that can perform the role of ‘responsible adult’ in finding lost devices, I wonder if (or when) it makes sense for Apple to start offering a business-facing product that can automate “lost and found”. I know for sure that gyms and hotels would love to have a product they could put next to their lost and found cabinet that would give precise and unambiguous data to the owners of lost devices. I can imagine it would also be popular with taxis/Ubers and planes, too!

It's a bit more interesting than that, as it's E2E encrypted, to avoid leaking the location of any device on the network.

Find My enabled devices are actually sending "my current public key is …" messages. The finder ("adult", in your terminology) device encrypts their location with that public key, and sends that, and only that, to Apple's servers.

The finder device isn't identified in that message, so you can't track a finder device by listening to "encountered a device" transmissions to Apple.

That public key is also rotated every 15 minutes, so an attacker can't track a device by tracking broadcast messages of a specific public key.

When you connect to Find My, you download that encrypted location, and use your private key to decrypt that location.

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/find-my-security-se...

I’ll admit I simply assumed there was adequate encryption to avoid leaking location data in undesirable ways and didn’t think to investigate how they were doing it (generally an unsafe assumption - although, credit is due to Apple, slightly less unsafe in their case!).

The system being “my iPhone encrypts its location with the lost device’s public key, so only the holder of the corresponding private key (i.e. the owner of the lost device) can see that location” is actually sublime, though. That’s the minimal amount of information and yet it still achieves the highest level of privacy, right? Only the location data from the adult, only the public key from the lost child, combined in such a way that cryptographically guarantees only the parent can read the location data. No Apple IDs or serial numbers or any other identifying information even included, so it’s robust even against broken encryption. Very cool.

> Possibly also why the map showed the boys location.

If it means even a slight chance of attracting unfounded vigilantism, mandatory participation in a poorly understood surveillance network seems like a pretty big downside associated with using an iphone.

It’s not mandatory. You have to explicitly enable participation. But most people probably do, as you yourself can’t use the location tracking, unless you opt in yourself.

Thanks. I misunderstood that.

But you don't need to opt into the network to be a potential victim of a false geolocation. Just the fact it exists and lots of people use it is sufficient to create risk of someone accusing you of stealing their iProduct, even if you've never purchased anything from Apple.

On a different story:

Our son had his iPhone stolen from him at school. He was in 6th grade and put his bag down to play ball when someone must have walked up and rummaged through his backpack. Once he realized it was stolen he called me from his friend's phone. I jumped on Find My and had it down to a house. They turned it off as soon as I pinged and sent a message to it. So, I called the principal and told her, "Could you ask the student who lives at 555 Friendly Lane in North Beach to return my iPhone or I'm going to call the police." The reaction she gave kind of let me know she knew who they were. Kiddo had the phone back in the morning and got a scolding from me and the principal about guarding his things.

If the other kid didn't return it I don't know what we could have done. But I think mentioning the police were involved made him, probably 10-12yo, feel he was over his head. An adult would probably tell us to fuck off.

I had a guy break into my car and write bad checks to himself with my checkbook that he found in the glove compartment. He had a very unique name, so I was able to pinpoint where he lived, and see that he'd been in trouble with the law for similar stuff in the past. The cops did nothing of course.

> The cops did nothing of course.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that you 100% found the right guy. Now, consider how the incentives work.

Depending on where you live, the police might already have more than they can handle just dealing with violent criminals. Even if they’re just sitting around with nothing to do, what do they gain by helping you out with this? It’s not the 1940s anymore, the average policeman works it as a job, not a calling, so even though you’re totally in the right and that person is a criminal.. if they do nothing, nothing bad happens to them, and if they go after the guy, they could get hurt or sued.

On the other hand, did you ask a lawyer? That is a person who stands to potentially gain from helping you out.

I feel kind of gross typing this out, but I’ve been trying lately to more often “say the quiet part loud”.

As someone who has lost three pairs of AirPods (including the newer pros) I’ve never understood why Apple allows another device to pair with headphones that are already paired to an iCloud account.

Once my girlfriend saw my AirPod maxs lying around and wanted to try them. She put them on her head, tapped “continue” or whatever it said under “not your AirPods” and was listening to music in 15 seconds. Obviously they weren’t stolen in this case but I was shocked at how easily someone could use AirPods they just found.

I feel like Apple could “just” give you the option to disable pairing and discourage people from stealing them, but I don’t know why they haven’t

I'm totally guessing, but could it be actual corporate strategy? If they are easy to steal, AppleCare+ becomes more appealing and/or having to replace them increases sales. It's certainly an easy problem to solve. Can anyone think of any other legitimate reason not to?

AppleCare+ doesn't cover theft, there is AppleCare+ with Theft and Loss for iPhone in the US but afaik it is not available for AirPods.

Ease of use and they didn’t think of it?

Most headphones don’t have a lockout feature.

They have such a lock out feature on all their other portables and desktops too in fact (activation lock) so I’m mostly surprised it didn’t “naturally” carry over

How would locking them to the owner make them harder to use? They're smart enough and have designed enough software where they could trivially allow the user to share them if desired- that is the only "inconvenience" I can image it would cause.

I doubt they either didn't think of it or that it wasn't suggested frequently.r

I lost some new model Pros and learned a lot of the same lessons. It’s weird that anyone would be able to use them? This is the case with the iPhone I believe, where the iPhone is completely useless (except for parts) if it’s connected to someone else’s account.

In my case at least my AirPods ended up in lost and found. I was able to go back to where I lost them with find my, then assist the person working there in finding them by continually playing the sound with a button on my phone.

> As someone who has lost three pairs of AirPods (including the newer pros) I’ve never understood why Apple allows another device to pair with headphones that are already paired to an iCloud account.

Seems kind of user hostile to me. I lose my Apple account I lose my headphones too.

I agree. I have several old iOS devices that are basically bricked because there's no way to factory reset them without first unlocking the device.

You can DFU any old iPhone and erase install any appropriately signed version of iOS on it.

What you can’t do is finish activation without a network connection and the last signed in AppleID account password.

Are you saying you don’t have the password for the last signed in AppleID?

Correct.

I don't think it's user hostile to give users the option to do this. Also, realistically, you're more likely to have your headphones lost/stolen than your apple account and for most(?) apple users, I imagine being locked out of their apple account would be worse than losing access to their headphones considering they would also lose their files, photos, messages, subscriptions etc.

It could default to on, but be optional. (Thus providing a “herd immunity” of sorts while still allowing you to do it your way).

Unless you can go to the apple store with proof of purchase and unlock the headphones

> I’ve never understood why Apple allows another device to pair with headphones that are already paired to an iCloud account.

Because then you can't use your personal AirPods with your work computer. Plus, AirPods work with non-Apple devices anyway. How does Apple know what iCloud account belongs to my car's stereo?

> I feel like Apple could “just” give you the option to disable pairing and discourage people from stealing them, but I don’t know why they haven’t

Something like that would be neat, provided that 1) it's optional; and 2) the user can authorize a small number of "guest" iCloud accounts.

Seems like there could be some sort of verification via your main iPhone, like "you are trying to pair XXX with YYY, allow?"

I could not imagine a worse solution to a user-error. Imagine this same comment but about wired headphones, for example.

Since the dawn of time people have stolen and misplaced things. Please don't give Apple any bright ideas about monetizing human clumsiness.

Ugh imagine having wired headphones which were somehow physically keyed to specific devices, sounds like a nightmare.

Imagine this same comment but with your car. People can’t just walk up to your car and drive it away specifically because there is a key that allows the key holder to verify they are authorized to drive (yes obviously someone can steal your keys but that’s the idea anyway)

No one accuses car manufacturers of monetizing human clumsiness and generally speaking the system works pretty well.

One thing that strikes me about the story- I guess not everyone is queasy about putting things in their ears that have spent a lot of time in another person’s ears? (I wouldn’t think they would be attractive theft targets, because of hygiene/stigma)

Just use an alcohol wipe and you're good to go. Cleaned and disinfected, don't know what else would bother you?

Alcohol isn’t sterilizing. E.g. Not very effective against non-enveloped viruses, for example.

I’d leave ‘em in the sun personally.

But putting it random stuff at the edge of your ear is probably low risk when it comes to activities people do on the regular.

Not sure I like that given there's a battery in them.

There's also a device which bombards small device like earphones with UV for a couple of minutes. Got it at work. My over ear headphones don't fit, but my Sony in-ear with noise cancelling do. Oh, and they still work afterwards, of course.

I mean, they’re often half in the sun anyway. UV can do its work without getting things hot.

> don't know what else would bother you?

Like I said, it’s queasiness/stigma about hygiene, not a reasoned thought. This is a common sentiment in the US- we like to buy our sex toys new, for another example, even though they’re usually made of materials that lend themselves to cleaning/sterilization.

Either you do some interesting things with your EarPods or there’s a second-hand market for sex toys I’ve never heard about.

Huh? I was pointing out another example of a consumer product that is designed to be sanitized, but that we nevertheless buy new because of squeamishness around our mucous membranes.

Airpod Max headphones go over the ear, not in the ear.

This feature actually appears to have been implemented at some point. It's called Pairing Lock. The only problem is I'm not sure if it has been silently removed, since on my phone and AirPods the same location in the screenshot no longer says Pairing Lock.

https://old.reddit.com/r/airpods/comments/q29h40/we_can_fina...

Nice! I was unaware of this. I also don't see this options though, so I assume it's been removed

I'd need "find my" to be perfect before I trust it at all again.

I set up a MacBook Pro with Find My, I changed the email on my Apple ID and no longer had access to the old email... time passes... I discover Find My does not recognise the Apple ID (same one, but changed email) and that I've effectively now lost ownership in Find My.

This took weeks to resolve with Apple involved and multiple wipes of the laptop and proof of purchase and ownership.

I'm burned, I now run my MacBook with location services disabled, Find My disabled. It's encrypted and insured, if I lose it or it gets stolen then I'll get another. This is less stress than Find My.

> I’ve never understood why Apple allows another device to pair with headphones that are already paired to an iCloud account

I want the ability to work cross account smoothly because I keep my work MBP signed into a work-only account but during the day I want to quickly switch to using them on my iPhone signed into my personal account.

You answered your own question. They allow this because often members of a group want to share their headphones without fully setting up a "Family Sharing" account.

You can only make changes to your "Family Sharing" account once a year due to demands from the music industry. They were worried about the revenue loss from friend groups registering as families and required that it be difficult to form a family group.

Everything about sharing Apple devices between family members is awkward because the RIAA dictated the structure of Apple IDs when they were first being designed.

Let alone my Apple watch that can only pair with one of my phones at a time...

> I’ve never understood why Apple allows another device to pair with headphones that are already paired to an iCloud account.

even folks who spend >$5k on headphones would find this suggestion obscene.

There are lots of good product reasons why you don't want to do this, but there's also a good chance that they're just not allowed to.

Airpods are Bluetooth. Their is a load of IP behind Bluetooth, and they will happily licence that IP for free to qualified Bluetooth devices. So you can't just pick and choose which bits of Bluetooth you like, you have to implement enough of it to meet the standards (you can do stuff on top though if you want).

It is possible that a device that refuses to pair/connect under some circumstances to a certified Bluetooth device (e.g. my Android phone, or an iPhone) would fail to meet the specification. There may be a spec lawyer way around it, or there might not be. If there isn't then they just can't do that.

When AirTags were first released, a friend and I entertained the idea of integrating them into high-value car anti-theft systems.

Our reasoning was simple: even if the stolen car was parked in an underground garage, devoid of mobile network, satellite, or even GPS access, an occasional passerby with an iPhone might be sufficient to log the device's ID and subsequently relay it to Apple's central system.

However, in our practical tests, the positioning and tracking proved to be somewhat unreliable and riddled with glitches — a sentiment that resonates with the author's experience with her misplaced AirPods.

Despite this, I firmly believe the Find My network is a technological marvel teeming with potential. I hope Apple continues to refine it and finds more seamless ways to incorporate it into CarPlay and other products

I recently had my iPhone stolen while on a trip in Latin America. It seems that it was an organised group with a vast distribution network. I could follow their entire supply chain which spanned through entire Brazil, from south all the way to Salinopolis which is a beach city in the north of the country. Most probably they travelled through the airport with an entire bag of phones stolen during the carnival.

Putting my phone into a lost mode resulted in them getting my primary phone number which then later was used in a feeble attempt to scam me over WhatsApp. Pretending to be Apple's support, they sent me a phishing link trying to extract the PIN number of the phone. Every number they used (from DNS registration one to the ones they used on WhatsApp) was stolen from someone else before and reused. Funnily, given the domain registration dates they have been preparing for carnival for quite some time. Police wouldn't move a finger (I had a similar experience in UK when I had a Macbook stolen in a central London restaurant).

While Find My might be a useful tool if you forgot something at your friend's place, I doubt the probability of successful retrieval of a stolen phone is high. It's fun to track on a map but unfortunately Find My doesn't even provide a history of locations (!) where the device appeared - it's only the last approximate address where the device has been seen. The return to risk ratio of dressing up as a batman and trying to retrieve the device yourself is not the best, especially if it has been stolen by a "professional".

I have retrieved my wife's phone two times and my own once using Lost Mode. We are in NYC. Maybe I just got lucky or the universe is just smiling on me. I did give each of the do gooders some money and each of them initially tried to refuse it. There are kind, helpful people in the world.

I returned a pair of Air Pods a month ago using “reverse Lost Mode” where you use your phone to request the contact info from the Air Pods.

I got my iPhone back at a giant music festival the old fashioned way- calling it and the do gooder answered.

When working at the Edinburgh Fringe, I once left my phone in a taxi, then went home and went to sleep pretty early. I was woken the next morning by flatmate banging loudly on the front door and holding my phone.

It turns out he didn't have his key, so had banged on the door for a while the previous night but I was too asleep to hear him and he had to sleep elsewhere. He'd also tried ringing me loads of times, and eventually someone in the back of the taxi found it and picked it up and my friend arranged with them to retrieve it.

Apple really needs to do more to lock down parts on registered iPhones. The OS should completely refuse to function if you have a screen or battery from a stolen phone.

My kid got her android phone stolen from a gym. Put up a message on the phone saying "this phone is being tracked, reward, call XXX-XXX-XXXX."

An hour later a grandfather called saying his grandkid would be returning the phone in the morning. Kid claimed he found it in the street.

> While Find My might be a useful tool if you forgot something at your friend's place, I doubt the probability of successful retrieval of a stolen phone is high.

What I hope is that some day most parts will have some form of authenticity verification built-in. Putting in stolen parts in another iPhone would just brick it and tell the holder to surrender it at the nearest Apple Store.

> Police wouldn't move a finger (I had a similar experience in UK when I had a Macbook stolen in a central London restaurant).

What I've been told by Brits living here in California is that certain crimes are simply not recorded by the police because it would make statistics look bad.

According to him this was, in part, because politicians were pushing for it due to Brexit.

> The return to risk ratio of dressing up as a batman and trying to retrieve the device yourself is not the best

In some places, the government will even charge you with a crime for doing so (after the police refused to investigate of course).

I appreciate the story, although bit overstretched.

I do have a question whether it’s just my ADHD, but was the writing horribly hard to follow for anyone else? I could not keep my focus while reading each of the paragraphs.

Not alone; hard to follow, gave up half way even though I'd have preferred to know the end.

Not hard. Just boring.

Interesting comment. I read the first three paragraphs, then jumped to the last paragraph, which looked too long to read. :-)

Huh, how odd; I had the opposite impression, as I came to write praise for how fun the writer was with this little story. Different strokes.

I just started skipping over it as it was feeling kind of rambley

I think it's sort of mode of reading thing: while on HN you expect either a technical piece of information, or news where you can quickly jump directly to conclusion. But this one is a rare bird here, a story-telling. I wouldn't call it a literary achievement, but it's written well for its genre. It can frustrate if you try to read it as news, of course

Depends on what you're looking for. If you want a rambling biographical story then the article is great. If you want to receive the message that "find my" is broken for airpods then it's got a whole lot of unnecessary words.

It was a general waste of my time.

Severe ADHD here and I actually found myself eager to keep reading despite not being at all what I expected when I clicked

You did better than me. I get half the page covered in a registration wall and I haven't got the patience to get rid of it.

Considering all the replies here, I'm guessing not everyone is getting this demand to register or everyone is being particularly generous with their email address.

> I imagined the teen casually picking up the AirPods in the co-ed locker room where I had dropped them only moments before, putting them in his pocket, and later breaking them out to play some tunes in front of his parents. I pictured them nodding serenely, approving of their clever son who had somehow produced AirPods out of nowhere.

1980s... my brother had a friend who'd come over our house now and then. My mom's walkman went missing, and the next day the kid comes over with... a walkman. My mom's walkman. He said "look what I got for confirmation!"

Couple of thoughts jumped in to my head:

A) Why would anyone gift you a walkman with a broken battery cover held on with tape?

B) You're not Catholic.

My mom had a really awkward conversation with the kid's mom. I don't even think that went all that smoothly. "Don't call my kid a liar!" "So... you're Catholic and Timmy just went through confirmation?" "None of your business!"

WTF? She did get it back, but it was more broken and then unusable than before because... of course. He was all of about 10? 11? Moderately curious how he turned out and where he is now, but... not enough to bother digging. :)

> Moderately curious how he turned out

Probably not well with parents like that.

Is confirmation a purely Catholic thing?

Its common to most of Christianity (excluding the Baptist, Anabaptist and other “believer’s baptism” denominations) but has different cultural attachments; its quite plausible that, in a local area in parts of the US, the Catholic community would be the only one where it is both practiced and the kind of event for which gift-giving would be associated.

It was a relatively italian/catholic area we grew up in. You sort of knew who was being confirmed and when in that era (late 80s).

I also stole an old walkman as a kid. My eastern european mom gave me a good beating, and ordered me to return it and apologize. I was too embarrassed to do that, so I jumped the owner's fence, put it on their backyard table, and ran away.

Today I pay even for my free Linux, so lesson learned, I suppose.

Sometimes ago I found a pair of airpods on a pavement in my city. I started searching for the owner nearby, but nobody showed up, after I keept them in a drawer for a while hoping that the owner would enable lost mode, but they didn't. After 10 days without news I disabled location and started to use them. They are still thetered to the original account. I would be happy to return them, but the owner probably don't know or don't care..

I was once chased down by some very, very enthusiastic Apple product ex-owners, with two embarrassed-looking police offers in tow, who were playing with this fun technologic toy and were quite convinced they understood what they were doing. They did not. It was a distressing experience, it really was.

I can't relate to the armchair generals saying "why didn't you just confront and accuse that family-with-children right there and then in the museum? It's your own fault for being WEAK and UNASSERTIVE". Those games are for idiots. The author comes off as an intelligent person: they patiently tested their hypothesis in multiple ways, with great skepticism, and ultimately erred on the side of uncertainty. The kind of person who would initiate a confrontation is the opposite of this.

Unless you consider that the confrontation could easily be a polite, tactful encounter.

I'm sorry yours wasn't, but I think the author would have navigated the conversation quite gracefully. (But I don't fault them for not confronting)

Yea.. “excuse me I lost my AirPods and my phone is telling me you have them, any chance you grabbed/picked them up”

and of course given they are linked to an Apple ID there’s no disputing ownership

- "linked to an Apple ID there’s no disputing ownership"

How do you expect to bridge the gap from "polite conversation" to "examining the device ID of a stranger's personal electronics"? This is where the conversation would end: "no; these are actually my devices and you absolutely may not touch them, stranger. Go away".

This is either a police matter, or it is nothing: there's no middle ground where you go alone to have a polite, exploratory conversation with a thief of the topic of thieving. That's not an interaction that leads to constructive resolutions.

I don’t know, if it’s a normal person doing “finders keepers” vs an actual thief, I think a normal person would be happy to return it to its rightful owner.

Inserting random headphones from another person in your ear is extremely gross.

So is stealing headphones though.

I lost a pair of airpods (swiped out of my office at midnight! wtf!?) and to this day I casually open the find my app to check on them, and they bounced around locally for a few days before making their way to somewhere in Turkey. They still seem active, despite being in lost mode (they shouldn't work in lost mode unless there's a known exploit?).

Also, I've tried dozens of times to get my own airpods to play a sound from the find my app, just to see what it sounds like and have never gotten any sound to actually play. I am not sure what I am doing wrong.

When they're in lost mode can you trigger them to occasionally play a loud "find me!" sound? Could do it at random times - during the middle of the workday where they are, in the middle of the night where they are, plenty of fun options.

These must have been the gen 1 AirPods. The 2nd Gen Pros (maybe others) now have a speaker and makes a pretty loud noise from the case.

The reason she could not track down these AirPods in crowded areas is because the location reported is actually that of any nearby iPhone, and there can be a significant delay sometimes. That explains why they appeared to be in a trash can for some time. They were pinged by someone's iPhone who happened to be at the trash can, and then the AirPods got in a car and moved.

I know of a few folks who have successfully tracked down their stolen items, and it involved knocking on a door or approaching people in less crowded areas where you can be more certain who has them. In all cases, the thief (or unsuspecting buyer of stolen items) just coughs them right up.

This was fun read, and I really don't see why it is such a big deal to try and recover stolen goods. You need to have some street smarts. If the item was lost (versus mugged from you), why not investigate where they could be? Use good judgement. Don't go banging on the door of a dilapidated crack-house. I dont think this is the dangerous mission people make it out to be. There were similar cautions around getting in a car with a stranger (uber, lyft), talking to and meeting internet people (dating apps) etc.

Even the 2nd Gen pros are not very good at reporting correct location.

I have a third-party sleeve for mine with a pocket for an AirTag. The sleeve is glued to the charger and the AirTag with RTV. The AirTag reports its position within a foot or two.

A determined thief could remove all that but it's no longer possible for me to lose the charger, or to be in the author's situation where it took me a day to get the search going. I know within minutes if my headphones have left my possession.

Downside: my wife's phone constantly alerts her that I may be stalking her with my headphones, my keys, my wallet, or our shared car.

The 2nd gen pros also have the U1 chip, the same as the AirTag. What's the point in bundling it with an AirTag?

I have a set of 2nd Gen Pros right here with me.

Under Find My for the device I am offered "Play Sound" and "Directions". "Directions" offers route me to my home on Apple Maps.

Under Find My for the Airtag I am given a big green arrow that points directly at the tag and says it's two feet away.

The app doesn't treat the U1 chip in the Airpod Pros the same way it treats a tag.

As someone who likes to write more words than is strictly necessary ... that was too much.

I recall here (Australia) in the 1990's as early-gen analog phones were becoming popular, and consequently so too the theft of same, much public hand-wringing about why the 2 or 3 domestic telcos steadfastly refused to offer a service to disable stolen handsets.

The popular theory was that telcos weren't incentivised to do so -- the thief (or whoever they offloaded the handset to) was likely to buy a SIM, and the victim was likely to buy a new phone and a new SIM. If they (telco) disabled a handset, they were disabling a potential (new) long-term customer.

The question continues to come up with all kinds of contemporary doodads that may be the target of theft - anything with a unique ID that's hard to modify and that is likely going to be connected to the internet at some point.

Prima facie these seem like very easy wins for vendors and for law enforcement to a) block, and/or b) track. Presumably the commercials of such an arrangement are not in the original purchaser's favour.

I really wanted it to end she discovered them in her coat pocket or something and that’s why it was following her around in museum but in guess the house ping is hard to explain.

The find my and play sound feature on airpods is broken. I've tested it in a quiet room with the airpods right next to me and it doesn't make a peep.

For a similar story, in London I had my phone snatched by a kid on a bike.

In my case find my phone was useful, as they'd thrown it into a nearby park when they realized it was an android and not an iPhone. (This is actually not uncommon in London, the police told me that was why, and I heard from another friend that had something similar happen)

That's kind of funny the iOS / Android thing for thieves.

On one hand, it's practically impossible to use an iOS device that has been remotely locked / disabled. So they shouldn't be worth much. This doesn't seem to be the case with some (most?) Android devices?

On the other hand, kids who like to steal things don't want to use Androids :-(

I was told by the police that there were some gangs in the area that sold them or something?

Not really sure to be honest, but i seem to remember they said it was easier (or more profitable?) to sell.

wait, wasn't the moral here that the airpods find my feature is faulty and she was getting fake locations.

This is my takeaway, having had AirPods for several years. I've never once had the Find My feature work as expected, either showing me the location of the AirPods or successfully playing the sound, even as I stand right next to them staring at the case.

Find My works incredibly well for AirTags so I hope that some day they just take an AirTag and stick it inside an AirPods case and call it a day.

The case of the AirPods Pro 2 is pretty much an AirTag.

I bought my AirPods Pro 2 after losing my AirPods Pro and being unable to find them. I’m fairly certain they’re in my house somewhere.

No, the moral is that if you’re indecisive, you can write a long-winded anecdote of it that doesn’t really go anywhere. ;)

I could relate to this so much as someone who lost his AirPods a couple of weeks ago. Instead of a museum, it was an unsuccessful search through Walmart for me. Find My app now says it’s in Germany.

>> (removing one bud to have a conversation, putting it my pocket, forgetting it, and washing that pair of pants).

My son has put his airpods through the wash at least 3 times and they continue to function!

My experience with Find My and Airpods is not great, if i look at them on the map i have had it say that my left airpod is 20km away while it is in fact in my ear.

My phone tells me routinely that I've left my airpods behind wherever I just left, even though... they're paired to the phone I'm using which is telling me I left them behind. At least part of this has been broken for some time. I've switched physical airpods and physical iphones, done firmware and ios upgrades, and it's gotten worse. The one commonality is they're all tied to my apple id.

I have this happen with every Apple device I own, except AirTags. I’ll have a laptop, AirPods, and an iPad in my backpack. Every time I leave a location, one of them goes “missing”.

And trying to convince my AirTag to not go bonkers every time I leave a hotel room is a losing battle.

Are individual AirPods any use? I’ve found a few of those over the years, but always assumed they need to be in a pair to work.

Just reading this, I can tell that this person's whole approach to life would annoy the hell out of me

I'd have posted the location they settled in tbh

tl;dr, she loses her airpods which are subsequently stolen and doesn't get them back. Lot of writing about a chase that ultimately results in nothing.

Why use few words when you can use a bazillion words.

BTW, the text is too long for GPT4 to summarise, I wonder if that's a tactic sites use against AI tools? :D Just make the text so long and full of purple prose that the AI models choke.

The purpose of this story is for the author to recount their experience in an entertaining way that's pleasant to read. Why would you want to use an LLM to summarize it? That'd be like finding an interesting-looking novel to read at the bookstore, then buying the Cliff's Notes instead.

I've thus far kept myself mostly isolated from and ambivalent about the GPT hype, but this comment, even if it's somewhat tongue-in-cheek, really says a lot about where the technology is going to take us as a species. I'm not thrilled about it.

> That'd be like finding an interesting-looking novel to read at the bookstore, then buying the Cliff's Notes instead.

Wait until you find out how people read "a book a day" or "ten books a week".

I skipped most of the article because it was boring. I was vindicated by the ending where nothing happens.

The point of reading a story like this is to enjoy the act of reading it, not to claim a reward for reaching the conclusion. It's genuinely saddening how angry people in this thread are getting over the idea of reading for reading's sake.

I guess the beauty of not finding your lost airpods is lost on me. The shame.

You must be the type who enjoys reading the short story before each recipe on the internet too and doesn't skip straight to the actual part where they tell you how to cook the dish they've been writing about for 10 chapters already.

Nothing about the article told me that it was just a short story about trying to find a pair of AirPods.

I expected some technical insights because it was posted to HackerNews, but nope.

I'm glad I'm old enough so I can browse text pretty fast, didn't take me too long to skip to the end.

‘I optimise my life so much that I use an algorithm to summarise articles. In so doing, I am oblivious to the art of content creation for the pleasure of it, as well as its converse, content consumption for the pleasure of it’

"I use an algorithm to decide if an article is just purple prose or does it have an actual message."

I read Brandon Sanderson's books. I don't have any issues with consuming long-form text =)

> Why use few words when you can use a bazillion words. BTW, the text is too long for GPT4 to summarise, I wonder if that's a tactic sites use against AI tools? :D Just make the text so long and full of purple prose that the AI models choke.

Regardless of the usefulness of a summary for this article, the obvious solution is to split the text into smaller chunks and generate summaries for each chunk, then combine them into an overall summary.

As an example, ChatGPT was able to summarize 32 out of the 48 paragraphs in this article, which contained about 3,714 tokens and 15,289 characters:

> The author resisted buying AirPods due to fear of losing them, but eventually gave in and bought them. Predictably, they lost them in a ski lodge. They later discovered that they were being pinged by the "Find My" app and were located in a nearby town. Despite warnings against it, the author contemplated taking vigilante action to recover their AirPods but ultimately decided against it.

Then, I requested a summary of the remaining 16 paragraphs, which contained 1,681 tokens and 6,983 characters:

> The author recounts their attempts to track down their stolen AirPods using Apple's Find My app. They follow the location of the thief to a museum and a Wal-Mart, but are unable to identify the culprit or retrieve their AirPods. The app leads them on a wild goose chase through a crowded outlet mall before the AirPods eventually end up in Mexico City. The author reflects on the futility of their efforts and accepts that they will likely never recover their lost property.

And the story is very well written and fun to read.

I was certain they were going to be in the authors jacket pocket on inside it’s lining or something.

Same. I was somewhat disappointed at the end. But I'll be clutching my AirPods Pro even closer tighter to my chest tonight, as a result.

That’s very subjective.

Have you ever read a novel? You'd hate them.

A novel about lost headphones would be a surefire hit

It certainly could be enjoyable, depending on what happens and how it's told.

Give it to Nolan. He will bring time travel, theory of pseudo-relatively and everything else in it, in the end revealing it was actually all about espionage and those pods contained sensitive information that a clever time travelling agent has hidden on in. Shit, I just gave it away. Spoiler alert!

"A novel about an old guy fishing would be a surefire hit"

I read novels but don’t like all of them. This one was certainly one of the most boring and that’s not the sentiment I look for in novels. What did you liked in this one ?

Novels have a plot. You don’t need to be rude.

lol, lets not compare this sort of journalism to a novel now...

lol, lets not compare this sort of personal diary with journalism now… :)

I thought it was gonna relate Airpods to Christopher McCandless. But that's Into The Wild. So thanks for clearing that up for me. :)

The title relates to Into Thin Air which Jon Krakauer also wrote about the 1996 Everest disaster (of which he was part).

Ahhhhhhhh. That's what my brain was remembering.

Does it otherwise reference that at all? Google Ngrams has the phrase `_VERB_ into thin air` going back to 1599.

The author initially resisted getting AirPods due to a fear of losing them. However, they eventually bought a pair and ended up losing them. Using the "Find My" app, they tracked the AirPods to a house in a nearby town but didn't confront the thief. They then visited a museum where the AirPods were located again, but couldn't definitively identify the thief. The author continued to track the AirPods as they moved to different locations, including a Walmart and an outlet mall, but was unable to recover them. The AirPods are currently in Lost mode, and the thief has not contacted the author. Despite the frustration, the author contemplates going to Mexico to search for the stolen AirPods.

Thanks for the summary, GPT

Yeah, why was this story on HN?

I had my phone stolen and basically did the same thing. I didn't want to approach anyone for fear of starting some altercation. Wish there was a better way to go about this.

With my phone, if I had another device maybe I could have made it make a sound and then started a conversation with the person that way? I didn't know who exactly had it, although I am pretty sure I saw the person just walk away with it. Wasn't sure enough to make an accusation though.

This is one of the most long winded, boring, and disappointing articles I’ve ever read about anything. Spend your time elsewhere, I implore you!

Holy hell this is a frustrating read. To save anyone else the time the owner loses their AirPods find them but chooses not to confront the person that stole them. This is the entire story.

No, that's not true. You apparently glanced over it, but didn't really read it, so making a summary for others was not the best idea. The story is more about real-life limitations for tracking of stolen things with "Find My..." which gives clues enough for suspicion, but not enough for certainty, and doesn't seem to be useful when one asks police for help.

She spends ages looking at the boy, and the boy apparently reacts to the chimes. She only doesn't know because she doesn't say anything. Hence the frustration many of us that tried to read this are feeling.

She's an adult, she should use her grownup words.

She did not actually find the person who stole them

How do you know that?

Honestly, this writing grew a bit too dramatic and flowery for me. I feel a bit annoyed that I had to read someone wax poetic about a pair of earbuds for 15 minutes, when they didn’t even have the courage to kindly talk to the family in the museum.

This person sounds a bit unhinged. They create this story of pursuit when they and their partner lost their devices, nobody stole them. The whole story vilifies various people who found or claimed lost gadgets(probably staff or kids). Most adults would just buy a new pair if they lost theirs.

There is a style of writing, fairly common in magazines, where the writer discusses an ordinary event in great detail, then attempts to draw meaning from it. As a reader, you’re meant to enjoy the writing style, humor, and leaps of logic, not take it literally.

This is not the greatest example of the genre, to be sure.

Entertaining, yes. Meaningful, no.

In other words, similar to how YouTube ppl stretch a 30 sec video to 10 minutes. Waste of time and totally garbage writing.

If nobody stole them then why were they moving around?

Unless you’re applying “finders keepers” here?

Every single time I see a person with Airpods or other true wireless earphones, i cannot help but smile.

Because it is always nice to see other people clearly marked as guillable fools, who marvel at the emperors new clothes.

I hope this trend never dies, because it really does provide endless entertainment to me.

And I suspect Apple hopes this as well, because they are making a killing selling expensive shit to the same people over and over again.

Why so? They solve a problem, namely convenient tether-free but non-intrusive headphones, and Airpods are nearly unrivaled in implementation.

AirPods are the earpieces Agent Smith wears in the Matrix.

I really quite like my wireless earbuds, you condescending prick. They're great for fitness, and I've not lost them once in the 3-4 years I've owned them.

That sounds like such a sad place to be, in a one-sided 'relationship' with everyone else, letting their personal choices get under your skin. They don't even note your existence, and that must hurt.

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