This is not true at all. Maybe for AirTags themselves, but EarPods are the same trackers and they do no such thing. My partner has been getting plagued with notifications that an EarPod is tracking her location, but she cannot find where it is. This has been happening for nearly a month. An option is given on the iPhone to disable the tracking, but you need physical access to the device for it. Also a suggestion is given to notify the police, but you need to have the serial number for that. Which again requires physical access to the device.
All this while she’s been actively involved in a court case for establishing a restraining order against a domestic abuser of hers.
If Apple actually cared they’d allow you to disable from the app. As is they’re just paying lip service to the abused while actively aiding the abusers.
> If Apple actually cared they’d allow you to disable from the app. As is they’re just paying lip service to the abused while actively aiding the abusers.
Then the value of the product would be zero, because thieves would disable it remotely.
The stupid beeping is already annoying if I happen to have BT off and jiggle my own keys.
But: how is that AirPod not running out of battery?
> No. Not if only. If they have been away from their paired phone for more than a few hours, they beep whenever they are moved.
Far more than a few — I am away from mine all day and they don't beep when moved. Apple apparently says it's somewhere between 8 and 24 hours. Also, they don't have to be right up against the paired phone — if someone is stalking a neighbor in apartment building, they probably come close enough to fool the system.
It is of course much more useful to sue the well-known billion dollar company than some fly by night endeavor where your contact information is ‘China’.
While that's true, the AirTag network is much more valuable for stalking.
Most people don't have a specific competitors tracking app on their phone, so the network is much smaller and location updates much rarer.
On the other hand. Every iPhone is by default an airtag location reporter, not only making the network much larger, but also, importantly, making it very likely that the targets phone, if it's an iPhone, will actively be reporting on itself, bring effectively as good as a gps tracker.
While this doesn't rule out the possibility of another tracker being used for stalking, it does make it dramatically more important for Apple to solve this.
This is a terribly bad faith argument. Apart from anything else, comparing AirTags to guns is absurd.
However, as I said in another comment, if they have been away from their paired phone for more than a few hours, they beep whenever they are moved. Even if you have no phone at all.
So you're saying that the SAFEST of all tracking devices should be the one used as a test-case to set a legal precedent against the harm that tracking devices could cause?
This reminds of the legal urban-myth(?) where if you grievously injure someone but had the intent to kill them, you get less time than if you didn't intend to hurt them at all.
Then Apple would be the only company making a gun that warned anyone, and you're saying that would make them worse than all the companies making intentionally concealable guns.
Which is what happens with the other tracker devices: there is no notification for anyone with any device. Even on android where apple presumably doesn't have the ability to do whatever low power level stuff that's apparently required they have an app.
Other trackers don't have anything that warns people. Tile does do something at least: there's an anti-theft mode that requires a government id to use. Except that's still 100% dependent on the victim knowing that they're being stalked.
And yet it gets all the flak.
People are stupid.