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Comment by mulmen | Hacker News Reader

I think you have your priorities wrong. Why should an unsustainable business be prioritized over consumer benefit?

Nobody has a right to a successful business but when consumers can trust their purchases they are more likely to make additional purchases.

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I felt like adding that disclaimer was a nice thing to do, informing the customer and letting them make their own decision. It makes almost no difference to remove that disclaimer (well, it would increase sales). it is not to protect myself. The price is very low and margin is very thin, what happens if Apple bricks the device? There would be very little money left to refund the customers, and most of the refunds would be eaten by transaction fees. Is it worth it for the customers to receive a few cents back? And that's assuming I keep all the money in the company and don't pay myself.

Agree that the transparency is nice but the limitation it mentions disqualifies the product for me.

The lack of trust in the purchase comes from Apple, not from this seller. It's apple that's reaching into your device and force updating the firmware without your consent.

No. The product in this case relies on unintended functionality in a specific firmware version of an Apple device that is specifically designed to not be suitable for this application. In this case it is the add-on device that is not offering refunds if it stops working.

Yes.

> if it stops working.

It doesn't magically stop working though, it would be apple explicitly putting in effort to break this functionality and forcing you to update a device you own, forcing you to use it only how they want you to use it.

https://xkcd.com/1172/

It doesn’t require Apple deliberately breaking this product. They could change the required functionality for an unrelated reason.

Where do you get the idea that Apple specifically designed the AirTag to not be suitable for a third party device to control when it switches on and off? I can understand how they might not approve of this adaptation to their product but I don't see any reason to believe they specifically designed against it.

The AirTag is specifically designed to not be used to track people without their knowledge.

Is that why it released it with built in integration in android so that android users automatically are notified of tags following them?

Or is that why the tag flashes and makes sounds frequently so that people without phones can know they’re being tracked?

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