APPLE’S BREATH OF FRESH AIR FOR FREQUENT LOSERS
One of the rare upsides of lockdown for me is that I haven’t lost anything for ages.
That’s not because I’ve been more careful, of course. It’s because I haven’t really been anywhere aside from my house.
With lockdown beginning to lift then, it’s timely that Apple should release its effort at helping idiots like me find the things we mislay.
AirTags are tiny disks, around 3cm across, that you can attach to almost anything. If you lose that thing, the AirTag will help you find it using your iPhone, iPad or Mac’s Find My app.
The system works on two levels – both using Bluetooth.
The AirTag is first paired with your iCloud account, it then emits a low-power Bluetooth signal. If you lose it, there’s an excellent chance it will show up on the Find My network of more than a billion Apple devices – if one of them comes within range of it, the network will know it is yours and ping your devices with an approximate location shown on a map.
This is all done privately and anonymously – whoever owns the device that’s found your AirTag will not even know themselves.
Once you’re near the AirTag you can use ‘Precision Finding’ via the Find My app to locate it with pin-point accuracy… provided you’ve got an iPhone 11 or 12. If you don’t have one of those phones, you can find the AirTag by making it emit a sound.
It’s beautifully simple, and in my testing, works every time.
There are a couple of built-in privacy features too – you can’t track others using an AirTag. Anyone who is travelling with an AirTag that’s not registered to their account is pinged on their phone to let them know about it. After a while, the AirTag will make a noise to alert even those who don’t have an Apple device that they’ve got unwelcome company.
The location of the AirTag is also only ever known to you – all that data is encrypted.
The AirTags are water and dust resistant, and have a replaceable battery. Apple says they’ll last about a year. They are £29 each or £99 for a pack of four, plus there are accessories available.