Apple doesn’t want AirTag 2 tracking pets. Why not?
Midway through the seventh paragraph of its press release about the new AirTag, Apple reiterates its surprisingly unambiguous position on the device’s intended usage. “Designed exclusively for tracking objects,” the company writes, “and not people or pets, the new AirTag incorporates a suite of industry-first protections against unwanted tracking…” It may have got a louder speaker and longer effective tracking range, but the updated AirTag still doesn’t have “tracking anything with a pulse” on its feature list.
The first half of that italicised section makes sense, because Apple wishes to distance itself from the criminals and abusers who misuse the AirTag to stalk their victims. This was particularly widespread in the device’s early days, before privacy measures were introduced to make it beep when separated from its owner and send alerts to unknown smartphones it detected nearby, but still remains a concern to this day. And thus, even though a parent could quite ethically place an AirTag in their child’s school bag for peace of mind, it’s understandable that Apple would decline to cater to that use case.
But the second part is more of a mystery. What’s wrong with using an AirTag to track your pet? A dog or cat isn’t going to mind, and an AirTag in the collar would come in equally handy if your pet is stolen or if you just want to know where it goes to get a second dinner. Indeed, the only people I know who get significant utility out of their AirTags use them to track the movements of their wander-prone cats.
I suppose the answer isn’t one of ethics but of practicality.
As I’ve written elsewhere, tackling privacy issues comes at a price, which is that the AirTag is now pretty useless at preventing theft. Hiding an AirTag in the case of your expensive musical instrument might seem like an excellent way to see where it gets taken by thieves, but they would soon be alerted to its presence by the anti-stalking measures.
Similarly, the privacy features create headaches any time you use the AirTag to track a living creature. You’re obviously not stalking your own child, but their teacher may not appreciate the AirTag beeping in the classroom because it’s been out of range of your iPhone for too long. (There are ways around this, but they don’t get Apple’s official endorsement.) And while most cats I know reappear for feeding, sleep, or attention frequently enough to stop the AirTag beeping in distress, I suppose that feature could become annoying to passers-by if your animal is prone to staying away from the house for longer periods. Let alone if it’s stolen and the thieves start getting alerts on their phones. I don’t imagine it takes long to search a cat.
Ultimately, Apple isn’t trying to control how we use a product we own, but merely to warn us about one of its limitations, one which, unlike with the AirTag 1, is present in the AirTag 2 from the very start. AirTags simply aren’t very good at tracking people. They’re designed that way: it’s a feature, not a bug.
The pet issue strikes me as less clear-cut, partly because cats don’t carry smartphones and partly because they’re less likely than your children to have a reason to be out all day. There’s absolutely still a use case for owners who are curious about where their pets like to wander, and I’m sure AirTag collars and compatible Find My trackers will continue to sell. But if you expect the device to help at all in a case of theft, you’re likely to be disappointed and wish you’d paid attention to Apple’s warning.