Apple deserves praise, not blame, for its AirTag trackers
Apple deserves praise, not blame, for its AirTag trackers
Apple is getting bad press because criminals are using AirTags. But in fact AirTags are the worst trackers for crime.
A woman in West Seneca, New York, got a strange pop-up on her iPhone. It said: “AirTag Found Moving with You.” Creeped out, but not knowing what to do, she drove to a police station where cops searched her car and found an Apple AirTag attached to the underside of her car’s bumper.
Canadian police this month announced that five car thefts were associated with AirTags. They claim that crooks spot target vehicles around town, stash an AirTag on the car somewhere, then later track the car to the owner’s driveway where they can steal it in the middle of the night.
These are examples of hundreds of cases where women were being stalked or cars being targeted. Some have speculated that AirTags could be used by home burglars to find out when people leave their house.
The press coverage on such events is alarmist and panicky. The Washington Post even called AirTags "creepy" and "unsettling."
But this completely misses the real story, which is that AirTags are in fact elegantly designed for privacy.
Mike’s List of Brilliantly Bad Ideas
1. Finally: Now you can carry a PDF in your arm!
Conspiracy theorists believe the covid vaccines are a plot by Bill Gates to inject a chip into people’s bodies. “Great idea!,” concluded one startup! A Swedish company called Dsruptive Subdermals, which makes multi-purpose embedded implantable chips, floated the idea of an implant that hyperlinks to an online PDF of one’s “vaccine passport” on a phone. The company’s managing director, Hannes Sjoblad, told the AFP that it means you can go to the movies without having to bring your phone and still prove you got vaccinated. (I believe some people just crave a dystopian cyberpunk future.)
2. Does this TV taste funny to you?
A Japanese professor invented taste-o-vision — a TV you can taste. Taste the TV, invented by Meiji University professor Homei Miyashita, isn’t some kind of high-tech electronic thing that stimulates taste buds. No, it’s literally an automated spray canister that sprays flavors on a TV screen, which you can taste by licking the TV. It would be a lot cheaper to just spray your own flavors on your TV screen before licking it.
3. Website makes people on Zoom calls think you’re busy
The Busy Simulator website is designed to make people think your laptop is going wild with notifications during Zoom calls, even though you’ve got nothing going on. Just pick your applications, and use the slider for notification-sound frequency. It’s the worst idea since the Boss Key.
4. Now your child doesn’t have to hold their phone anymore!
Kids spend way too much time looking down at a phone or tablet screen all day. The solution? The Buddy Bot! This device stand will hold your kids’ devices so they don’t have to! What’s next, a hovering Wall-E chair with Big Gulp cup holder?
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