AirTags, and how they've saved my sanity

I've actually been a fan of Tile for quite a while, and had a few... however, I always felt their range was somewhat limited. Now they've joined Amazon's Sidewalk it will improve .... but I don't trust Amazon. I have actually bought Eero routers and, if they enable Sidewalk I will be switching it off.

I really wish that Tile had decided to join Apple's FindMy. I like things like their very slim product for purses (That's an English Purse, not American Purse).

Still, they haven't joined in and so I got some AirTags. 

2 for the cats as we'll be moving soon and we want to be able to track them down. This was an area where Tile had failed us. We found that the Tiles could not be dipped in water, and that is needed when you have a cat as they drink! The AirTag is IP67 rated, which gives it an amount of water resistance. We bought some covers to go on the cats collars.

I have one for my keys and one for my purse.

My spouse has one for her purse.

My mother, we have added one for her keys and one for her handbag.

We also bought my 82 year old mother a 2nd hand iPhone 11 to replace her ageing flip phone. We bought that because she is used to the iPad interface and it supports UWB (Ultra Wide Band).

How it has saved my sanity.

My mother has a terrible habit of losing her keys. The worst 2 have been when she's put them on her bed, and then they've fallen off. Once in to the deepest darkest corner of a bag the was at the end of the bed, and the other time under the bed. In both cases, I doubt we would have found them without the AirTag. 

As you can probably imagine, it is really annoying when you can't find your keys and, by extension, even more so when my mother can't find hers as the pressure comes on for the family to find them.

The FindMy app has been a god send, although I wish it was more 3D than 2D. This was particularly true for when they fell under the bed. The app got me within 1 ft of where they were, but didn't suggest actually going downwards. Why does Apple not tie this in with ARkit? It'd be fantastic if it overlaid on the camera. 

<Updated 23/11/23>

I originally wished it was possible to share an AirTag, well that is possible now. In this case, my mother owns her AirTag and then she shares it with me. This means that I don't have to use her phone to find out where it is. There's no issue with tracking, as we already share each others locations.