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Comment by doublerabbit | Hacker News Reader

How long until they tag these to our ears and assign us a personal number? With Elon's offer of servitude[1] on Mars and these, we may encounter George Oswells 1984 pretty soon.

Airtags, just another piece of e-waste to poison the planet.

[1] https://twitter.com/PicklePunchD/status/1217991463503446016

How long until Apple decides to discontinue the tags on their current generation of devices forcing you to upgrade?

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Vincent van Gogh. Born 2043, Brabant, Netherlands. Child prodigy in arts, sciences, and engineering. Graduated from Erasmus University, Rotterdam in 2055 with joint masters in particle physics and fine arts. Exhibited at the Louvre at age 14. Discovered a universal nontoxic perpetual energy source at 16 and joined staff of the Huge Monad Collider that same year as doctoral researcher in functional cosmology. There, proved that spacetime is lazily evaluated and that speed of light arises as input latency in underlying algebra. Disappeared November 23rd, 2063, leaving behind notes for a "personal temporal debugger" and a diatribe, hidden in a stencil of rats, railing against the prevailing culture of universal citizen tracing. Last sighted in background of art documentary, Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010); current whereabouts within continuum unknown, assumed to be still at large. Eartags never found.

I, for one, don't like losing my keys or umbrella and really like AirTags.

Do you need the location tracking for that, or just the ability to hunt within wireless range of your phone?

I've not-often lost my keys nor umbrella, do you live in a castle? How often do you loose those things?

And now your tagging your items just for apple to see besides no one has answered how does that justify the e-waste these tags produces?

Seeing as I've been rated-limited.

> Not sure what you mean there, but Apple doesn't get to know where anything is.

To say Apple doesn't get to see any information, pfft. I trust them as much as any thief. Can you prove this?

> Something something covid vaccines and 5G base stations

Not at all. I'm hoping to get my covid vaccine, have you?

I have ADHD and live in an apartment <1000sqft and have lost my keys moments after finding them, but before I made it out the door. My second most frequently used command with my smart home setup is "Where's my phone?". I ordered 4 air tags. As to the e-waste concern, I'm trusting Apple's recycling program to handle them for me once they're no longer in service. It's admittedly not ideal for the environment, but I think it's better than the companies that sell disposable commercial trackers that are intended to never be recovered.

That might make you the only person to have never misplaced your keys. It's not exactly uncommon. In the above scenario, finding of an umbrella prevents waste as otherwise you need a new one.

I'm guity there, never is the wrong word, so I've edited it to not-often. Not Often have I lost such possessions.

But still, a gimmick which those with will get bored within the next six months and will be left with a thing that will constantly tag it's position.

> tagging your items just for apple to see

Not sure what you mean there, but Apple doesn't get to know where anything is.

Do you have a phone, a computer or even a relatively new car?

I presume you do. You are already being tracked.

Totally yeah, no car though. I walk in to a shop and I'm already tagged. I walk in to the streets, I'm tagged. There's no hiding from surveillance. But now to allow a tag report back where your X is located is ridiculous.

Why you want to submit to a heat map of your objects, and what you do with them, I don't know. Call me cynical. I pity the people who feel its a fantastic toy when normally it's the same people criticizing about X FANG company thing. Yet they go and buy the recent crud they release. Talk about hypocritical.

There are a few interesting things you say here. I won’t comment on the others, but the e-waste one is a valid point.

I wonder how many more of these have sold than is “necessary” just because they are cheap and nifty, only for the purchaser to get bored with it after a while and forget about it?

And to add, how long will it last until Apple forces you to upgrade your iDevice because "it's not compatible with this version. Not like that's ever happened before.

We have plenty of history here... so the answer is "somewhere around 5 years".

Example: iPhone 6. Released 2014, last sold 2016, lost new OS support in 2019. It's the newest iPhone that isn't compatible with AirTags. And with AirPod Pro and Pro Max you can only use it with regular Bluetooth, not the enhanced Apple proprietary version.

AFAICT the 6 to 6S upgrade involved doubling the RAM from 1 to 2GB, and the CPU improvement was almost doubled (+70%). The pace of raw improvement has slowed a great deal since then.

even just the battery waste alone will be insane. the coin cell batteries only last a year and they are non-rechargeable so if someone gets their first airtag in their teens and uses it throughout their life then that's at least 40+ batteries. its kind of nuts when you think about how many people will end up using these

hopefully they would be recycled in some responsible way but thats wishful thinking. future archeologists will have a interesting time figuring out why there is such a dense layer of coin cell batteries on top of a layer of fidget spinners

> How long until Apple decides to discontinue the tags on their current generation of devices forcing you to upgrade?

I’m confused: what would require an upgrade?

Unless iPhones stop supporting Bluetooth, which obviously won’t happen, or ultra wideband, which is not impossible but very unlikely, these devices will work with iPhones effectively forever.

Something something covid vaccines and 5G base stations

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