AirTag: Everything You NEED To Know Before Ordering! By AppleInsider

Hey welcome everybody welcome to apple insider. It is Andrew here you can find me on the tweeter at Andrew underscore OSU in this video. I am going to cover everything that you need to know about air tag. Let's go ahead and dive into it. So air tag has been rumored for ages. I legit have a stub in our publishing platform on apple insider.

I had it from like September 2019 like we were. Furthermore, I was so certain it was going to come out then, and here we are in early 2021, but Apple has announced the device, and it will be finally available to purchase very, very soon so air tag. This is a 29 device tracker, so use an air tag to track anything that you frequently lose could be your favorite sweater. It could be your keys, it could be your TV remote, it could be uh whatever there's a lot of stuff that you could lose, and air tag aims to help solve those woes. Now before AirTag was announced, apple announced the open availability of the find my platform so find.

My was opened up to third parties, so welkin announced their sound form, uh. True house, earbuds that'll work with the find my app, so you can find them in much the same way. Chip Poco they've announced the spot one or one spot device tracker that works with the find my app. So you can choose this option instead of air tags, and it'll work very similar, but apple's air tag has a few different features that those third-party trackers don't so start at the beginning, high level apple's air tag is made from a piece of machined, stainless steel and polished to a high gloss on one side. On the other side, it appears at least to be just a plastic shell.

Now that shell can actually be personalized or customized by you guys when you order them through apple, so you can choose from, I believe, 31 different emojis that you can put on the top of your air tag that can be representative of the item or something that you're tracking like keys or just the p sign or whatever there's 31 for you to choose from, or you can add a little of text. So you can do that as you are buying these through apple. They also are ip67 water, resistant and dust resistant, which means they can be submerged in one meter of water for up to 30 minutes, and they're still going to work just fine, and they have a replaceable battery on the inside. That battery should last over a year with normal use, and it is a cr2032 cell battery they just come apart. Put a new battery in uh, tighten it back up again good to go another year on just a single battery.

They communicate over Bluetooth, low energy as well as use the ultra-wideband chip uh. To help find your item. So as you're going to look for it, you can use a new feature that apple's coming out with called precision tracking, where I'll show you like an arrow on the screen. So you can see the direction you're heading where you need to go to find your item and how far away you are, it's very precise compared to other trackers out there. Other trackers are starting to use uh u1 in their you know, device locating tile type devices, but Apple is using it here and there.

So if you have an iPhone 11 or an iPhone 12, any of those can use that precision tracking feature with the u1 chip, otherwise it'll operate solely over Bluetooth, which is still very handy. There is a speaker inside an air tag so that you can make it uh put out, omit an audible sound, which makes it easier to discover where do where your lost device is uh and there is an accelerometer on the inside. So it knows when it has been moved. As far as other things that you need to know, this operates using the find my app on your phone, but you can also use Siri. Just ask Siri: where is my wallet? Where are my keys, and it'll be able to track down the air tag and let you know you can put it into lost mode when you put it into lost mode it'll, it will alert you if the device is found by someone else and the way that will work.

It's very similar to other platforms that have this feature, such as tile community feature, but you'll put it into the lost mode and say you left your keys on a table at the mall and an another customer or someone walks by that table, and they have an iPhone in their pocket. That iPhone will see that Bluetooth signal it'll, see that that device is marked as lost, and then it'll anonymously and privately send that location back to you saying: hey! Your keys were seen at this exact location. So that's the way that that person is able to essentially help you, even though they don't even realize that they're doing it. So they may not even see your keys on the table, but it will still pick up that location and send it back to you now. If you do mark an item as long, you can optionally put your contact information there.

So if someone did see your keys or your wallet there, they can tap it with their phone and via NFC it'll transmit that information to their phone uh, such as your contact, information or a message, and then you can. They can go ahead and reach out to you and let you know hey, I found your wallet. I found your keys. I found whatever item it is that you lost, and you can work on reclaiming it. So that is how that lost mode works and how you can optionally send information there um there is anti-stocking features built into air tag, so say someone wanted to stalk you, and they slipped an air tag into your pocket of your coat or into your purse, and you don't realize it.

What will happen is when air tag is separated from the person who set it up because they're not with you, because they're stalking, you and you're walking around and if it is separated from that person it'll start to notice. Your phone will notice that an air tag is with you. That is not yours, and it will alert you that an air tag has been following you around. What then happened is if you don't find that air attack right away. So you know an air tag is on you, but you don't know where it'll then start to make a noise.

If you don't find it after a set period of time, so that way, it makes it easier to actually find where this device is that way. People cannot use these devices to track or stalk people without their knowledge. Setup is easy. Easy works just like your air, pods uh, you just take it, bring it near your phone. A card will appear right at the bottom of the screen.

Just go ahead and tap it to set it up, give it a name and assign it to an item, and it'll. Be then viewable inside the find my app keep track of it, find it everything that you need to do before we get into pricing availability. We should talk about accessories. There are a number of accessories that are already up for pre-order for air tags, some from apple some created with apple and then some that are just third parties that were very quick and getting their stuff out there. More and more and more of these are going to flood the market.

We're gonna, see these as prevalent as AirPods cases. I am telling you uh, but starting out from apple offers three different options. There is a leather loop, so you can tie this onto luggage a bag. Anything like that there is a polyurethane loop. So if you don't want a leather option and then there is a leather key ring put this on your keys.

All those come in multiple colors, following that apple worked with welkin, to create the secure holder and secure holder key ring, just a lower cost option to apples. Pretty simple and apple also worked with Hermes to create a few different options, including a luggage tag, a caring and a bag charm. Possibly my favorite of the new third party accessories for air tags is from moment. Morin offers a stretch, fabric mount. This is super cool.

It has a really strong adhesive on one side, so you can attach to any fabric your bag. Your purse, your coat your sweater it'll actually attach to those and your air tag can come out, so you can take it out when you're washing it or anything like that or if you need to change the battery blah blah blah, but it will stick to any fabric, and it's nice, soft and lightweight, so you can just put it in there, and you'll always keep track of. You know your coat your purse, whatever it is that you attach this to on that fabric, surface or hard surface. For that matter, there's also a hard mount. You can put this onto something that you need to it's a bit more.

You know durable or rugged something like your bike. If you want to mount this underneath the bike seat or something like that, so again, it's an adhesive, but it holds on. It's got that really hard strong shell on the outside, and then there is a soft, a curved surface mount, so it has a silicone exterior and now anything that is curved or not. Even maybe this could be your underneath, your bike seat, and it's kind of really curved and weird, and you have to somehow still stick something to it. It still has an adhesive, but it'll attach to curved surfaces to allow you to attach your air tag.

So really anything you need to attach there is these different mounts out there, for it. Nomad has two different options: coming out up for pre-order, there's a keychain, a leather keychain using their signature, horsemen leather, and they have a glasses' attachment. So it goes on you clip it to the back. Your glasses go the back of your head and keeps track of your glasses, or your sunglasses also prevents them from falling off your head. So a couple neat options there.

But again there are a ton of accessories already coming out for this pricing and availability error tag will go up for order on April 23rd, which is this Friday. If you're watching this video, you know during launch week at 5:00 a. m, pacific and uh 8 a. m. Eastern time zones, so it'll go up for pre-order.

There will be 29 apiece, and again you can customize them with the emoji. Your text, when you're buying them through apple uh, so 29 bucks a piece, but you can also get a four pack for 99, so you can save yourself at least a little amount of money by buying four of them at once, instead of just one at a time save roughly you know four bucks, a piece or so for a quarter, a piece at least it's a little of saving so 29 or four for 99. Let me know what you guys think over on Twitter at Andrew underscore OSU. If they're live the time you're watching this video, I put a link down below in the description, so you can pick them up for yourself or any of the third-party accessories. Those are already up for pre-order, so you can already pre-order most of those accessories.

If you want to get a head start other than that stay tuned, we had a lot more videos coming. You.

Source : AppleInsider