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Comment by pompino | Hacker News Reader

Design doesn't matter after a point - you have to meet your users on their turf. Most people were using it for other reasons - and if Apple's stance is, fine - don't buy it, then so be it.

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The device, from the beginning, was not designed as an anti-theft tracker. It’s always had features that made it unsuitable for this use case. At every point Apple has made it very clear they’re not interested in meeting users on that turf.

Users can say they’re not interested in it because it doesn’t suit their needs - that’s completely fine.

> Most people were using it for other reasons

Source? I just use them to find my keys and remote, didn't know it was popular to try and recover stolen property given the alerts when you're near not-your-airtag for any length of time.

There have been news articles since practically the day of release. I tracked stolen keys to a house a few miles away, but didn't feel like risking my life for them.

There are any number of products allowing you to mount them inconspicuously.

Its not just popular, police departments have recommended it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/28/airtags...

https://www.axios.com/2023/05/24/apple-airtags-track-car-thi...

https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/apple-air-tags-travel-...

https://www.govtech.com/public-safety/police-urge-caution-in...

To no one's shock, the police departments are giving poor advice

Police department recommendations are often wrong, and often based on either poor information about the domain the advice is being given in or actively-promoted (by police leadership) disinformation.

Police agencies aren't systematic domain experts except in the application of force to obtain compliance, as well as not having an interest in accurate advice.

The killer use case here, as I think most people have figured out, is figuring out where your stuff is when it's in a system you don't have visibility into. Like if UPS says it's "on the way" from NYC to LA or something, and especially if the airline isn't sure where your luggage is. It's just spectacular for that.

And of course where did I leave my keys and is my backpack in the car or at work stuff, but that's the obvious/advertised use.

It's been that way since day 1

No, not in a free society. For any product, users should be free to use it for any (legal) use they see fit.

Artificially limiting the use of a product goes against the hacker culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture

You’re free to use the purchased device. You’re not free to demand changes. It’s not like you’re unlocking functionality that should be built in. Changing this would require patching the firmware of every iPhone

> You’re not free to demand changes.

I mean, technically you are — doesn't mean anyone will listen.

Hacker culture would mean working around the limitation, not complaining that some consumer product doesn’t work exactly how you want it to work.

FWIW, there are videos on YouTube showing you how to silence the speaker. No idea if they work or not, but it's hacker culture at work.

> For any product, users should be free to use it for any (legal) use they see fit.

None of these companies ever agreed to be bound by that value, and aren’t under any obligation to adhere to the tenets of Hacker culture. Hackers as a group have failed to convince the public that these things matter, so as far as these businesses are concerned, they don’t.

Like, I agree, it sucks when companies restrict what I can do with a device. But when that happens I don’t talk about it like they betrayed me, I knew what I was buying and decided to buy it anyway.

> Hackers as a group have failed to convince the public that these things matter

I distinctly remember friends at Apple being surprised, in the aftermath of San Bernadino, at the backlash they received for refusing to break the encryption on the shooter’s phone for the FBI [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption...

Do you think online protests or discussing these issues results in any tangible outcomes? (I do)

Using a tech device to find and disable hidden trackers is pretty "hacker culture".

So why are you trying to artificially limit the use of my phone to alert me to other people's tracking devices?

I can use a steak knife as a screwdriver but I wouldn't expect it to be good in that role.

The reason apple designed it this way is so that someone can know if they are being tracked. If an air tag not associated with your phone is close by for a certain period of time, then it notifies you that you are being tracked.

This is a safety feature and its been there since day one.

There's two products here Bluetooth trackers and phones. People don't want to buy phones that expose themselves to tracking by other people.

Every phone is already being being tracked and logged. What youre really saying is that people often tolerate some tracking if done by CIA/phone company/Apple/Google/FB. We're just playing with semantics here. Tracking is either acceptable or not. The only real solution is to go off-grid.

It's reasonable for a person to have a threat model that's more concerned about their violent narcissist ex attaching an AirTag to their car than about the CIA.

It's astonishing how few people actually seem to realise this.

If the FBI wants to obliterate me, they can get a warrant and send goons to my house. The costs of preparing for that threat model are excessive, so I don't.

If some scumbag ad company wants to track me, they can eat shit on my adblocker and not track me. The cost of preparing for that threat model is trivial, so I do.

CIA/phone company/Apple/Google/FB/some rando are all different, independent, situations; as a reasonable adult I have decided that some of them are acceptable, some of them are not.

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