Apple Is Releasing a Find My AirPods Feature (theverge.com)

For those of you worried about losing an AirPod or two, you may soon be able to find some peace of mind. According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is adding AirPods support to the Find My iPhone app with the release of iOS 10.3, which will be released in the coming weeks. The Verge reports: Inside the app, AirPods owners will be able to see either the current or last known location of their headphones (although it seems like Apple will determine that based on where the case was last seen, not the actual earbuds). That location data is going to be pretty broad, so it'll really only be good for confirming whether your AirPods are at home or got left behind at work or a coffee shop -- it's not granular enough to say where within your home they might be. To help out with the trickier issue of locating missing headphones that have been separated from their case, Apple is able to blast sound out of each earbud (so long as it has some remaining power). That's by no means an assurance that you'll find a lost earbud, especially if you drop it outside, but it could be pretty helpful if one goes missing around the house.

Comments

I guess we now know...

[thesupraman]

Why they pulled the app a few weeks ago that allowed you to track down a lost airpod..

How is this NOT anticompetitive?
Apple use their control of the app store to remove an app, and then release similar (although by the sound of it only distantly similar) functionality a few week later.

I hope the creator of the pulled app knows a good lawyer..

Re:I guess we now know...

[SeaFox]

Why they pulled the app a few weeks ago that allowed you to track down a lost airpod..

How is this NOT anticompetitive?
I hope the creator of the pulled app knows a good lawyer..

Maybe he should ask that guy who wrote the notification app that was copied by iOS7 (iirc?) how much of a case he has.

Re:I guess we now know...

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell Tim Cook's sexual orientation have to do with anything?

Re: I guess we now know...

[TheFakeTimCook]

Stop injecting your prejudices into the discussion. The commenter just referred to him as 'that gay guy.' No implication was made that his gayness had anything to do with the rest of the comment. Stop acting like calling somebody gay is a pejorative. It's no different than saying ' that redheaded guy.'

You don't actually believe what you are saying, do you?

Re:Typical Apple

[Roger W Moore]

It will use the last place seen rather than have them emit a sound. Yup.

No, according to the summary (you didn't even need to read the article!) it will do both...at least until some idiot does this while wearing the airpods and goes deaf at which point I expect the feature will be pulled.

Could be done better

[wbr1]

Based on last location of case? Junk.

If they are paired you can have them emit sound.
While connected you can use GPS and a small table to record the phones location every minute. Round robin it for maybe an hour. Stop writing table when unpaired.
Then when you need to find them you can backtrack from where you were last paired, up to an hour before that. You can even map it.

Most likely they are within 30 feet the last paired location, or someone at that location picked them up. This is NOT rocket surgery. Come on Apple have some courage.

How about a different option?

[surfdaddy]

How about a "Find my Headphone Jack" feature?

Even better

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Wow, an app to help you find your earbuds!

You know what would be even better? What would be even better is if you didn't need an app to find your own fucking earbuds.

The lack of an earphone jack is one key reason that I'd never buy an iPhone. Mostly I like Apple gear, but this "fuck the users, we'll do what we want" attitude is just unbearable. Branding the "fuck you" attitude as "courage" is even more insulting.