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Comment by refibrillator | Hacker News Reader

I found some AirPods on a remote trail awhile back, case and all. Batteries were completely dead. Once charged they paired to my iphone with no indication of a previous owner, besides the device name of John’s AirPods or whatever.

I tried briefly (not as hard as the author) to figure out who they belonged to but had no luck.

I called Apple support and gave the serial number, but they told me there wasn’t anything they could do if the owner did not mark them as lost via the Bluetooth settings page. Even though at that point Apple presumably had all the information necessary to contact the original owner…

So I cleaned the AirPods and have been using them since. Is there any way for me to find the owner if I have no info about the owners area code like the author did?

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AirPods are a bit pricey but cheap enough that I wouldn’t even bother reporting them lost to the local park authority. I doubt there’s much you can do besides a sign at the trailheads.

they're airtags essentially, aren't they? the person who lost them would report it to apple, not park officials, then they'd be found

No they wouldn’t. Apple doesn’t care. I tried.

Aren’t they like $160? That’s not cheap.

Valuing your time at $20 an hour, that's 8 hours worth of time for them. If the remote hiking spot is ~2 hours away, and it takes roughly an hour to deal with the park authorities, that's already 5 hours, plus transport.

Add in the inconvenience of not having them for somewhere between a few days and forever, and I'd also say they aren't really cheap but still it probably isn't worth the effort in that situation.

On the other hand, if someone makes 15 $/hr, but 50% of that goes to rent and other essentials, and they save a little, say 20%, for retirement, that leaves 30% or about 5 $/hr for discressionary spending, so the airpods come closer to 32 hr or 4 days of pay.

I wouldn’t necessarily have worked these 8 hours for 160$ after tax, I’d have gone to pick them up.

If I was certain that I would find them when I went back to look for them I would do it. It’s worth the time, but if the chance of finding them is only like 50% not worth the time, new one’s are probably better and have better battery life anyway. sour grapes perhaps yes

Yeah but he said "cheap enough" and I agree. If the owner didn't bother to mark it as lost in the Find My app, there's nothing you or Apple can do about it.

"Cheap" is a relative term. I'm sure lots of HN-reading US-based software engineers make enough money that $160 isn't a big deal.

I guess Apple didn’t bother to connect with the original owner since lot many people do not buy for themselves and as gifts or for parents. So unless AirPods were paired with a device, Apple wouldn’t like to get involved much.

They don’t get involved even if you find an iphone that has John doe still logged on. No clue why they wouldn’t at least send an email to the account owner. I tried to surrender the iphone at the store but they wouldn’t take it.

Liability probably.

And, a lost $ale.

"Accidentally" leave it at the store, or say, "Hey, this was sitting on the bench in the mall outside your Apple Store" and set it down and walk away before they can say anything.

They're also impossible to register without an iOS device. I have a pair that I won, but have no iPhone or iPad. They work great with my Macs, and pretty well with Android, but there is no way for me to register them with Find My, which is pretty annoying. There's no logical reason they couldn't do this on a Mac.

Never tried it myself but this article as well as a couple of posts mentions it should be possible on a Mac if Find My is active on the Mac. https://www.soundguys.com/how-to-set-up-find-my-airpods-6213...

No, that only works if they're already added via an iOS device.

I think they may not have used activation lock until later generations cannot confirm though

I mean, even if Apple knows the address of the people who bought it, it might have been re-sold since then - so it makes sense they don’t give out any info.

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