Apple AirTags: What You Need to Know

Apple’s new Bluetooth based tracker’s deceptively simple design hides impressive utility

An Apple AirTag. (Credit: Lance Ulanoff)

How odd, an Apple device without a single moving part, button, display, or touch-sensitive part. Apple’s new AirTag item tracker is a tab that is, aside from a startling ability to produce sounds without a speaker grill, essentially inert.

It’s not dead though. Inside is a little circuitry, Bluetooth, ultra-wideband (UWB), sensors, and a watch battery all working together to look after your stuff. Actually, it’s more accurate to say AirTag keeps a watchful eye on momma iPhone, bleating like a lost lamb if the device (and its owner) strays too far, for too long.

Apple’s AirTags ($29.00 for one and $99.00 for a four-pack) are designed to attach, with optional Loops (that can cost an additional $12-to-$40), to any of your precious objects, especially those you have a habit of leaving behind:

• Wallets
• Bikes
• Umbrellas
• A camera
• Luggage
• Jackets
• Keys

I rarely lose any of this stuff but when I do, it’s in spectacular fashion.
Once, for instance, I left a bag full of expensive technology on a…