I can buy a lot of things and modify it to do bad things.
AirTag is an interesting choice as if you want to REALLY track someone I think an AirTag is a wonky choice. Very much a cheap-o 'best effort' kind of tracking.
I think AirTags are only the right choice for casual stalkers who haven't really thought their plan all the way through. Anybody who is properly motivated will easily find better options.
Right about now I wish I had pasted one to my son's iPad. Of course, I wish the iPad just had that function built in so it wouldn't need a booger attached to the outside.
Well you can have the iPad share its location ... that's a thing.
How you do it depends on if your iPad is setup under a different apple ID or not (still can do it either way).
My father in law who is older and prone to wandering off, I put an airtag on him while on vacation temporarily when we were out and about, and set his phone to share his location to the whole family all the time just to be save. It's very handy that way.
> Well you can have the iPad share its location ... that's a thing.
As a member of my family account, his iPad does share its location. But only for 24 hours after the battery dies, at which point Apple will no longer show you were it was last found. And since it's only a WiFi iPad, it'll only report when attached to a network it knows about.
And even in perfect circumstances, it doesn't work worth a crap. My daughter 'lost' her iPad last night and asked me to beep it. So I did. "Find My" said "playing sound" for maybe 10 seconds and then just stopped, without any further notice. It told me it last saw the iPad two hours previously, so I told my daughter it may have run out of battery. She found it a couple minutes later in my wife's office. 80% battery. In our house, attached to our WiFi. She came up and played with it a while sitting behind me in my office. "Find My" still couldn't see it. This morning, about 10AM, while my daughter was in school and her iPad was sitting on the charger, it started beeping to be found. LMAO. Thanks Apple, for nothing.
They should put a rechargeable AirTag in the iPad somewhere. With all the usual features. Then I could tell you where my son's iPad is right now, and I could make it noisy, even though the battery died a few days ago and he doesn't know where it is. We think it might have gotten swiped by the neighbor kid, but we'll probably never find out since it's a game of eliminating possibilities, not positively finding the device. Since he didn't mention that it was missing until more than 24 hours after it was last seen, I can't even say for sure he lost it in our house somewhere. Such a misfeature.
Found the iPad. My daughter hid it and turned it off so it could not be located. A couple days ago I had asked her if she knew where it was. We have a thing where if I really need to know 100% the answer to a question, we'll lock pinkies and she can tell me anything and I agree there will be no consequences for what she confesses. A momentary free pass in return for a hard truth. She lied to me when I asked her point blank if she had done anything with the iPad or knew where it was. That hurts. She has a casual relationship with the truth (she is 11 years old, FWIW), and I had been trying to give her a way to get back into a more trustworthy relationship. To lie during a pinky promise... ugh. I've failed as a parent, LOL. There's no real reason to punish her, I guess, she's lost more than she realizes yet, I think.
Rant over. Parenting is occasionally such a PITA. I love my daughter but she causes me ongoing anxiety as a parent. My son (9 years old) is so compliant, by comparison he's a breeze.
My daughters’ iPads both have LTE and Location Sharing enabled to our family profile set up through my iCloud account.
My eldest is 13, and we don’t really see a reason for her to have a cellphone yet; it’s coming fairly soon, sure, but for now the 11” iPad Pro that I passed down to her is a much more functional device for her and carries less drama risk as she’s excluded from her peers’ SMS group chat where it seems like the majority of that sort of thing emanates.
When she does have a need for a cellphone, it’ll likely be one of the relatively inexpensive iPhone SEs or an older used iPhone that’s mostly useful for calls and texts.
I can buy a lot of things and modify it to do bad things.
AirTag is an interesting choice as if you want to REALLY track someone I think an AirTag is a wonky choice. Very much a cheap-o 'best effort' kind of tracking.