Comment by storus
21 hours ago
Again prioritizing low cardinality event (stalking) instead of high cardinality event (theft) because of "security", making the device mostly pointless, good only to quickly locate some thing at home (assuming battery still holds after the thing being forgotten for years in a closet).
"Again prioritizing low cardinality event (stalking) instead of high cardinality event (theft)"
I don't think you can speak to the relative likelihood of these with any confidence. There are lots of people for whom stalking is a much bigger problem than theft.
Stalking has likelihood of being life threatening, property can’t be life threatening.
They are prioritizing safety both personal and litigious. Apple markets it as a way to find lost things, not stolen things. There are trackers you can buy for tracking stolen things. I'm only familiar with ones designed for cars but I'm sure there are others as well.
That's a personal preference. I have like 12 AirTags and find them quite useful. The precise indoor tracking functionality is great. Losing/misplacing something happens a lot more to me than theft. Though I do have an airtag I've removed the speaker from, so could be useful in a theft situation.
It's useful to help locate things both at home and when traveling. But, yes, optimizing for potential theft recovery conflicts with disabling stalking and, however uncommon, the latter got a lot of publicity, so it's something Apple etc. wanted to focus on (especially given that, in most places, theft prevention probably wasn't very effective anyway).
I think you'll find it's not so much about how likely the event is (stalking vs theft) as it is about the potential impact of the event.
The things you want to "protect" with an invisible AirTag are, at their core "just stuff".
The things being protected by not selling an invisible AirTag are, at their core "people".
I think if my car is stolen, it's probably a bigger deal for me personally than stalking.
I'm not a female, so I don't anticipate a civilian stalking me for really any reason. A non-civilian wouldn't use an airtag.
Zero stalkers are stopped because of airtag policies, since many other devices exist.
There are infinitely better ways to protect your car from being stolen than putting a fucking AirTag in it, and as a bonus you can buy all of them without sounding self-centred and flippant about real threats to other people.
A train is barreling down the tracks while you stand at a switch. Do nothing and the train will destroy dozens of bicycles. If you pull the switch the train will kill one woman you've never met.
You sure you still wanna pull that switch?
The false dichotomy you present does not become any more credible in the form of a thought experiment.
This is literally the situation the comment I'm responding to set up
How many people's lives in third world countries were ruined making that train?
And I know, I know, the downvoterinos!
I don't actually care about this issue at all. The observation is: that moral grandstanding of "woman's lives to stolen bicycles" is somewhat amusing when the hardware is built on the backs of underpaid people in the global south. All so people can have little toys of convenience.
It's likely that Apple doesn't care about woman's lives either, for what it's worth. Just the negative PR associated with the problem at hand.