As a chronic loser of keys and wallets, I recognize the user need here. However, this is a prime example of a piece of software that can only be trusted when an open-source implementation is provided.
Google and their customers don't have much to gain through a proprietary implementation. If anything, open-sourcing Find My Device Network would allow third party devices to join the network, enhancing its value to Google's customers. Google emphasizes ad nauseum that this system is extremely private and secure, so third party implementations shouldn't be cause for worry.
Governments and various potentially dangerous organizations stand to benefit greatly from a closed implementation for reasons that hardly need explaining.
Google makes a lot of lofty claims about E2EE and privacy considerations in that blog post, I'd just like to see them prove it.
Beside of open-source, this whole use-case should be built as an industry standard, not as a ammunition for an adjacent platform war.
With these few huge tech-companies, the industry has lost its natural "feature" that required competing players to work together and form an Alliance/SIG to make really big things happen.
Instead, the really big companies are happy to take the fruits from that time (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC,...) and build something proprietary on top instead of contributing back to it...
Open standards are still a very common thing. Google and Apple themselves cooperated in development of Matter... then failed to address the key-sharing issue that facilitates vendor lock-in on Matter... so yeah, uhh... never mind.
But that doesn't use the "find my device" netowrk. I think the parent wasn't saying, "I want an app that continually reports its ___location to my server so I can monitor my phone's ___location." Indeed, that's fairly trivial to build, but is useless if, say, your phone doesn't have internet access (like, someone turns it off or it runs out of battery).
The thing Google is announcing here is like the Apple "find my" network--it seems to allow you to use other people's devices to find your lost device simply based on a BLE ping.
That is something that is hard to build by yourself, and would benefit greatly from an industry-wide standard (more peer devices reporting locations!).
On Apple's devices, you cannot disable that BLE broadcast. The same is true on the Pixel 8: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/8/24123909/google-pixel-8-pr.... That's the whole point of this design, and fundamentally different than just having some app ping a server once in a while so long as it has network access.
Beats me. I can't find anything definitive on this. Since Apple devices continue to broadcast Find My signals even when powered off (as long as they have a little bit of battery left), I assume they continue to do so in airplane mode.
It wouldn't do a lot of good if thieves could just turn off Bluetooth, right?
It turns off celular which is the main problem
(Wifi is common enough in modern airplanes so I have to assume the interference risk is low, same for Bluetooth)
This only works on the device itself, and while it can contact the internet or SMS. It's more akin to a self-hosted version of device locating features pre-airtag.
I think the real utility of tile/airtag/google-find-my-device is the network of other colluding devices listening for bluetooth pings and reporting on the ___location. Not least because apple (maybe google, don't know) forces your device to send reports if you want to use the feature. Heck, on modern phone OSs, you can't use BLE in apps without turning on the ___location service.
Open-source software would allow us to see how that published software handles our data, but it would not allow us to see how the cumulative sum of that data is handled after it is passed over to a central body.
Unless, of course: That centralized data store were also open -- perhaps even by using something like DNS -- but then, anyone of sufficient skill would be able to craft an application to see where others' things are.
(Unless... E2E encryption for ___location data, so it can only be understood by those who generate it? Hmm.)
An open source backend that requires end to end encryption on a per-user-storage basis, while not sharing those keys in the open source client (reference implementation) could effectively prevent third parties from seeing the data.
Something like shamir's secret sharing with split up keys effectively making the encrypted data useless, or based on time frames so you can only track the last "epoche" (like the last 24 hours, maybe?) similar to how HOTP/TOTP works could work nicely I'd imagine.
At Tholian (my company) we're using team based keys where at least 2 of x keys (the elected lead and co lead) in the team must co-sign a data changing action. It's peer to peer, meaning those peers can find each other and co-sign this without our servers having to store any transaction queue that could be compromised.
This way we prevent abuse, and if the feds come knocking on our doors, our users stay protected because without those keys we cannot see what's going on in any of the registered teams.
That's how I think it should be like, for any web service that supposedly keeps their privacy promises. If they don't do this, their promises were likely lies and once the root keys or the databases are compromised there's no turning back.
Looking at you, cross-tenant keys at Azure. Everyone knows you were and are still lying about the security aspects.
I love my Tile(s), but since the AirTag and now Android networks now feature the same capability, I feel their model is dead in the water since they don't own the platform and can't compete on the installed base.
They should have sold out (edit: to a mobile platform company, either Google or Apple) while they had the chance.
They did sell out, they were acquired by Life360 a while ago.
edit: I don't think Google would have had much to gain by acquiring Tile, the actual technology is very simple, their moat was just the fact that they had the largest install base of tracking apps on Android. Google could, and did, just rug-pull them by pushing their own network out to every Android device with Play Services (so nearly all of them).
The only thing Tile really has going for it now is that their trackers can be used with both Android and iOS simultaneously, if you have devices in both ecosystems.
As someone who owns about eight of them, I don't see how you could love Tile. They have a ridiculous profit margin and the company likes to engage in asshole practices like making it so getting a notification when you lose connection with a tile is a fucking monthly subscription. Companies that charge for things which cost them literally zero dollars deserve to burn to the ground.
99.9% of the time the network doesn’t matter because the item isn’t lost, I just don’t remember where I left it, and it’s either in range or wherever Tile shows the last known ___location to be. And even if it is lost, Tile app remembers it as being at the last place where I had it and my phone, which is practically always where I left it.
Airtag surely has better coverage, since like 50% of phones are helping, but the one time I actually lost something Tile found it. Someone had moved it so the ___location must have been uploaded by another Tile user. I use my Tiles daily to find my AirPods or a key set, I’ve used it once in years to find that (my Airpods case) when it fell out of my pocket in a park.
Tile is louder and easier to hear. Tile has several form factors, Airtag only has one, and honestly, any tile form factor is better than Airtags. I swear they picked the worst possible shape for it, it just has to make whatever you put it in bulge. You have to buy some sort of case to even use it most of the time, whereas a Tile can pop directly onto your key ring.
Airtag can’t ring my phone. I do that frequently.
I’ve used both extensively, I’ll keep buying Tiles. Or maybe one of these newer ones. I’d go so far as to say Airtag is only better at finding something that’s been stolen, and that’s just a tiny percent of the use cases. Tile is better in every other way.
AirTags are not better in one very important way: they don't prevent theft. They will notify thieves that they are hidden in a valuable item that they are stealing if the thief carries an iPhone.
Tile has a feature where you can submit your info and sign some sort of extra contract stating that you won't use your Tile for stalking/illegal activity, and you can actually hide a Tile in your bike frame and it can be used to find your bike if it goes missing. AirTags are useless for this because Apple doesn't want them used for stalking.
How do hidden trackers "prevent" theft? If a thief steals your bike and is notified that it's being tracked, they're probably much more likely to abandon it somewhere, at which point you can recover it. This seems like a safer bet than trying to hunt them down yourself. (It should go without saying the police are not going to go get your bicycle back for you even if you do hand them the GPS coordinates.)
It’s a massive deterrence. LoJack has been in business since 1986 for a reason.
Also, the attitude of “don’t go and get your stuff back yourself, it’s not safe” is just castrated cowardice and only emboldens thieves. Thieves should be afraid of both law enforcement and vigilante response. Better society when both are on the table.
A hidden device can't prevent theft. It takes visibility to be a deterrent.
For instance: One or more well-hidden surveillance cameras cannot ever deter anyone from doing anything. However: One or more cameras placed out in the open can do so. (They don't even have to be functional cameras to be a deterrence.)
LoJack isn't a deterrence. It is instead a way to react after a theft has already occured.
The AirTag, meanwhile: It also can't prevent or deter the theft -- if a thief is going to steal a thing, they're going to steal it whether it has an AirTag hidden somewhere or not.
And when an iPhone-using thief is alerted to the presence of that AirTag tracker, they have options beyond just ditching the bike: They can make the AirTag make noise, and also use Precision Finding to draw an arrow on the screen of their phone that helps them to locate the AirTag so it can be destroyed.
(This is a deliberate anti-stalking feature on the part of Apple.
Tracking stolen goods is fundamentally incompatible with anti-stalking measures: There cannot be both things in the same ecosystem, since if a person can silently track their [stolen?] bicycle, then they can also silently track a living human being.)
Thieves will begin to expect it to be there some of the time, after sufficient police/vigilante response. And perhaps it will be hard to find. Hence, deterrence.
Cars are stolen far less often than they would be otherwise partially due to technology like LoJack. Did you grow up in the US? Steering wheel locks used to be on every other parked car. Immobilizers and LoJack made them a thing you buy for your weekend classic car only.
Immobilizers had an order-of-magnitude larger impact on car theft than LoJack. It used to be relatively trivial to start a car without the keys once inside. Now (disregarding certain Hyundai/Kia models) it’s essentially impossible to start without the key.
You lose credibility right there. No need for such bullshit it you actually have a point. Performative machismo is completely useless.
> Thieves should be afraid of both law enforcement and vigilante response. Better society when both are on the table.
lol no. Actually, what the hell are you thinking? Mob justice is not justice at all. What happens when someone decides you are a thief (or rapist, or murderer) just because they don’t like the look of you or would like to have your car very much?
This does not frighten thieves; this frightens people other people don’t like. I mean, we’ve had plenty of examples in recent history. I would take the risk of losing my bike every now and then instead of the risk of being lynched any day.
If you hide the tag in a way that it can’t be removed (locked to the bike etc) then what option does the thief have? They might actually decide not to steal the item!
one way they aren't better. You have the tile but can't find your damn phone. Sure there is 'find my' but the little button on the tile that causes the phone to chime was actually pretty handy.
I imagine apple removed it because tags are not paired to phones (like tiles) but instead to the whole account. If you were to push the theoretical button on the airtag your entire house would probably set to chiming (apple tv, homepod, all the phones and ipads on the account all the macs...)
> If you were to push the theoretical button on the airtag your entire house would probably set to chiming (apple tv, homepod, all the phones and ipads on the account all the macs...)
There is a simple solution to this: if you press the hypothetical AirTag button, trigger the closest iPhone attached to your account, and then you can manually pick any specific device in Find My as usual from the iPhone.
AirTags only come in a single size and shape that only makes sense for larger container objects. Tile makes a flat credit-card sized variant that you can slide in your wallet, and the adapters required to put an AirTag on a keychain is pretty ridiculous in comparison to the tiny variants you can get from Tile with a built-in hole for this purpose.
(Also: AFAIK the "large"--not really, in comparison to the AirTag + adapter, lol--Tile Pro variants have a noticeably longer range than AirTags.) Honestly, the only thing, to me, missing from Tile is the direction arrow finder, which is certainly useful, and yet... the speakers on the Tile are much much better so it just doesn't matter so much?
(BTW: it is extremely stupid that that arrow only works in two directions. I waste so much time following the arrow only to realize I need to go upstairs -- I live in a two story apartment with a bedroom and an office above my kitchen and living room: it isn't larger than my friends's apartments, but it is really nice having two floors -- that I am only doing because the sound isn't loud enough on AirTags.)
Frankly, the whole argument for AirTags being inherently better is merely that they have a "bigger network", but for most of my objects I am not scavenging around town looking for then, nor am I ever going to be chasing some thief around the city in my car looking to steal it back, hoping to catch up to them before they disable or throw out the tracker... that vigilante justice idea associated with this product category is just a crazy pipe dream.
Instead, I am pretty much always just trying to figure out which pair of pants I left my wallet in today, or on which shelf I left my keys: I would actually be much happier with a purely local product that only responded to encrypted pings from my personal phone and only even did that when I actively ask it to (as despite using both Tile and AirTags for years now the "you left your item behind" notifications have only happened before I myself noticed once or twice in a way which was helpful... it just doesn't ping often enough, with either product, to be maximally useful).
And looking at the replies to this, I have learned AirTags are actually missing what is to me a glorious feature of Tile: that I can push a button on my keys and find my phone in reverse. I hadn't noticed this lack before as I am only using AirTags in large objects I don't keep on my person (which makes their notifications really annoying as the UI fails to eat old ones even when I walk back to my object... this seems very fixable), but I don't want to have to buy an Apple Watch just to have a way to find my phone :/.
That's cool! I am looking at this and seeing another issue with AirTag: I actively use the feature on Tile where I can use the Tile on my keychain to find my phone by pushing the button, and I guess AirTags is entirely missing that feature.
The issue is not that they have a well-integrated ecosystem, it's that they build features into their products that only their other products are allowed to use. There would be no need for action if Apple designed a popular ecosystem that all of your devices could participate in.
This is irrelevant. The comment was about Apple’s preferred way of locating lost phones was Apple Watch so they don’t support pinging it from an AirTag. This has nothing to do with 3rd party support, and in fact 3rd parties (Tile) do have the feature Apple doesn’t for their item trackers.
Apple not allowing 3rd parties use of their proprietary technology is not the entirety of the DoJ’s argument. For example, their claims about Messages and Apple Watch are about support Apple hasn’t built, not about what they prevent 3rd parties from building.
something i initially missed as well but like .. if you pushed the button on your airtag it would probably start all your apple devices to beeping. The tag is associated with your account, not your phone like with tile.
Thanks! For the card-shaped one I might actually try that one out and switch. I actually was just adding a thing to my comment about how the ___location finding thing is certainly useful but not as good as a loud speaker as it doesn't support a Z axis for some silly reason, so I don't really care. But, honestly, the flat versions of the Tile have an issue where the speaker wires can get broken slightly by flexing in the wallet (I took one apart to diagnose this once) and so I could see trying a competitor, as this is the same thickness!!
It's weird to me that people actually have this problem often enough that they go out of their way to research and buy a product to try to solve it. I literally never lose my phone or wallet.
There's like three different places I put my phone in different areas of the house, and only one where I put my wallet and keys as soon as I enter.
I would like an airtag to put on my bike or laptop or other high value item to track it if stolen, but I'm not about to buy Apple stuff.
I had found what I consider to be the perfect wallet and while they did add an RFID lining it was one I could remove. I have bought multiple of them as backups and likely will purchase a few more ;P.
The only time I've used RF-blocking gear for privacy or security was when I had a little Faraday pouch for my old flip phone a million years ago[0].
It was nice-enough case for my phone and it primarily kept the phone from getting beat up by other pocket-stuff that would happen in a workday. But it also had two compartments: One was shielded all around by conductive fabric and this made a fairly good Faraday cage, and for the other one layer of that conductive fabric would be pushed aside so that the Faraday cage was incomplete (and thus largely non-functional).
It gave me a choice, and that choice worked well.
I think I paid $3 for it back in the day from DealExtreme (which was a lot like Temu is today, except shipping normally took months instead of days or weeks).
Is choice not a thing in modern RFID-blocking wallets?
[0: There was a time when my company felt it was useful to track people with their company-provided cell phones. I didn't mind that during the workday, so much, but we were also encouraged to use these as our personal phones if we chose to, and strongly encouraged to keep them with us 24/7 so we would be reachable.
And I didn't mind being reachable most or all of the time and I certainly enjoyed not having my own cell phone bill back then, but I did not like being tracked 24/7: Sometimes, I wanted to do my own private shit on my own time without being snooped on.
I could tell the tracking app to exit, and that did work, but doing so sent a notification to my completely stupid, abusive manager -- who would variously either call to ask why I did that, or just silently turn it back on remotely (which the system permitted).
And I did not (and do not) think that, as a professional, I needed to excuse my choice to have privacy at any given time. (Given my own role in the company I had access to this tracking data as well, but I'm not the abusive type.)
So, the solution was simple: Normally, the phone was in the non-shielded part of the case. And when I dropped it into the completely-surrounded Faraday portion instead, the phone just simply dropped off and silently stopped providing updates.
This worked 100%, and while I refer to them as separate compartments to aid in functional clarity, the design of this case didn't really take up any more space than any other phone-case would have.]
Insane that this seems to be getting downvoted (I assume? It's faded to light gray) just because you are daring to question the superiority of the Apple Solution.
I had a number of Tiles over the years and really wanted to like them, but really didn't. I lose stuff infrequently enough that the battery in the tiles would die 2-10 times before I was likely to lose my keys/wallet. The TV remote, the tile was something my son (the primary loser) would fiddle with constantly and destroy. I carried a dead Tile Pro on my keys probably 95% of the time I carried it.
The one place I'd really like a tile is on my Pixel Buds, but a Tile is a significant %age of the size of the case, and again not something I need super frequently.
Do the Pixel Buds not have a Find feature? I have the same experience as you with Tile, but I use the "Find" feature on my iPhone to locate my AirPods all the time.
They do, but it doesn't work very well. For example, if I go into "find my device" it says my buds are at the gym. When I lost them a few months ago it said they were at the hospital, but I eventually found them at home.
> I feel their model is dead in the water since they don't own the platform and can't compete on the installed base.
Yeah, this functionality is the ultimate "network effect" model. While my most common use case for Tile is walking around my house with my phone to see where I've misplaced my keys, the other (and more advertised) case is that if I lose my keys while out and about, I can get notified of their ___location if anyone else with the Tile app installed is near my keys.
The iOS and Android platforms have a huge advantage because they don't depend on having any app installed - that previous sentence just becomes "I can get notified of their ___location if anyone else with an iOS device (for AirTags) or Android device (for this new functionality) is near my keys." That's huge, because it means there are fewer places that won't have anyone with those phones. And now that Android has this functionality, I see more and more people switching to it from Tile, which means the Tile network will get smaller and be even less useful for the Tile users who remain.
> if anyone else with an iOS device (for AirTags) or Android device (for this new functionality) is near my keys.
I wonder just how quickly this'll roll out over the Android devices in the wild? It needs Android 9+ it seems, which is about 80-85% of the devices from memory. I wonder if it also needs vendor updates? How quickly will Samsung/Huawei et al provide Android updates with this feature? (And will vendors be able to choose to block it?)
It's rolling out as part of Google Play Services, which is updated out of band from Android itself so just about every device should get it without any action from the manufacturer, aside from the small minority of devices running de-Googled versions of Android.
Yeah I can't really see where they go from here, which is a big shame personally because I got a bunch of very cheap battery replaceable ones years back that are still going strong.
Also got a four pack of long dead gen 2s that were pretty easy to cut apart, rejig for replaceable batteries and embed into a few items.
No, the AirTag ecosystem and Google Find My ecosystem are still separate things. Google and Apple did cooperate to standardize stalker detection though, so your iPhone will alert you if you have an unknown Google tag following you, or vice versa if your Android phone notices an unknown AirTag.
Is there a technical reason why this can't work with Apple's Find My network, or is it just that they don't want to work together? Using the "Unknown Trackers" feature my Samsung phone can scan for nearby AirTags and tell them to play sounds.
Not anymore, since 2022 apple stock was mostly flat and today is even below January 2022. Vision Pro is a flop as today (maybe future iteration will change that) - just look at google trends.
Hopefully Apple change the course or Tim Cook get replaced - especially if they don't show anything meaningful related to AI/ML at this WWDC.
If we were to force all new technologies to be interoperable with all technologies from all possible competitors we’d create a Kafkaesque nightmare for innovators and particularly early stage startups.
Indeed. Good example. If Cerf, Kahn and others had been forced to make the internet (as we know it today) compatible with with nascent competitors such as X.25, Cyclades, OGAS and EIN, it would have compromised the design process with a “too many chefs” problem.
Also would have forced the Internet to a lowest common denominator of capability.
I don't see why this success storey couldn't happen for the 'lost device world' or most other proprietary non-interoperable systems. (why can't i send a message from Whatsapp to Messenger)
It’s actually two separate aspects, there’s the network for crowdsourced finding, and there’s the localisation of unwanted trackers.
The feature that lets you ring nearby trackers is actually standardised between Apple, Google, Samsung and the others. It goes by DULT - Detection of Unwanted Location Trackers.
Of course it isn't. The time of interoperable standards in consumer devices is long past.
Bluetooth used to support file transfers from device to device on feature- and early smartphones no matter the brand; now there's AirDrop (and maybe sometimes Google Nearby, but only if the humidity and lunar phase is just right).
In home audio streaming, there was once DLNA; now there's AirPlay and Google Cast.
We have two mutually incompatible walled gardens, and while life within them is admittedly nicer than in a world of poorly-implemented standards, the walls are getting higher by the day.
Good call out, it’s incredible we went from local file transfers with Bluetooth to needing an internet connection to transfer to a person sitting next to you just because they have a different OS. If only the EU could pressure the big folks to adopt one wireless transfer protocol like it did USB C recently with Apple.
Oh, my (optimistic, but I think not unrealistic) read of the DMA is that this is the case already!
There are clauses in there that mandate gatekeepers to give access to all kinds of interfaces only accessible to the native OS or first-party apps. I'd expect AWDL/AirDrop to match the type of thing the EU wants Apple to open up quite nicely.
If Google had any interest in shaking the duopoly, they'd of course be first to request Apple to open up AirDrop access to Android.
Realistically we'll hopefully see at least some third-party app vendor that bridges the gap with something that doesn't need an install on both iOS and Android, since in many AirDrop scenarios people don't have time, knowledge, or a network connection to install some unknown third-party app.
Bluetooth file transfer was always nearly useless in my experience, airdrop was somewhat revolutionary in that it actually worked reliably most of the time
AirDrop has its issues too. Used to work in educaiton at a school with 100+ iPads within reception range. Quite common to have A-to-B drops work but not the reverse direction i.e. B-to-A. Solution was often to ask another student C and use their iPad as a proxy i.e. B-to-C-to-A to get something from B to A. Quite fustrating given it would be an issue one day and not the next and what device it appeared on was totally random too. The same device B would send/receive fine to other devices but just not to A, and A itself would send/receive file to others but just not to B! No rhyme or reason to it, and of course being Apple no way to properly debug it.
maybe that's why the volume controls on my 1st-gen se no longer apply when using a bt-speaker. granted it's dated hardware on both ends but it used to work fine for 5y+
Bluetooth was always insanely reliable for me for file transfers even on phones and PCs that were a decade apart in manufacturing date. It was slow, but for a lot of things that was fine, and it was the obly way to get data from some really old phones.
For me, reliability has been similar. I will say that it is much faster, though (no wonder – hundreds of Mbit/s over 802.11 vs. 2 Mbit/s over Bluetooth EDR). UX is much better too.
But would it kill them to just support both? I’d take sometimes janky, always slow transfers to Android over having to WhatsApp photos to somebody literally next to me any day.
Oh sure, it would be a great opportunity, but the idea of Apple voluntarily interoperating with anyone else on most things is just funny to think about.
Google isn't significantly better on that metric, of course, but I feel like it's often in Google's business interests to interoperate more often than it is in Apple's.
Bull. That’s why I put the comment in parentheses.
They had already switched their laptops to all USB-C many years ago. And iPad Pros. I think the iPad Air and iPad (no name) switched as well.
There were also strong rumblings Apple was going to release the USB-C iPhones when the rule was passed.
> They tend to oppose standards they aren't already using.
You’re kidding right? Then explain USB. Or Thunderbolt. Of every other thing I listed above. Apple didn’t invent any of them and open them. They were all existing standards.
So you're saying that's what they wanted to do all along, it just took them almost ten years, and it just happened to neatly coincide with the EU regulation as well?
Sure, and they're now allowing game streaming apps and retro emulators on iOS because that's what they always knew was best for the world anyway. What a coincidence (with the DMA, in that case)!
> Apple didn’t invent any of them and open them. They were all existing standards.
Counterpoint: Magsafe. They had USB-C and went back to something proprietary.
Another counterpoint: Thunderbolt wasn't an open standard until very recently, and I can only imagine that Intel gave Apple some heavy discounts on the controller chips used (or even their main CPUs) to push the standard.
Apple doesn't always hate standards and interoperability, but they will absolutely try to push their proprietary protocols and interfaces whenever it's in their business interest.
USB-C didn’t exist when they went to Lightning, it wasn’t an option.
The fact all their other products were moving seems to indicate they’d move to USB-C on the iPhone as well. Rumors had them working on it for years.
Now maybe it would have come out this year and not last.
MagSafe: they added something back. You can still charge with USB-C. Works fine, I do it.
Thunderbolt: that wasn’t Apple. Intel invented it and Apple put it to use. I have no idea if it’s open or closed, that’s my fault. What I meant was it wasn’t an Apple invention. Besides, what else had that kind of bandwidth at the time in a cable? It’s not like there was some common better thing they shunned.
Counter-counterpoint: When Apple introduced the Lightning connector in 2012, they described it as their connector "for the next decade".[0] Their switch from Lightning to USB-C on the iPhone came just over ten years after that announcement. Perhaps it was EU regulation, or perhaps it was Apple wanting to make good on a ten-year-old promise of connector continuity.
> Counterpoint: Magsafe. They had USB-C and went back to something proprietary.
They added MagSafe and still kept USB C charging.
> So you're saying that's what they wanted to do all along, it just took them almost ten years, and it just happened to neatly coincide with the EU regulation as well?
> They had already starting to move iPads to USB C
Which they're explicitly selling as laptop alternatives, at least the Pro line.
People were already connecting all kinds of things (audio interfaces, mice, ethernet adapters etc.) to iPads using the hilariously named lignting-to-USB-host "camera adapter", and all of that is just better over USB-C.
On the iPhone, the vast majority of people only use the port for charging and maybe listening to music; the few additional iPhone sold to people that actually use them with external storage for ProRes cinematography probably pales in comparison to the lost revenue from MFI license fees.
When the camera adapter was first released, usb-c didn’t exist.
And how much do you think Apple really made on MFI licenses as a percentage of revenue? It was a rounding error and many of the knocks off people bought from Amazon weren’t even licensed.
Excatly right. They switched to USB-C only on certain classes of devices and even then only over a incredibly long period of time when they could have moved all of their devices over to USB-C fairly quickly given their vertical integration advantages. It's interesting how my non-Apple ecosystem has me using USB-C across all devices across multiple manufacturrs but my Apple friends have multiple cables/chargers/etc to accomodate Apple's approach of using different standards across their own product lines. Thankfully EU has made this a thing of the past but if it wasn't for EU there'd be no change or it would have happened years from now.
Perhaps it was EU regulation, or perhaps it was Apple wanting to make good on a ten-year-old promise of connector continuity. When Apple introduced the Lightning connector in 2012, they described it as their iPhone connector "for the next decade".[0] Their switch from Lightning to USB-C on the iPhone came just over ten years after that.
Boy did they ever get hell when they left the 30-pin connector. I could easily see them wanting to avoid that whole mess again.
Honestly I am still blown away that the switch last year to USB-C was met with some positivity (often from tech people) and a bunch of ’meh’. I was expecting tons of screaming and “Apple’s making you buy all your cables again to juice their books!”
I don't know the answer but I agree this tech should be standardized. Over time there will be a massive network of phones and tags capable of finding each other, but it's silly to bifurcate it such that you might not find your device because nobody on the "correct" network is nearby.
Couldn't agree more – just like it's quite silly to not be able to "AirDrop" a photo to an Android device, even though Bluetooth could do it just fine 20 years ago from a Nokia to an Ericsson or Motorola.
I’m really surprised this took 3 years after AirTags. Especially since AirTags have been rumored to launch for a very long time before that, and it was a surprise to people that they seemed to be done and just not available (IIRC).
Google decided to delay the release until apple updated their unknown tracker alert to support google's bluetooth tracking devices. Not sure why, but it took one year for apple to implement the support.
Anti-competitive behavior is why. Apple had no need to update their unknown tracker alert software on any particular timescale. And if Google was willing to wait until Apple made that update, Apple could certainly drag their feet and delay Google's launch for a while.
Presumably Google would have, eventually, said "ok, enough is enough, we're releasing on X date whether or not you've updated yet". And maybe that's indeed what happened! At that point Apple really would want to finish that update, since not doing so could be a privacy hole for their customers. (The same privacy hole Android users had to deal with in the early days of AirTags when we couldn't detect them.)
Yeah, that's the narrative I'm seeing in many news outlets, but it doesn't make sense to me. Did Apple wait for Google to release an anti-stalking feature detecting AirTags before releasing them?
Does anyone have a comparison of Airtag vs "Bluetooth tracker tags from Chipolo and Pebblebee"? I imagine Airtag is superior due to non-reliance on Bluetooth? Can Chipolo/Pebblebee tap into the Android network without Bluetooth? And is their tech comparable to Apple's work?
In addition to BLE, AirTags use UWB. I assume this is how AirTags can provide fairly high-fidelity directional guidance, something that wasn't clear the new set of Android tags provide.
I can't really see how Airtag can be superior in most places around the world: it's simple, there are many more Android users than iPhone users so the Google network can only be better (if not right now, then over time, give it 12 months...?)
This difference is even stronger when you leave EU + US and go to Asia, Central / South America, Africa where iPhone users are not less, but very rare.
My use case is clearly to track my hand luggage, wallet, backpack etc. when I travel and I'm a nomad. Gonna wait on reviews but I'm very excited!
"Out of battery" isn't really what we think it means. The phone shuts down (and refuses to start back up) when it still has quite a bit of battery left. If it truly allowed the battery to go flat, that would damage the battery, and you'd have a really hard time charging it again.
The amount of juice your entire phone needs to run for, say, a half hour can probably power just the bluetooth LE chipset for occasional wakeups for beacon-sending for... weeks? Months? (Completely made up time spans, but the BTLE chipset really does need a tiny amount of power for infrequent wakesups compared to the entire phone.) Certainly this can't last forever: if your phone is missing for long enough, the battery will eventually run down to a point where the battery controller won't let even the BTLE chipset draw any more power.
This definitely requires hardware, firmware, and software support in order to set up, which is why only Pixel 8 is supported so far. Clearly when they were designing the Pixel 8 hardware, they already knew this feature was in the pipeline, and wanted to be able to launch with a supported phone.
As far as I remember there's a separate microcontroller that controls "Find my phone" beacons without having to boot up iOS on the main application processor.
The CR2032 that AirTags run on for over a year has about 200mAhr of capacity. That's down under 5% of a typical 5000mAhr phone battery. So 1% of the contingency low battery capacity could probably run the BLE stuff for a few months if needed.
I'm guessing this works exactly the same way as Apple's "Findable After Power Off" feature [1]. If the phone "dies" the battery still has some reserve to display the "charging needed" screen when the power button is pushed, along with sending ___location. Additionally, it can use the Find My network [2] where other devices that are powered on can relay the proximity device's ___location using their own ___location.
Same question here. I have to assume this would either work by the device sending out a last gasp "I'm about to die" GPS ___location call home (for finding it when it's far away), or else there's a mostly passive RFID-like thing in the phone that makes it findable by nearby devices (for finding it when it's somewhere in the house/car/office with you).
I read that they use bluetooth beaconing for this. A simple bluetooth beacon like a tile can run for months with minimal power. The phone isn't actually 'dead dead' it's still powering the bluetooth beacon.
If it is using a similar technology to AirTags, then it could broadcast signal for a long time on remaining battery. Even Bluetooth can do months on coin cell battery.
Moto g30 without cell modem but with enabled WiFi easily gets two weeks of the runtime without much of display time.
My RAZR MAXX could sit for months on the one charge (with already busted battery) without any cell activity.
So if you don't need the display and a hungry wireless tech to keep on constantly you can have enough juice for days, even when the phone is no longer in the power profile to have a full run.
> thanks to specialized Pixel hardware, Pixel 8 and 8 Pro owners will also be able to find their devices if they’re powered off or the battery is dead.
This suggests there is separate hardware with its own power and network capabilities, designed for ___location tracking, designed to be always on. Is there a way to disable it?
> To solve this problem, Google is working on a “Powered Off Finding” feature that allows a device to store precomputed Bluetooth beacons in the memory of the Bluetooth controller. This means that even when a device is powered off, it can continue broadcasting Bluetooth beacons to nearby devices.
> Unfortunately, Powered Off Finding isn’t the kind of feature that can just be enabled on any device. This is because the device needs to have hardware support for powering the Bluetooth controller when the rest of the components are shut down. Plus, device makers need to put in some extra engineering work to support this feature. For example, they need to support the Bluetooth Finder hardware abstraction layer (HAL) so that the Android OS can enable Powered Off Finding mode and send those precomputed Bluetooth beacons that I mentioned.
I don't know how that could work if the battery is dead, unless they're letting the Bluetooth controller draw on some reserve battery capacity after the phone has powered itself down.
There is mostly dead and then there is all dead. A battery which is unable to supply enough power to keep the entire phone operating can likely supply enough for just the Bluetooth chip. Of course, the resulting deep discharge may damage the battery chemistry.
I'm pretty sure phones shut down long before they reach 0%, keeping plenty of charge for the Bluetooth beacon. The battery protection circuit will for sure prevent deep discharging by cutting the power.
Putting my tinfoil hat on, this explains why Google was okay adding a toggle to ___location access for apps on Android. They don't need your device to send them their ___location anymore, they'd only need you to be in range of an UWB or BLE device.
iOS-style runtime permissions (for things like ___location access) were introduced in Android 6.0, which was released back in 2015. That's quite the long play.
Google is still beholden to consumer privacy laws. I’m sure if you turn off ___location data in your Google account they won’t track you. The guys in the Room 641A will.
"Google has agreed to pay nearly $392 million in a settlement with 40 states over allegations that the company tracked people through their devices after ___location tracking had been turned off, a coalition of state prosecutors announced on Monday."
> Google is still beholden to consumer privacy laws.
To ignore them or what ? None of the FAANG respect the privacy laws (GDPR for example). They just pay lobby money and insignificant fines from time to time and no government cares about it.
I've measured with an external, unconnected RF monitor. The cell phone shows clear activity when not in airplane mode, and then zero activity when in airplane mode.
I was told: "I suspect that in airplane mode it would only communicate at the specific request of the system (and perhaps in spread spectrum mode), so [before baseband is activated from outside] it would not be worth measuring." What do you think?
Isn't that... totally expected? After all, it's the system that told the modem/baseband to enter airplane mode in the first place. Of course it can also tell it to exit airplane mode.
You are right, bad translation. She was trying to explain that the problem is that, independently of you and against your will, the remote telecommunications system is able to activate the broadband chip of your mobile phone while it is in airplane mode, where you expect the baseband system to be deactivated.
I have a Pinephone, which has hardware switches to turn off potential privacy destroying features.
But it's even more secure than that - them made it so it's such a poor phone that I never managed to get it into use as a daily driver phone for more than a day or two at a time! The most private device is one you never bother carrying!
I once built a cell phone from scratch. They do have high peak power consumption, and I did connect it to the battery rail directly, along with some capacitors to handle the surges.
If you need to worry about cellular tracking, you should either carry your phone in a faraday bag or carry a dumb phone whose battery can be taken out.
AirTags/Find My is THE reason why me and my whole family is on iOS.
This is great. I wanted my next phone to be Z Flip since Apple stopped making small iPhones (and no foldables in sight), but reliance on Find My stopped me.
You may want to watch some videos on the longevity of foldable screens, consensus is that they still don't hold up over time and become especially brittle after being exposed to cooler temperatures.
I can’t imagine anyone, even Apple, solving the issues of the screen being perfectly flat at the hinge. I don’t think it can be made to feel the same as the rest of the screen or have no visual difference either.
And I like my iPhone. If it was twice as thick and half as tall when folded, I just don’t see that as “better”.
If it was the same thickness as today when folded and half as thick when unfolded I’m not sure that’s better either (and would be harder to make anyway).
Folding phones seem like one of those neat things that can be made but don’t solve any problem most people have. It seems like it would be most useful to make something the size of a lipstick case that unfolds into something a bit wider. That would’ve been cool 20 years ago. But I don’t wanna phone that tiny these days.
>Locate your compatible Android phone and tablet by ringing them or viewing their ___location on a map in the app — even when they’re offline. And thanks to specialized Pixel hardware, Pixel 8 and 8 Pro owners will also be able to find their devices if they’re powered off or the battery is dead.
Then they are not really offline or off are they? Bring back removable batteries in the phones.
Can anyone recommend a similar device small enough for eyeglasses? An elderly person I know loses theirs (and it's a significant problem; they are very limited without them, on top of other difficulties of aging). I can find their phone for them remotely, but not their eyeglasses.
Quick search gave these. I've never used any of those so I can't recommend one, but I have heard some good stuff about Orbit. Maybe there is someone here who has actual first hand experiences with them?
This seems like something achievable with the optics that a phone already has. It should be possible to wave your phone around and have it identify your glasses, if they are somewhere in the room.
Even Google has to comply with warrants. Even secret ones.
You should assume the ___location of your devices will be disclosed whenever the US gov has a plausible reason for requesting it, regardless of which part of the globe you live in.
Does anyone know of a good way to have an Android phone ring from another Android phone, without sharing all account access ?
My wife keeps her phone on silent but loses it multiple times a day. We use the computer to make it ring using Find my Device, but it'd be a lot easier if I could just do it from my phone, which I can if I install the app and then add her Google account to the accounts on my phone, but then I get access (and notified of) all her emails, google photos and stuff like that.
Is there an alternative ? Some way to just have both phones agree to sync somehow and then one can make the other ring, regardless of sound settings.
There should be a config seeting. The 2nd time within 2 minutes that your phone is called from [other phone number] it will ring with increasing loudness, regardless of other settings. (Enable/disable)
Finally, this was announced about a year ago but kept getting held up by the effort to standardize stalker detection across Android and iOS. Seems like they've finally got it figured out.
The one thing I want to find is my earpods inside their case. I mean how hard is it to implement this for a company? Take my money please ? Just allow me to find my earpod and its case ?
I've never needed this feature before but if a chance of losing my phone once per decade is the price to pay for not having my phone tracked at all times, then I'm cool with it.
I'm working on a 3D print + PCB device that turn off/on Airtags periodically.
This way, it re-purpose the airtag into a good theft-tracking device (and not just a i-don'know-where-my-keys-are-device).
Apple impletemented notifications because a few sktechy people used it to track people. But the downside is it can warn thieves as well. Turning off the Airtag ensure the iphone does not see the device enought to enable warning.
>And thanks to specialized Pixel hardware, Pixel 8 and 8 Pro owners will also be able to find their devices if they’re powered off or the battery is dead.
Google is like store-brand Apple. But their home devices are so much better (but still somehow not ‘good’) that more people have coverage with them rather than HomePod so they’ll get the search assist from there.
I’m surprised they can only do proximity, though. AirTags do direction quite well and can sometimes even tell altitude difference.
Curious to know about the home devices. I'd never allow any google hardware a permanent place in my home even if it's amazing, but it's hard to see another major tech co coming up with something better than Apple TV.
The Homepod is amazing too. It's stuck with Siri (is this what you mean?) but has fantastic sound that integrates with the TV for movies and Mac when playing music.
> I'd never allow any google hardware a permanent place in my home
The irrational part of me agrees with you, but I already have an Android phone, so the Google Home doesn't really give Google any extra insight into my private life that they don't already have.
This is why I don't get it when people are weirded out by a stationary always-on microphone in their homes, when they carry around a mobile, always-on microphone (and tracking device!) in their pockets.
(If you also refuse to have an Android phone on these same grounds, then your position seems pretty reasonable, of course.)
I’m all-Apple, but I think my next always-in-my-pocket phone will be a flip phone just for the peace of mind of not having an internet-powered distraction machine on my person
Direction requires UWB, which is unfortunately still scarcely supported by Android devices. I believe the only ones which have it are the Pixel Pro models (but not the base Pixels or A-series) and Samsungs S+/SU/Z models (but not the base S models or anything lower end) while the entire iPhone stack has had it since the iPhone 11.
And here I am still wanting a damn widget I can put my Android which will "find my phone" my wife's phone, and vice versa without her needing to log into her google account.
UWB (at least as used by Apple, i.e. without using angle-of-arrival techniques) only provides precise distance as well. The rest is done on the iPhone using ARKit and trilateration.
Since Android supports UWB [1] (depending on the device of course), I don't see why they couldn't support the same feature.
Based on the mockups and description in the article, it seems like it's the latter, unfortunately. If it did the UWB thing, I'm sure Google would have prominently pointed that out.
That’s what I was afraid of. It’s nice that AirTags can tell if they’re at home or whatever. But they got so much better with UWB on the phone for pinpoint locating.
Google is quite good at these little screw-you features:
> At home protection. If a user has chosen to save their home address in their Google Account, their Android device will also ensure that it does not contribute crowdsourced ___location reports to the Find My Device network when it is near the user’s home.
This is a feature that is fundamentally on-device, and it’s even a privacy feature, but for some reason it requires a Google account.
That’s a fair question — if your phone doesn’t report beacons without a Google account, then requiring a Google account to mask off areas isn’t so bad. But you should still be able to mask off areas without telling Google your home address.
This is a prime example of the "big-corp issue" of today's tech.
In the landscape of 20 years ago this "Find-My" use-case would have already been made an industry-standard, with an Alliance or SIG of the industry controlling a global spec and roadmap.
Tech-companies would have proposed a spec, lobbied competitors and other players to join and contribute to an industry standard to make this happen, because no single company was large enough to launch such a multi-disciplinary product all by itself.
You would get a wide range of companies joining, reviewing and vetting the specification to create a strong ecosystem for service providers, component makers, device-manufacturers, etc.
Now, a few established big corporations happily use those legacy industry standards (WiFi, BT,...), and instead of contributing back to it to make it stronger, they create proprietary products/services on top, ensuring that everyone else is just a petitioner/supplicant.
What makes me sad about this is how it effectively stops innovation.
The barrier to entry is so high, that only a handful companies can launch an item tracker service. And everyone who wants to offer a product in that space needs to play by their rules, they prohibit a lot of use cases.
I use a few Chipolo trackers with my iPhone, and I find it infuriating how limited they are. There doesn't seem to be a way to query the data, so I can't eg. make a dashboard that shows ___location of my items, or make my own app that makes it easier to find my stuff. Every time I look for my keys, it takes me 30 seconds to navigate through Apple's stupid interface, wait for it to update, scroll to the right button, and press the "make sound" button.
Without competition we're forever stuck with mediocre software and a fraction of what would be technically possible.
Even worse, I doubt that ANY company can actually compete with such a service. Apple and Google create the tracking-network by baking the capability to scan for trackers into the Smartphone-OS.
A competitor first needs to make users install an app to "manually" build this network. There's no company capable to build a global network of equal scale.
When will we get precise positioning using UWB? UWB has been in three generations of Pixel phones now and I haven't been able to use it a single time. Not even once.
I want a direction finding arrow that points to my lost headphones case or my wife's phone. I want a smart door lock that unlocks automatically when I approach from the outside but not the inside. I want to stop relying on flaky Bluetooth for Tesla's car key. Why are there literally zero products on the market that support UWB on Android as far as I can tell?
> UWB has been in three generations of Pixel phones now
Only sorta -- the Pro models have it, but the regular ones do not.
I wouldn't be surprised if Google eventually rolls this out. But it's probably bad optics to say it's only supported with a very limited set of models.
I don't see why UWB should have anything to do with the Find My network. It's something the tag manufacturer would add separately. Since UWB range is lower than BLE range, the Find My network would get you close enough and then the manufacturer's app would enable you to use UWB.
So the answer is, whenever a manufacturer thinks it's worth including in the tag.
According to this article you use Google's "Find My Device" app to find tags, not the manufacturer's app. Google's app needs to support UWB tags and display appropriate direction finding UI. Like Apple's has for years.
It doesn't have to, and you don't have to. There is zero reason why you can't just have the UWB direction finding UI in a different app, even should they not add the hook. The UI/UX change between map oriented passive direction finding from anywhere in the world and camera oriented UWB direction finding only when you're within range is very sharp.
If it could eventually do it within the app that could be pretty neat, but even if it doesn't and just has a button to open the manufacturer's app - just like it currently does to open the maps app - it would be basically as good.
Alternatively, the manufacturer's app can just show a notification to get you into the UWB UI when active proximity mode is enabled and when you are within UWB range.
Apple isn't the only manufacturer to do UWB, and Samsung's UX is pretty similar to this and works just as well.
It is ridiculous for Google to release a new tag finding app today without UWB support and without even mentioning UWB at all as a future feature. Sure, Google could link to third party apps, but they're not. Sure, manufacturers could do it themselves, they could have done it three years ago, but they didn't and they still aren't. I'm asking why none of this happened. It's irrelevant whether someone theoretically could have done it or might do it later.
But manufacturers have? Samsung tags have UWB and they work well. There are also Chinese UWB enabled trackers you can buy.
Other manufacturers like Pebblebee, Chipolo and Tile decided not to include it - neither on Android nor iOS. They could have added it for years now, they just decided not to. Chipolo says they think it's just not worth the tradeoff. I don't necessarily disagree - I rarely use it with my samsung tags or airtags, it's just more convenient to use sound 95% of the time. Only time I'll use it is if I'm afraid of waking someone up.
I could definitely see it being useful for people with hearing limitations, though.
> There are also Chinese UWB enabled trackers you can buy.
Where can I buy a UWB tracker that supports direction finding on Pixel phones? I have looked and didn't find a single one. Or literally any other product of any kind with UWB that works on Pixel at all for any purpose, for that matter.
You can buy plenty of Chinese UWB trackers, but they are for industrial applications. Without an open network (this being the first that comes with an UWB API) there's no way to make a compelling product so no one's going to try.
I'm guessing the reason you can't find anything compatible is because there was no way to make anything worthwhile before the Find My network economically. It made no sense for Tile to add UWB only for Pixels (since the Smarttags are better), and no one else could make their own network.
Once this rolls out, there will probably be trackers with UWB trackers. Otherwise, you can make your own - the chips are pretty cheap and it's a relatively accessible DIY project that has been done before.
Ironically, yesterday my wife couldn't find her phone while we were at a restaurant. Is it at home? Well, let's try this. Google it, go to http://android.com/find
Ah, but it only shows devices logged into my account. Well, let's log into hers. Which required 2FA from... her device.
With Apple's Find My solution, when logging in via iCloud.com there is a 2FA bypass link to the Find My web app. If you want to access other iCloud web apps, 2FA is required, but not for Find My. A nice quality of life feature that has probably gotten thousands of people out of a bind.
Just don't log out. Let us collect your data forever and at all times. No need to restart your computer, ever.
You're dumb because you didn't create hard copy two factor backup codes! User error.
Some potential explanations by people who don't want to resolve this admittedly difficult problem to solve. I find these issues difficult when also considering security keys like Yubikey. Like you can't clone a yubikey and that's considered a feature not a bug. So what, you want me to have everything on a usbc device that barely pokes out of my laptop? That's very easy to lose. Fall off my keychain? I've had many usbs do that (__especially__ the small ones).
I am really happy that there are people doing security and making things more secure, but the truth is that usability is necessary too. The reason Signal is so great is not just because encryption, it is because my Grandma can use it. Not aware of any other encrypted text message system besides iMessage and WhatsApp that has that usability and those come with strings. I really think there needs to be something similar for MFA. Consider the user.
Edit: A possible suggestion for FindMyDevice is to have trusted users. That you can give your wife, friend, whatever permission to find your device without needing to sign into your account or any other permissions. This seems like a relatively obvious solution, is there something wrong with it? Google devs, can't you patch this in in a few weeks (or less? But we all know, bureaucracy exists)
> The suggested solution for loosing a Yubikey is to already have n>=2 set up for your account
>> I find these issues difficult when also considering security keys like Yubikey. Like you can't clone a yubikey and that's considered a feature not a bug.
Yes, I am quite aware of this. My complaint is that I cannot expect my grandma to be able to perform this action. It would even be difficult if there was a cloning program, but without it, this is certainly an insurmountable task.
Sure, you can make the argument that my grandma is dumb and tech-illiterate, but the truth of the matter is that this is the bar for the average person. You, me, and other Hacker News users would have no issues with these tasks, but this is not representative of the general FIRST WORLD population. Not to mention those in developing countries.
The technical aspects are great! But they also need be made available for the average person. Be that by bringing the average person up to sufficient level or through careful design to bridge this gap. But what is clear is that the current state of things is insufficient. Especially consider that this is Apple's main value: design.
Why? Why not just have it let you know via a message pop up that ___location tracking is active?
If you don't get that message because you don't have your device that means you're not being tracked / are looking for your device and if you get that message because you have your device you've now been warned that someone has breached your account.
My wife and I had this exact same sort of situation and now we're both logged into each other's accounts. We never have trouble finding our phones now but it does introduce other problems. Such as not knowing if some sort of security alert is being generated by my spouse and now we have to communicate about it.
I have no idea why they sunsetted Latitude. I feel like there was nothing on Android after that, and everyone I know switched to Find my Friends and iOS.
The article mentions sharing accessories, but not the device. I assumed that maybe sharing the device feature already existed, but judging by GP's comment that doesn't seem to be the case.
Came to the comments section to point out this ridiculous fact, which has been this way for ages (2018 at least). I'm glad it looks like there is enough momentum for them to think about fixing it now.
Tangent, but my experience with this was when I needed to upgrade my mobile plan for international service... but I had 2FA via text message enabled for the account.
And now I thought I'd try it with my device. It's on my work wifi and on mobile data. "Play a sound" works. But it still insists "Can't reach device" and won't tell me where it is. What am I missing? "Find my device" is toggled on in the settings.
Yeah, this seems like such an incredibly obvious oversight. Like... I know how it goes with fuzzy requirements, but who didn't nail down the acceptance criteria that the user should be able to trigger Find My Phone without 2FA.
Please don't. If you have 2FA, it should always be active. No exceptions.
Hackers were able to steal private photos of half of Hollywood in 2014 because someone at Apple decided that 2FA is not needed for one particular iCloud function.
There are many design tradeoffs around this problem, and most of them are reasonable, except the one they chose (can't find your phone unless you have your phone). Especially since the choice of where the 2FA prompt will actually show up is out of your hands.
> And judging by the other comments in this thread ATM (with one possible exception), nobody seems to care...
I know this sounds defeatist, but I've gotten to the point where I don't think it's possible in modern technological life in a developed country these days to avoid being tracked to some extent. At least not without dropping most (if not all) of the conveniences I care about too much in day-to-day life. And yeah, that's on me for becoming so accustomed to those things that I'd feel worse not having them.
It's a sad state of affairs, really. But I don't think this will change without some heavy-duty privacy-focused legislation (with massive, tightly-enforced penalties for non-compliance) that forces companies to prioritize user privacy. Part of me would like to believe that sort of thing is coming within the next decade. But the more cynical part of me thinks it won't come, because governments benefit from companies tracking their users, as they can buy that tracking data even when their own laws say they cannot collect it themselves.
First of all, I said it's not possible currently. Which is what I'm interested in. Not that it might not be possible in the future if enough pressure is applied (that might be interesting for activists, which I am not and have no interest in being).
Second, it's not mine or EFF's responsibility to police what Google does. Let's make it very clear that the current situation is Google's responsibility and nobody else's.
Third, it doesn't matter whether I stop using Google services because other people using those services will track me anyway.
And fourth, what does it say about a company that you can only use its services if you agree to be tracked and agree to track everyone on the planet without their explicit consent?
I mean, let's be clear here. This is not "I'm tracking a pseudonymous ID across websites". This is literally tracking the physical ___location of someone whose real ID Google can easily find out, through a wide variety of means.
> Second, it's not mine or EFF's responsibility to police what Google does. Let's make it very clear that the current situation is Google's responsibility and nobody else's.
That's not how society works, though. There's no such thing as "natural human rights". If you want rights -- like privacy, or the requirement that you can control all aspects of your devices -- you have to fight for them sometimes. Millennia of human history is littered with examples, and plenty of people in power would prefer you didn't have any rights.
Companies are in some ways sorta just agnostic: they often don't care if you have rights or not, but if you don't, they're going to exploit that situation for their own financial gain. It's lame, but that's the system and society we live in. Ignoring that doesn't make it go away. Organizations like the EFF exist precisely because this sort of thing is our collective responsibility.
So I 100% reject your assertion here. We are all responsible for our collective situation, even if often it feels like we are powerless to change things. Ultimately we aren't actually powerless, but it's hard (and sometimes risky, depending on the issue at hand) to work to band together to form a large enough power base to change things, collectively.
If you don't want to be an activist, that's fine. But complaining about your rights then feels a little hollow and lazy.
These seems like the most interesting thing to come from the post and every time you refresh the comments you will see more people asking about this feature.
I don’t think you can. Your other options are to either use older Android phones, or switch to a libre-focused phone such as Fairphone 5.
Unfortunately this is the way things are now. I wish there were good open source phone contenders but they have yet to catch up to the feature parity and quality of iOS and Android.
Ah, sorry good point. I was thinking of the Librem 5 [1], but it is hardly comparable to an iPhone or Pixel in terms of software quality, battery life, and feature parity.
There was another post upthread that linked to a GrapheneOS post saying that it does require support from the OS to enable and set this up, and GrapheneOS won't support it. So you'd need to install a third-party OS that doesn't support it.
