> Apple being Apple may well have brought more publicity to the issue but no, AirTags do not do what you say they do. If anything there are reasonable arguments that Apple has been too careful to the extent of making them pretty irritating in family/friends usage where everyone gets nagged for normal shared item activity and cannot use them in a shared way (despite being able to do so for devices!).
Bringing more attention and publicity to it, and claiming to have actually solved the privacy problems when in fact they haven't has actually made it easier for stalkers. The proof is in the pudding: Similarly google search guides on disabling the speaker on AirTags, you'll find hundreds just for the one product. Likewise, compare sales of AirTags to the GPS Trackers on Amazon.
Whenever a big trusted company makes a product more accessible to the average person, they're making it easier as a whole.
Even in a strict technical sense, having it visible in the Find My App that people already are familiar with and use to locate their airpods, apple watches, etc., that alone gives the infrastructure benefit to make it simpler.
> Likewise, compare sales of AirTags to the GPS Trackers on Amazon.
You know one has a convenience factor to it, right? And it’s a known brand and has an ecosystem built up around it… These misc trackers on Amazon don’t have that… why would you ever consider comparing the sales as an argument?
It always was this easy. Apple has't made it easier because it has built-in anti-stalking which you cannot disable. You can tamper with the speaker, but not with the BTLE or UWB radios (well, you technically can but at that point you can't use them to track anything either).
The only thing you could theoretically attribute to Apple is that it is now much more known that this can happen. That is both good (you can now look for it) and bad (dumb people will try to use this to stalk/steal, not realising that they are tied to their AppleID, and thus to their SIM, IMEI, MAC, and device serial number and thus to them).
Bringing more attention and publicity to it, and claiming to have actually solved the privacy problems when in fact they haven't has actually made it easier for stalkers. The proof is in the pudding: Similarly google search guides on disabling the speaker on AirTags, you'll find hundreds just for the one product. Likewise, compare sales of AirTags to the GPS Trackers on Amazon.
Whenever a big trusted company makes a product more accessible to the average person, they're making it easier as a whole.
Even in a strict technical sense, having it visible in the Find My App that people already are familiar with and use to locate their airpods, apple watches, etc., that alone gives the infrastructure benefit to make it simpler.