Andrew Orr
An Apple AirTag was recently credited for helping to find a lost dog in Florida, despite Apple's warnings to not use the device in this manner.
The dog — Rocky — escaped his home. An hour after the break-out, the owner realized that Rocky was missing.
"I went to take the trash out, and I think he just escaped when I took the trash out," owner Denise Huertas told FOX 4 Now in a video.
But then she remembered that she had put an AirTag location tracker on Rocky.
"I ran and got my phone, when I looked at the location, the location said about 20 minutes away," she said.
Someone had found Rocky and brought him to Orange County Animal Services. The workers there noticed the AirTag on him.
"This was actually a first for us, we've never really seen this level of technology," said Bryant Almedia.
The shelter said putting the AirTag on Rocky's collar was a good idea. But they also wanted to remind people of more traditional methods for locating pets, such as a microchip or an ID tag on a collar.
Apple also recommends caution when using an AirTag to track people or pets, since the company specifically designed it for item tracking. In 2021, Kaiann Drance, Apple's VP of worldwide iPhone product marketing, talked about people parents using AirTags to track their pets or kids.
"If people do that, they just have to make sure that their moving pet gets into range of a device in the Find My network," she said.
For parents to track their kids, Drance said that using an Apple Watch with Family Setup might be a better option.
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8 Comments
Microchip your animals first. And sure. Try an AirTag. Anything for our dogs and cats. But Microchip comes first!
Unfortunately trackers on cats are a bit more difficult since cats need to wear breakaway collars to prevent them from choking on a branch.
Apart fom stalking (which is unacceptable), the only reason Apple downplays the "find your pet or kid" use of AirTags is to avoid liability. That way, people can't come back at them when someone never comes home, despite attaching an airtag to their collar or backpack, whatever the case may be. But also, it might be Apple does not wish to normalize, or be seen as overtly normalizing, tracking devices for every living creature. (Although cellphones essentially serve this purpose for people already.)
The other reason the downplay it is that buying an iPhone or Apple Watch for you kid, provides much higher profits. Than an AirTag 😉