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Comment by saurik | Hacker News Reader

That's cool! I am looking at this and seeing another issue with AirTag: I actively use the feature on Tile where I can use the Tile on my keychain to find my phone by pushing the button, and I guess AirTags is entirely missing that feature.

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You're supposed to use your Apple Watch to find your iPhone.

And if you misplace your Apple Watch®, grab your Apple Vision Pro® to look for the Apple Watch® in Augmented Reality!

You make fun of it, yet the ecosystem is so popular and well integrated that the US Department of Justice is suing them over it.

That's apple DOJ soon.

at the Apple Inc. Sessions Court

The issue is not that they have a well-integrated ecosystem, it's that they build features into their products that only their other products are allowed to use. There would be no need for action if Apple designed a popular ecosystem that all of your devices could participate in.

Are there laws against that “issue”?

Sure, in the EU.

This is irrelevant. The comment was about Apple’s preferred way of locating lost phones was Apple Watch so they don’t support pinging it from an AirTag. This has nothing to do with 3rd party support, and in fact 3rd parties (Tile) do have the feature Apple doesn’t for their item trackers.

Apple not allowing 3rd parties use of their proprietary technology is not the entirety of the DoJ’s argument. For example, their claims about Messages and Apple Watch are about support Apple hasn’t built, not about what they prevent 3rd parties from building.

something i initially missed as well but like .. if you pushed the button on your airtag it would probably start all your apple devices to beeping. The tag is associated with your account, not your phone like with tile.

Different behavior would be very easy to program.

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