Explainer | What are Apple's AirTags and how do they work?

AirTags attach to an item and help you keep track of its location

Apple’s ‘Spring-loaded’ event has now ended and as people rush to decipher all the product launches, we thought we would shine a light on one of the smaller ones – The Apple AirTags.

What is Apple’s AirTags?

Picture this, you walk in after a tiring day at work and plonk your keys down on the table. Imagine yourself settling down in front of the TV to realise that your HotStar subscription has expired. You subconsciously reach for your wallet to figure out your card details only to realise, it is not there.

Normally, you would ‘Indiana Jones’ around the household looking for your lost treasure but Apple is proposing a better way. AirTags are small puck shaped electronic devices that attach to an item like your wallet in this instance. They connect to the ‘Find My’ app on your iPhone through Bluetooth and can quickly be traced using the app. A simple solution to a simple problem.

The Apple touch here is the ease of use. The way you set it up is by simply holding them close to your phone and they will connect. You can then attach them to an item you want to track like house keys or backpack and just leave them be. They have enough battery life to last a year and the batteries are user-replaceable, so when you run out just put new ones in. When you invariably stomp through the house one day swearing that you kept something where it is supposed to be, the AirTags can then help you track down that lost item.

Let us be honest here, this is the very definition of a novelty item and it is not exactly cheap either with one costing you Rs. 3,190. It does solve a very real problem though and would be useful in finding important items that otherwise cannot be tracked.

Okay but isn’t there stuff on the market already like this?

Yup. Much cheaper as well, you can find one retailing for as low as Rs. 219 but Apple has studied this market well. Good alternatives like Tile cost nearly as much and do not have advantages like Apple’s U1 chip which enables something called ‘Precision Finding’. Simply put, using the built-in accelerometer in conjunction with the U1 chip, the AirTags can tell you not only about the location of your item but can also read elevation and the general direction of the AirTag and uses the app to guide you to the exact location.

You may ask yourself that is great but what about the times when it is out of range? Good question. The answer is in Apple’s Find My network that can detect Bluetooth signals from a lost AirTag and relay that information back to the user to give you a general search location to work with. When you get back in range, Precision Finding takes over.

Come on, somebody must have thought about this before?

Here is where things get a little dicey. Tile (a competitor that makes similar products) accused Apple of abusing its power over the ecosystem and deliberately curtailing important features for other tracker manufacturers. The bone of contention in this debate stems from the privacy policies that were introduced with iOS 13. You may have heard about them; Facebook isn’t too happy about that either.

Tile alleges that Apple deliberately disrupts its tracking features by requiring users to opt-in to location tracking. While the permissions themselves are something users welcome, Tile argues that it makes things tougher for them. It also argued that Apple actively encourages users to turn off location tracking and the workarounds are complex and not easy to find.

Apple has said that Tiles claims are “meritless” and the changes were in line with the privacy focused path that they have taken over the last few years.

What is interesting is that Tile and Apple seemed to have a good working relationship that was mutually beneficial, but it fell apart when rumours started to swell that Apple was working on a tracker of its own. Given Apple’s own products are exempt to any restrictions, Tile argues that this deliberately worsens the experience on competing products.