Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

That was a clear explanation! Bit concerning it could silently track movements for 3 days though if someone was away from 'home' or a non Apple user.

The three day thing is that after being away from your phone for three days the tag will emit a sound each time it is moved.

So the tag would continue to give a location ping to you via every passing iPhone until the battery dies (c. 1 year) and only if they detected movement would they emit the sound to tell someone nearby they are lonely and missing their connected iPhone. This does mean if you dropped your keys in the woods while out walking your non-existent dog and didn’t realise. You could still locate your keys a month later provided an iPhone or two went within 200 or so meters of the tag. But if after three days someone with a dog disturbed the ground, your keys would ping and they could use NFC (inc. android devices) to read your missing device message. So yes, potential to stalk someone for three days, including a spouse you suspect of playing away.

This has good spousal tracking though as the spouse will likely have your address as home. On arrival at home, instead of sending the you’re being stalked alert, the tag will start talking to your phone again. It will probably never tell them they have been stalked. The moral of the story being, check your pockets and bag compartments carefully if you are playing away.

I think it tries to track if the tag is following you and not the owner, so the spousal scenario should still be detected as amiss.

All good points, the way I see it is that Apple seem to have done a decent job in balancing the need to avoid malicious use with the need to actually track lost (or stolen) items. As a consumer I would probably prefer that they reduce the anti stalking measures a little bit more to make airtags an even better theft deterrent/tracker- at the end of the day, if a bad actor really wants to remotely stalk someone, then there are undoubtedly loads of cheaper devices with no anti-stalking tech.

But from a brand rep perspective it’s a good idea.

How does it work in this example?

Your bike gets robbed, the person rides it for 1 hour to their house, notifies them and they deactivate. You return 1h 15 mins later and find your bike is missing and open app to have a look... will it show you it’s last location before it was deactivated?

Maybe hypothetical thief then takes it to a crowded place for a few hours, let it ping lots of other Bluetooth devices then deactivate. Your last ping might lead you to someone entirely innocent?

Only planning to whack them with the baseball bat call the police if they are actually in possession of bicycle 😆

Tbh the right answer is to get insurance - any amateur sleuthing/baseball bat activity is for entertainment only!

My old Magic Mouse keeps losing connection constantly. Is there a good alternative to just buying the MM2?

I have the infamous butterfly keyboard 2018 MBP. The keyboard issues started early but I couldnt be bothered as most of the times I used an external keyboard for work but now has screen (ghosting?) issues. Is this a known defect? Will I have to pay big bucks to get it fixed? I have booked an appointment at my nearest Apple store next week.

Yeah you have the stage light effect. Mine went the same way and you may still be in luck with a warranty replacement for both keyboard and screen.

@thebaldingbuddha selling an iPhone 2020 SE cheap

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/363255/

Though if you leave it a few more hours he’ll be giving it away

Hahaha very true. No thats my limit now.

Does anybody have any wizardry to fix a wifi printing problem?

We've two 2020 MacBook Pros on the same wifi network with a printer connected to it. Then one laptop just stopped being able to print. So far, I've removed all the drivers and reinstalled them, checked all network settings (which are identical) and checked all other settings on the MacBook, the router and the printer, reset the printer function, deleted all Epson software in the library etc and restalled. And still no joy. Everything seems identical. But, one can print, and one can't even see the printer.

On one laptop I can enter the printer IP address which brings up the printer, and on the other laptop it just times out.

Any ideas, before I just buy a new printer?

Contact Apple support? They are pretty good in my experience.

Get a second hand airport express and hook the printer up to it? That worked better for us compared to the printers own wifi thing

Any ideas, before I just buy a new printer?

Check the band that they are using is the same.

Had something similar but with wifi speakers. Turned out it would shit the bed unless everything was on 2.4ghz not 5 or whatever it is.

Factory resetting the router should sort it.

Wasn’t someone on here missing target display mode? Seems like you can do it via an app

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/05/luna-display-mac-to-mac-thunderbolt-ethernet/

yeah, it sucks

my better half had this on her 2018 MBP a couple of months ago and they replaced the screen, keyboard and battery. apparently all were faulty and covered by warranty

What sucks? That solution?

i tried a luna display a few years ago and the latency was noticeable, i just dont think theres any alternative to.. a display cable

Bet you're right, similar to using an ipad as extra display. Haven't tried sidecar though, only the 3rd party solutions

Sidecar is really good, definitely an 'exceeds expectations' thing.

adds mental reason to buy ipad pro