I'm not sure it's really Apple's fault. You could do the same thing with a Tile or other beacon. That's the entire purpose of the device.

Apple's trying to prevent misuse of their device. They want you to use it to find your keys, not your ex. If you consider that an invalid limitation of your device (by notifying your ex that they seem to be carrying an unknown tracker)... well, let's just say I disagree.

By attempting to prevent misuse they also prevent some legitimate and morally unquestionable uses. Like - the most obvious examples already mentioned in the comments - finding your cat or tracking your checked baggage. There are probably more less obvious use cases where something temporarily leaves owner's proximity, does not remain stationery, but tracking that object's location is perfectly legal and not questionable.

And this can be perceived as - arguably - restrictive and user-hostile by some.

All of those usages are permitted and ordinary uses of the device. Nothing prevents you from doing that.

As far as I can tell from reading the article, all it does is say, "Hey, did you know you've been carrying around a tracker that's not yours?" Your cat or your luggage don't care if you attach a tracker to them. Your ex does.

I care a fuck-ton more about finding my dog if lost than my bag. A bag can be replaced with an identical one. A dog cannot.

Current GPS collars are absolutely trash (3 day battery life, bulky, etc), this would be about 10,000 times better if effective. But if it starts beeping randomly unprompted and scares the dog, it's a problem.

Sure but this is good enough to be useful in many situations, whereas a GPS collar is impractical enough that it's unlikely to be regularly used. I just wanna throw a chip on the 3 dogs collars and forget about it except to swap batteries once a year. I don't want to be bothered charging active GPS collars every few days and putting a heavy device for the dogs to carry.

I'm sure it's possible to get the best of both worlds, it's just that no one have made it yet. An active GPS tracker does not have to be larger than a keyfob to your car nor does it need to be online all the time. A combination where the GPS is only activated once the tag has not seen a known device for 1 hour. That should give you a battery life measured in years with meter precision when it matters.

Great idea.

I’ll be blunt: a stalker is going to find tools to do stalking without apples help. Far more people just lost out on a super easy pet tracker because of a glorified “think of the children argument”.

I don't argue, I'm trying to explain how others may see it.

Everyone has their own needs, requirements and ideas what's essential and what's not. Importance and justifications are subjective matters.

Only thing everyone can certainly agree on that those use cases were not deemed important (or even considered) by Apple, as they would've designed it differently otherwise.

If the "interest" that you're worried about AirTags "working against" is being able to stalk people by attaching trackers to them or their belongings -- sincerely, fuck you. It is entirely appropriate for Apple to build functionality into their products to mitigate this sort of abuse.

And not the user of the phone that is reporting the location of those tags to a stalker? Their interests are important too.

Anyways, I don't think there was ever any intent for AirTags to function as an anti-theft tracking device. Anti-theft is much harder to do well than anti-loss (which is what Apple is targeting), and is very difficult to distinguish from stalkerware for a mass-market product.

> stalkerware for a mass-market product

which is specifically a problem Apple has had with "Find My", so it's nice to see them taking it seriously here.