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Comment by sogjis | Hacker News Reader

Those are some strong words from someone who makes it very hard to easily enable/disable gps, bluetooth, wifi

I think they meant it reports tracking data to Google, not that the phone tracks its environment with those techs.

Apple’s AirTag implementation is very elegant and does not result in user or AirTag location being revealed to Apple or other users. It’s hard to imagine Google shipping that kind of design.

It just makes stalking incredibly easy, elegant!

That's somewhat in the nature of a tracking device.

Exactly. You can argue the morality of shipping a tracking device at all, but that's a totally different question than whether such a product should let the company track users or devices.

Apple devices don't even actually turn off anymore when you try to power them down. They blank the screen and continue reporting their location.

No, it's even worse -- they say something like "your phone is still findable." Wtf?!

Which is a huge feature, loved by most users. Like, I wouldn’t be happy about losing/having stolen a device that is a small fortune, and contains my whole life.

Hang on, you don't have any backups?

It is still be a major headache to lose a $1000 device, that likely contains all the keys to your digital life, even when you still have backups.

Yes, it provides some ability to track stolen phones even when they're off, telling the user they're still being tracked even though it's off which is very much pro-consumer.

It's worth noting that even a device is turned off these days, there's a good chance there's some small chip inside still on, likely connected to the radio.

I don’t think that’s quite accurate. They emit a beacon that can be detected by other iPhone in the area which can relay the location to the owner like an air tag.I doubt the phone knows if it moved in that state. If there is no other iPhone around, nothing gets reported.

I expect it knows if it is moving or not (via an accelerometer) but no way would it use GPS or WiFi to geolocate itself. Too much power.

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