Comment by logicalfails
1 day ago
> The new AirTag is designed with the environment in mind, with 85 percent recycled plastic in the enclosure, 100 percent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets, and 100 percent recycled gold plating in all Apple-designed printed circuit boards. The paper packaging is 100 percent fiber-based and can be easily recycled.
I'm no material scientist, but this seems pretty impressive to me that Apple's economy of scale can pull this off, and upgrade the device capabilities, for less than $30 USD.
Building an attachment point into the tag itself is still beyond current technology though. We just don't know how to do it.
The fundamental issue preventing keyring aperture integration stems from the AirTag’s reliance on inverse-phase magnetic reluctance in the structural substrate. You see, the enclosure maintains a precisely calibrated coefficient offramular expansion. Introducing a penetrative void would destabilize the sinusoidal depleneration required for proper UWB phase conjugation. The resulting spurving bearing misalignment could induce up to 40 millidarkness of signal attenuation. Apple’s engineers attempted to compensate using prefabulated amulite in the magneto-reluctance housing, but this only exacerbated the side-fumbling in the hyperboloid waveform generators. Early prototypes with keyring holes exhibited catastrophic unilateral dingle-arm failure within mere minutes of deployment. Until we develop lotus-o-delta-type bearings capable of withstanding the differential girdle spring modulation, I’m afraid keyring integration remains firmly in the realm of theoretical engineering—right up there with perpetual motion machines and TypeScript projects that compile without any // @ts-ignore comments. The technology simply isn’t there yet.
I must say you had me in the first couple sentences :). Also does look like it's not an LLM-generated text either. Good job!
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You really don’t want to accidentally frobnicate the turbo encabulator.
Of course the offramular expansion is what makes all the Fleeb Juice a key aspect of Find My. That and the lack of a substantive in the name.
Haha. That was wonderful to the very end.
rumors are the airtag promax has it for $99.
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It's all ball bearings nowadays!
Thank you Geordi.
> attempted to compensate using prefabulated amulite in the magneto-reluctance housing, but this only exacerbated the side-fumbling in the hyperboloid waveform generators
Wrote my PhD dissertation on this. It would've been in the literature for Apple's engineers to find, but unfortunately I lost institutional support to get this into a journal after my college (Mailorderdegrees.com, an FTX University^TM) folded mid-process.
Aliens fucked over the carbonator on engine four, I’m gonna try to refuckulate it and land on Juniper
You missed the "strategic use of metamaterials to emanate a negative refractive index"
I think the point is to make the smallest unit of functionality possible and then people can integrate that into their use case using attachments, casings, etc. in a way they see fit. It's a good approach for this product in my opinion.
I think this argument would work better if the AirTag in its minimal form wasn't so teardrop-shaped. It feels almost like it was designed to be difficult to integrate into other environments because it lacks any edges or openings. It ensures that anything that could hold it must be at least as big as the AirTag itself. It really confuses me why they couldn't even allow for a single small hole in its edge - it would still leave attachment up to the user, but make it far more flexible by letting people just hook it onto things. Is it because design had overpowered functionality in this product? Is it because this shape is somehow mandated by the hardware within it? It confuses me.
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This might also explain why the first party luggage loop accessory seems to have been (unfortunately) memory-holed. I think third parties still sell them out of excess inventory, but they've been harder to come by in recent times.
My current carry-on doesn't have large enough attachment points to easily accommodate the Apple leather case's keyring, so an updated loop would have been welcome.
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And the result is that for every oh-so-sustainable AirTag sold, a keyring doohickey is dieseled/kerosened from AliExpress' China warehouse to the consumer.
> Building an attachment point into the tag
To be fair, most people I know put their AirTag inside something, e.g. inner pocket of a bag.
At which point the necessity for an attachment point becomes somewhat moot.
Same. I've never seen anyone put an AirTag on a keyring.
Oh, wait...
You're getting a ton of jokey replies, in true internet fashion, but the real answer is acoustics. For it to sound as loud as it can with no visible speaker grille, it needs to be that shape with no keyring holes.
this is the smallest attachment loop i've found. It's rock solid https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CPTS8JG?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_...
That attachment loop costs more per unit than the dual-protocol tags themselves that another commentator mentioned.
I use quite a few varieties, including Apple's, and I have found Belkin’s to be an ideal one — small, secure, with a minimal footprint, and available with a keyring or a lanyard.
https://www.belkin.com/p/secure-holder-with-key-ring-for-air...
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Dude... not cool to put your Amazon `ref` link in there....
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My father-in-law is a builder. It is difficult to get his attention in a magnificent space because he is lost in wonder. We were in an Apple Store together years ago and I asked him what it would cost to build an attachment point to the tag itself. I will never forget his answer… 'We can’t, we don’t know how to do it'
Different people want different attachment types (or no attachment point at all), so it makes sense for that to be external. I've used other trackers with integrated attachment points, and because the attachment point has to be very compact it tends to be flimsy or hard to fit.. vs the Apple one where you can add a larger attachment point that makes sense to you.
Are you trying to say that the AirTag is so strictly utilitarian, that they couldn’t have found a spot for a lanyard hole?
I disagree, they could have, they didn’t want to. Beyond the look, this sure panders to their accessory partners.
How big of an industry is the phone case? Should it even exist? The audacity.
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There are third-party tags out there compatible with both Google and Apple's network that is roughly the same size and use the same battery, yet have a giant lanyard opening in the design to fit anything.
Apple could trivially have fit a usable hole if they wanted to. They just don't want to because they get to sell accessories with that now. Also, looking cleaner on its own helps sell even if that is an entirely useless quality for a tag tha tneeds to go into a bloody case.
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Recycled metals have always been cost effective. Recycled plastic is much more expensive than virgin plastic, but it's a very small materials cost to start with, likely totaling only a few cents.
How does that compare to previous AirTag? Whats the industry baseline for all of those, maybe gold is 100% recycled anyways in most products?
This is a great question. For example, the Pixel 10 has a similar recycling profile, although with less recycled plastic.
This is just green washing on the level of “93.65% natural ingredients”.
What level of materials recycling would be required for you to not consider it green washing?
It’s a genuine question, since I don’t like Apple and agree that we buy tons of stuff we don’t really need. That said, our bicycles can’t be insured anymore, but having AirTags at least alleviates some of the angst over leaving them in public places.
Recycled plastics actually produce microplastics more than virgin plastics do. Some studies on recycled polyester garments found that they dump an additional 50% more or so into the environment than non-recycled polyester fabrics. And those non-recycled fabrics already release enormous quantities over their lifespan into the water supply and open air (via your dryer exhaust) already.
Dumb example for the sake of discussion, you could understand why recycled plutonium would not be a healthy thing to weave a sweater out of. It's less about the recycling and more about the material itself.
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If you believe Hank Green (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=325HdQe4WM4), a lot of recycled plastics aren't recycled the way I used to think they were (by shredding them, melting them down, and extruding them into new shapes). Rather, they're chemically decomposed into what's essentially raw feedstock, purified, and then re-synthesized into new polymers.
That's pretty energy intensive, to the point that it may be better to just use new feedstock (which is produced as a byproduct of oil and gas extraction). There are obviously higher-order effects to think about, but for me, plastic recycling isn't an obvious win for the environment.
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This is just green washing on the level of “93.65% natural ingredients”.
I keep seeing products in the supermarket with big "Made with REAL ingredients!" labels on them.
As opposed to what? Imaginary ingredients?
Classico pasta sauce is the most recent offender.
Chemicals. That’s what they mean by real ingredients: no chemicals.
Like orange juice: can be from a chemical powder or real oranges.
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It’s never possible for things to be good with people like you. It’s not 100% recycled, which would be better. But surely, this is better than 0% recycled??
Ironically, it's worse. I just wrote another comment about this. Recycled plastics carry more toxic load and shed more (and more fragmented) microplastics into the environment. Recycled plastics only win out on carbon emissions.
Moral of the story: plastic is just not good. Avoid buying things made out of ANY kind plastic if you are going to regularly wash and mechanically agitate them. You won't eliminate 100% of washed plastic in your life, but it's surprisingly easy to get rid of 80% of it without sacrificing quality of life.
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I don't see old-gen airtags for sale on the website. Are they throwing them all out?
Apple rarely offers direct discounts of closeout or excess merchandise. Instead to clear out back stock they’ll work with partner retailers (Amazon, Best Buy, etc.) who don’t mind the brand perception associated with offering deeper discounts.
First-gen AirTags have been on sale on Amazon frequently over the last year, and they’ll probably drop the price again soon.
The wholesale material costs for the plastic, gold plating, and magnets is all just pennies, if that.
I'd be a little wary of these numbers as regulation around advertising these kinds of figures normally permits mass balance systems[0] (which imo is tantamount to straight-up lying).
Mass balance is better than nothing I guess, & I understand the practical challenges with going further, but ultimately it's not what's implied by the marketing.
[0] https://www.iscc-system.org/news/mass-balance-explained/
but then the fob also costs $30 :/
Just stating the obvious that not buying one of these things that we never seemed to need until they told us we needed it is the only way to have "the environment in mind".
This feels like a good tradeoff as far as gadgets go. It doesn’t take finding that many objects for it to make up the energy cost to manufacture the AirTag.
They do require periodic battery replacements but I imagine it’s still a net savings or pretty negligible cost. I’d love to see a more formal analysis, though.
Just stating the obvious that not buying one of these thing that we never seemed to need until they told us we needed it
I never thought I needed one until my wife lost her car keys, and the Fiat dealer charged $1,200 for a replacement.
And it's not even the electronics that makes them so expensive. Modern car keys aren't like the 1970's where it's just a piece of metal with the edges shaved off. Those little key cutting kiosks at Home Depot can't cope with today's complex engraving.
I have cats. I can’t count on things being where I left them.
> one of these things that we never seemed to need until they told us we needed it
Found the guy who literally never leaves his studio apartment and has thus never lost baggage, keys, etc.