It will come as no surprise to regulars here that I use and very much like Apple products. In fact, I use the majority of the Apple ecosystem, not everything, but quite a lot—watch, phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, and cloud services. But, when Apple release the AirTag… let’s say I didn’t rush out to buy any and didn’t expect I ever would.

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I mean, I liked the idea of the AirTag—a way to keep track of your stuff and to find it with specific directions using ultra wideband to localize it. Neat. What I didn’t like were the size, and the price. AirTags aren’t huge, but they aren’t tiny either. Using one on something you carry around (keys. wallet, &c.) is a serious commitment, it will bulk up whatever you attach it to.

For luggage, briefcases, purses, messenger bags, and the like it’s not really a problem but if I wanted an AirTag for anything it would be for the things I might drop, and with the size I wasn’t going to be putting one in my wallet (they do make wallets designed for it, but I have worked to make mine a slim as possibe and an AirTag would at least double it). I also wasn’t fond of the idea of adding one to my cars ”remote control“ (as BMW calls it) which is the only key I carry.

And then there was the price: AirTags cost $24.00USD each. Not a fortune, but given what would have been just a speculative purchase I was reluctant to spend it. One of my sons is a lot more ready to jump at things like this and so he did rush out to buy. You get a slight discount on a 4-pack so that’s what he got. He put one on his keys and the others in things that move around with him. I got a look at the one on his keys, and it didn’t seem too bad an addition. Keep in mind you have to buy some sort of holder, there are many options, and many cost much more than the tag itself!

I should step back at this point and give a very brief explanation of what an AirTag is and how it works…​

An AirTag is a lentl-shaped device made of steel and plastic. Inside is a replaced lithium coin cell and some magical electronics that uses Ultra Wideband Bluetooth Low Energy to provide localization to a very high precision. The BLE is also used to talk to iPhones and iPads, as part of the operation. A small but surprisingly loud speaker is also included inside the waterproof housing.​

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An AirTag is associated with an Apple ID, and that person can use the Find My app on the phone, tablet, or desktop to check the location of the AirTag and optionally make it make a sound. The phone can use the UWB BLE to locate the tag from about 10m away with a compass pointer and distance indicator. It can be a bit tricky until you get into that 10m circle, but it’s not very hard. After that, you just go where it points.​

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One of the magical bits of the AirTag is that every iPhone is part of the network it uses to report its location, and there are a lot of iPhones! So, even if it is located somewhere far from you it will likely be located near an iPhone at some point—and than it‘s AirTag phone home time. In a densely populated area, like a major city, this might be in near real time!​

…back to our story…​

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So, it turns out that for various reasons my wife and I began to travel quite a bit. At that point I considered it was probably prudent to get some AirTags for our luggage since I am very good at losing things and she isn‘t flawless (close, though). When I got them, I decided I would bite the bullet and add one to my car’s “remote control” since losing that on a trip would be… annoying… if not enraging.

It does bulk up the fob which I keep in my “change pocket” into which it fits very nicely without the AirTag and a bit awkwardly with it. Still, not world ending, just not ideal. Fast forward to yesterday…

On Monday my wife and I went for a nice stroll along our riverwalk which has several parks and green spaces on it. My agenda included photographing birds, which I did—with fairly substantial success. It was a nice walk of about 3 miles and that was that.

Now I don’t drive every day, I don’t need to. There are times when it might be an entire week before I drive somewhere. So, Thursday I needed to go food shopping, and in getting ready I found that my key was not in my pocket. No big deal, I probably just left it on the nightstand… no, not there, which means it was in the pocket of the pants I had last worn. But I wasn’t sure which those were, so I decided to use the Find My app to locate the AirTag.

I fired it up and it told me that my key was last seen on Kamm Island, 1.7 miles away. I didn’t think anything of it because I had been there and I figured it just needed refreshing, which I did, but the pin stubbornly remained in its place on the map and that’s when I noticed it was last seen… 30 minutes ago!

My key was on Kamm Island, not in my pocket. It had been there since Monday! I grabbed the spare (fortunately where I expected it to be) and rushed over to Kamm Island, arriving there was no signal to be found where the map seemed to be saying it should be but walking around I got a “low signal, move to a new location” messages. I little more moving around produced a pointer and 25 feet, 20 feet, 15 feet, 10, 5–there it was, on the ground at the base of a tree, in perfect condition and not even dirty.

And Find My can notify you if you move away from something with an AIrTag—checking back I found it had, and I’d missed it!

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So—I guess I recommend AirTags to iPhone users, mine just saved me about 5 times what it costs. If I had needed to replace that fob I would be out a lot of time and money right now.

 

There are pieces of the modern technological offering that do work very well. Air-tags are amazing.

I dropped the keys to my brand new truck somewhere in a 20 acre paddock FULL of grass and it took me all afternoon to find them using a metal detector. I only found them because they had a big boat-float attached. I spent a lot of time that day thinking about possible applications of GPS.