Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Can't you join the call as two users? One to show stuff and one to talk and be seen?

I've done it a few times on a Mac and macbook and it works really well

Can't you join the call as two users? One to show stuff and one to talk and be seen?

I possibly could. But, I work in an industry where both my peers, and those senior to me struggle to understand basic MS Office packages. ie, instead of using Excel, they'll manually make a table in Word, calculate on their phone and then wonder why the results aren't correct. Or try to write an essay in Excel. Calling as two users may be beyond their comprehension, and I couldn't be arsed to explain why I would be doing that.

Calling as two users may be beyond their comprehension, and I couldn't be arsed to explain why I would be doing that

Am I connected twice? What an odd bug.
Anyway...

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002324090240.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.75eb5ea1tWUpl6&algo_pvid=b51c6bd4-ef1e-4194-9f1f-8dbfeb2e2214&algo_expid=b51c6bd4-ef1e-4194-9f1f-8dbfeb2e2214-0&btsid=2100bddd16191219266567763e391a&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_

That didn't take long!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vInUoPtg8m0

Anyone planning to use airtags as a bike tracker? Can imagine they would be pretty good if they can be hidden inside one of the tubes

Not checked how big they are but was thinking of wrapping under bar tape. On the underside so as to be inconspicuous.

I'm thinking about it, but I don't know how well it will work. They get their location and talk to the internet by Bluetoothing to a nearby Apple device, so only good in a populated area I think.

Sticking them inside metal tubes is going to limit the range. Inside a saddle might be a good place.

I Googled this the other day out of interest what the Airtag was and it sounded like you couldn't really do it at range without the tag being able to be publicly tracked (or something?). There were a lot of suggestions saying Samsung Tile(?) worked better.

About to abandon my Lenovo for something from Apple, but having trouble deciding between an M1 MBA and new iPad Pro. It's for personal use, photo editing, streaming, emails and occasionally more demanding use cases. My main concern is the debate over the limitations of iPadOS, but realistically I'm not concerned about Lightroom/Logic pro etc. and as far as I can see it's competant at everything else. Smaller battery life and lack of headphone jack on the iPad are also annoying.

On the edu store I could get a 512gb//16gb RAM MBA for roughly the same price as the new 12.9"/256gb/8gb RAM iPad Pro with a magic keyboard case. The former seems more future proof/sensible, but part of me just really wants that mini LED touch-screen...

Any thoughts on this stupid first world dilemma?

No, it can piggyback on any Apple device that's in Bluetooth range to get its location to you. I don't think there's such a thing as public tracking.

If AirTag is separated from its owner and out of Bluetooth range, the Find My network can help track it down. The Find My network is approaching a billion Apple devices and can detect Bluetooth signals from a lost AirTag and relay the location back to its owner, all in the background, anonymously and privately.

The battery in my 2011 MBP ha swollen. I’ve removed it and will dispose of it in the proper manner but weighing up replacing the battery for £60 ish. It’s vintage hardware at this point but still fast enough for general use and is a joy to type on. Worth keeping alive that bit longer?

I also have a maxed out 16” from work for doing real things.

I've got a 13" MacBook Pro and iPad Pro, and work between both of them. If I had to choose just one, whilst the iPad Pro is great, I'm not sure if I'd want it as my only device. It's an amazing companion device and I use it lots, but you might eventually find it a bit limiting.

I know the data considerations for this are going to be small, but they're going to be non-zero, which makes it interesting to see how Apple is going to solve that.

Apple devices can't report every tag it sees all the time as a walk through a busy area could result in hundreds of tags each one of which could chip away at mobile data allowances.

If they only need to report tag IDs that have been marked as stolen/lost then they'll need to download these lists (or updates to them) periodically.

I guess it'll work in a similar way to the Covid location app. The device will keep track of any tags it sees (along with a timestamp and geo-location) and then cross check what it has seen against the list of lost/stolen tags, and report anything it has seen of interest, and discarding anything that wasn't. The downloads of the lost/stolen tags of interest will either be small enough to be done over mobile data (especially if divvied up regionally) and/or augmented by larger downloads when the phone has a wifi connection.

So the chance of a "Find my tag" screen showing a bike being ridden away along a street in real-time as it passes lots of people with Apple devices is unlikely to be a thing.

Would it use Apple devices that aren't officially signed up to 'tags' too? It's an interesting and maybe worrying concept!

Would it use Apple devices that aren't officially signed up to 'tags' too? It's an interesting and maybe worrying concept!

Yes, that's the whole point, every Apple device (once it had been updated to the right version of iOS) would be tracking any tags it can see, if BlueTooth is enabled, etc.

Not really worrying as the only thing it should be reporting the status of are tags that people want to be located, which is the whole point of buying them.

Also as long as the location of tags that aren't marked as lost/stolen is not retained on any device or centrally for anything longer than a small one or two day window to give the owners a chance to mark it as lost/stolen.

Also as long as the ID of the device that was in contact with the tag was not recorded, otherwise that information could be used to track to location of a device (and not the tag).

Yeah I just read this too which might hinder using it as a security device?:

AirTag is designed to discourage unwanted tracking. If someone else’s AirTag finds its way into your stuff, your iPhone will notice it’s travelling with you and send you an alert. After a while, if you still haven’t found it, the AirTag will start playing a sound to let you know it’s there.

walk through a busy area could result in hundreds of tags each one of which could chip away at mobile data allowances.

Will just wait until it gets wifi then send location and time detected. Suspect this won’t be the default setting though as it hobbles the system too much. More likely is that it reports over xG ‘hi I found this thing at this location at this time - are you interested?’ And the server says ‘nah mate, and don’t report it again for x time’.

Not sure it would need to have access to the stolen / lost list, which could get quite large, unless they divvy it up by some kind of zoning system.

The covid app is hobbled by not being an apple product and being delivered by an app; this stuff is going to be nearer OS level.

That said pretty much all apps will slowly chip away at data in the background for legit and non legit reasons and literally nobody cares.

This is good to know, just got a new Air from work and I am like what? You want me to do video editing on it? 😉

The problem with using them on bikes to track a potential thief is that the tag will start making a sound and report itself to the thieves phone. This is a function to prevent the tags being used to track other people without them knowing.

Would it use Apple devices that aren't officially signed up to 'tags' too? It's an interesting and maybe worrying concept!

Most iPhone users are signed up to "Find My iPhone" which I think (haven't read the small print) opts you in to helping track other people's Apple devices.

The problem with using them on bikes to track a potential thief is that the tag will start making a sound and report itself to the thieves phone

Apple haven't made it clear how long after it's stolen it will start doing that. Could be minutes, could be days.

https://www.heise.de/tests/Auf-den-Hund-gekommen-Apple-AirTags-im-Praxistest-6025619.html
This is in German but if I understand it correctly it will notify you when you arrive at your home address, or at the end of the day and starts making sounds after 3 days. So your best bet is a thief with an Android phone.

Yes I suppose it's effectiveness is based on how many device users have given consent (knowingly or not) to be part of a 'network'.

The main thing I’m wondering is in the immediate aftermath of the theft whether I’d be able to track the tag (on a map) as it comes into the vicinity of iOS devices. I think this is something that the tile does but I haven’t seen anything to confirm that the airtag can do it too.

Edit: from reading this I think the airtag will work decently as a tracker in the immediate aftermath. Even if the thief has an iOS device and they are alerted to the tracker, as long as it’s well concealed in the frame it might act as a decent deterrent.