Macworld
7 ways Apple can make the AirTag so much better
The AirTag is promising but far from perfect. Here’s our wish list for the second generation.
body>Apple loves a good second-gen product, frequently snaring early adopters with a promising but flawed or incomplete original product before hitting the mainstream with a sequel that fixes the biggest issues with the first model. This list goes on Apple Watch, Apple Pencil, even the
original iPhone. And now we can add the AirTag to that list. While there s a lot to like about Apple s tracker, there are several ways Apple can improve it with the inevitable AirTag 2.
AirTag vs. Tile Buyer s Guide
Thursday April 29, 2021 1:58 AM PDT by Hartley Charlton
AirTag is Apple s newest product line, a small round disc used to track items using the Find My app. Yet Apple is not the first to offer item trackers of this kind. Tile has been making Bluetooth item trackers for almost a decade and is now AirTag s main competitor.
As the two leading item trackers share a number of key features, it may not be immediately obvious which is better for your personal use case. Our guide answers the question of how to decide whether AirTag or Tile is best for you.
Tile app
Let s start with the obvious points: Apple AirTag works with Find My, which is only on Apple devices. Samsung Galaxy SmartTag works with SmartThings Find, which is only on Samsung Galaxy devices.
Both these trackers work within a walled garden: only Apple devices will locate the AirTag, only Samsung Galaxy devices will locate the SmartTag. Both of these networks are potentially huge as they are market leaders in smartphone sales - but there s a catch for Samsung.
Pocket-lint
Apple requires you to use an Apple ID for your iPhone (meaning there s potential for all iPhones to find an AirTag), but Samsung doesn t require the use of a Samsung Account on a Galaxy device.
Dive Brief:
In a bid to expand its services for retailers, Square has released a suite of inventory management tools for Square for Retail, the platform announced on Thursday. The features include Easy Item Create, Quick Inventory Counting and Smart-Stock Alerts.
According to the announcement, Quick Inventory Counting tracks sellers stock counts using barcode scanning, and Easy Item Create lets merchants add to their product catalog and prepare items for sale via various channels. The Smart Alerts tool uses machine learning to pinpoint when an item may run out and automatically prompts merchants to reorder it.
Dive Insight:
Though inventory has always been a challenge for retailers large and small, the COVID-19 pandemic has been acutely disruptive to retailers inventories, leaving retailers with either too much merchandise or not enough. For companies like Nordstrom, Stitch Fix, TJX and Ross, inventory woes have hurt the bottom line.