Hello, stranger My wife and I were sitting with our dog on our front porch on a recent weekend morning.
I went inside for a moment; when I came back, my dog was inside, but my wife was not.
I secured my dog inside, then headed out to meet this fast-moving but friendly interloper.
I had not yet needed to actually find something truly lost with an AirTag, so I looked up how it worked.
That’s a good AirTag—now, stay I was working at iFixit when rumors circulated about Apple developing a “Tile-like” item tracker in early 2019.
One passage from a single, thin paperback has stuck in my head the most out of all the books I read for my formal education.
“Selective list of what readers like” is provided in William Blundell’s book The Art and Craft of Feature Writing. It begins with a categorical no. 1. “Dogs, then other adorable animals and well-behaved young children.”. According to Blundell, “people are your second-best option, as long as they are saying or doing something interesting.”.
In almost three years here, I have not been able to deliver a dog story to Ars Technica readers. I’ll take care of that today. A dog is the subject of this tale, which also offers a unique optimistic interpretation of a common “smart” gadget that aided a good girl.
For the sake of their owner’s privacy, the pictures in this post do not feature the aforementioned dog. Adoptable dogs that looked somewhat like that dog were featured in pictures from the Humane Rescue Alliance of Washington, DC.
Hi there, unknown person.
On a recent weekend morning, my wife and I were sitting on our front porch with our dog. We were enjoying DC’s small window of mild spring weather while sipping coffee and reading. I briefly went inside; upon my return, my wife was not there, but my dog was. I opened the door, looking out, confused. A dog that wasn’t mine poked its nose into the opening of the door, hoping to sniff me out.
Partly to herself, my wife exclaimed, “There’s a dog here?”. She simply rushed to the porch. Where she came from is unknown to me. “.”.
I got my dog safely inside and went to meet this amiable but swift intruder. Despite not having a leash, she wore a collar and appeared healthy, well-groomed, and a little panicked. One of Apple’s AirTags was secured underneath the collar by a silicone band. When I took out the AirTag and tapped it against my phone, nothing occurred.
I retrieved a CR2032 battery from the garage while my wife posted on the different social media platforms in our neighborhood (Facebook, Nextdoor, and a WhatsApp group for immediate neighbors). I have a few AirTags and a small home automation habit, but not everyone has that. A little twisting, pressing, and swapping later, the AirTag beeped and was operational again.
The last four digits of the owner’s phone number and the tag’s serial number were displayed on a webpage that I accessed when I tapped the AirTag against my phone. I researched how an AirTag operated because I hadn’t yet had to use it to actually locate something that was lost. You have the option to give anyone who taps an AirTag with their iOS or Android device a complete phone number and message once you’ve set it to “Lost” status in your Apple account. You can’t have it provide information in advance if you don’t know that your AirTag or Find-My-compatible item is missing and mark it that way. Perhaps Apple ought to modify that for specific types of tracking.
My wife was left to manage sight lines and space between this eager newcomer and our worried, perplexed dog after I had to leave the house. Before delivering the dog to the local animal control facility, my wife was advised by them to keep an eye on social media. We were texting each other nervously after two hours of unplanned fostering. A decision had to be made before the animal shelter closed for the day, but we were happy to have taken this dog off the streets and placed in a home with leashes and a crate available.
Then the doorbell rang. We were asked if we had the dog’s owner, who was accompanied by the AirTag. She promised to always keep a new battery in there going forward and described how the dog got loose. I returned home to find my wife and my dog much more at ease after she bid farewell to her temporary charge.
I can’t blame anyone who doesn’t want to be on Facebook or Nextdoor, but it’s possible that the dog’s owner would have seen the posts. The shelter may have been able to connect us, or maybe a local phone chain would have helped. However, Apple’s coin-operated nub arrived just in time, and I appreciate that.
That’s a good AirTag, so stay put.
Rumors surfaced that Apple was working on a “Tile-like” item tracker in early 2019 while I was employed at iFixit. iFixit’s communications and teardown teams were primarily anticipating that Apple would introduce another small device that couldn’t be fixed or had its batteries changed, which would fill the void left by AirPods in landfills. A few months earlier, Tile, one of the pioneers in the Bluetooth tracking industry, had unveiled replaceable batteries. However, Apple appeared unlikely to adopt the common denominator at that time, as it continued to defend its butterfly MacBook keyboards and cling to Lightning ports.
But Apple made a smart decision. AirTags have evolved into incredibly useful gadgets after some of the initial worries about possible abuses were allayed (though some still exist). In rural areas, GPS tracker collars may be more effective for some dog owners. However, it’s likely that someone with an iPhone will approach your dog—or wallet, or keys—close enough to inform you of its current location. They can still learn who owns this tag even if they don’t have an iPhone to ping their location.
It appears that Apple is preparing to release a new AirTag that will allegedly have a longer range and fewer potential points of privacy invasion. I respectfully ask that the new model keep using a coin cell battery for power. Finding a charging cable or magnetic charging pad or learning that the cells inside are dead are the worst things that can happen when something important goes missing, especially if it enjoys ear scritches and pumpkin treats. Coin cells are generally much easier to handle than lithium-ion waste, though nothing is truly recyclable.
My family’s bicycles, wallets, keys, and a few other items are all AirTagged. I would also like to get an AirTag on my dog’s collar, depending on how it turns out. It can help some good boys and girls who have gone awry if you take the battery warnings seriously. And I hope that this human being’s story about coin batteries was briefly engaging.
