AirTag

The Device Therapy Bike Mount & Reflector gives you a place to hide an Apple AirTag tracker. With this combination, you can (hopefully) track the location of your bike if it gets stolen because millions of iPhones around the world can report the location of your lost item.

Amazon bargain site Woot! is known for its bargain-basement sales on tech items, but Tuesday’s Best of Tech sale digs up some oddities, including an offbeat selection of Apple products. An international travel-adapter kit, for example. The much-maligned FineWoven iPhone cases (also silicone). And an AirTag keychain with a carabiner clip.

Not to mention gear from Belkin, Victrola and others — everything from chargers to solar panels.

The Best of Tech sale runs through April 9. See below for some of the most interesting items on sale.

A firmware update out for AirTag has begun gradually rolling out. You’ll probably want it, but it turns out that updating the software for Apple’s item tracker is both easy and hard. You don’t have to jump through hoops, but neither do you have much control.

Here’s what you need to do.

A U.S. federal judge gave a go-ahead to a class action lawsuit accusing Apple’s AirTag of being “the weapon of choice of stalkers and abusers.”

Apple argues that it designed the product to discourage stalkers.

A deal on a four-pack of AirTags brings the Apple tracker back down to its lowest price ever. Each AirTag costs less than $20 after a 20% discount from Amazon or Best Buy. If you’d prefer a single tracker, that’s up to 17% off the usual price.

AirTags are a great way to keep you from leaving important items behind, or to help you find them if you misplace them.

If you love your AirTag soooooo much that you take it on romantic bike rides (or, more likely, you just want to track your sweet ride), check out these brilliant bike mounts from Laut. They’re well-designed and wonderfully affordable.

You can either attach your tracker to your saddle for less than $20, or beneath your water bottle for even less cash. And because Laut’s mounts are so inconspicuous, thieves won’t even see that your AirTag is there.

Do AirTags make noise? They don’t look like they make any sound, but yes indeed they do. They make noise for a variety of reasons, and in my experience, it can sometimes be mysterious — or irritating.

• What does the setup chime mean?
• Why is this AirTag I found beeping?
• And how do I stop it?

I have about half a dozen AirTags, my family has about a dozen more, and we use them regularly to find lost or forgotten items.

But they can sometimes be mysterious and the sounds they make aren’t always obvious. Here are all the reasons why it’s beeping at you, and how to stop it. But be warned: it’s not a simple yes/no situation.

Strap an AirTag to your bike so that you can discreetly track its location with this ingenious mount from Device Therapy. It looks just like a bog-standard reflector at first glance, so would-be thieves will have no idea it’s even there.

Bag yours today from the Cult of Mac Store for just $15.99.

The Apple AirTag is arguably among the company’s most useful product releases in recent years. Once you set up an AirTag, it gives you powerful options for locating it (and whatever you attach it to). Put one of Apple’s tracking tags on an item like a keychain or luggage, and you can easily track its location from your iPhone, Mac or iPad.

Since AirTag’s launch, numerous reports have detailed how the tracking tag helped owners find lost items. If you recently acquired an AirTag, here’s how you can set it up the right way and use it properly.

You can get a stocking stuffer for a loved one or make the whole family a bit more organized thanks to a sale on Apple AirTag. A single one of these useful item trackers is available at a 17% discount, while a four-pack is now 20% off.

AirTag makes a nice gift for an Apple user who has everything. Even if they use a tracker tag already, they can attach another one to something else.

Apple’s AirTag item tracker can help anyone who keeps misplacing things, and it’s currently available at a tasty 12% discount.

It’s good timing: With the holiday season apron us, an AirTag makes a nice present.

Never worry about losing your pet again with one of Nine Twenty Eight’s new AirTag dog collars. The family-run Canadian retailer — new to the Cult of Mac Store — designs the collars with a double-stitched slot for an AirTag, which is included with some models.

That way, you have a secure, comfortable collar for your pooch that also lets you use Apple’s AirTag tracking technology to help ensure he or she never gets lost.

Nine Twenty Eight also makes cat collars, but currently the lineup in the Cult of Mac Store is a selection of small, medium and large dog collars — and personalization is an option on the medium and large sizes!

If you keep misplacing important items in your daily life, AirTags should be an indispensable item in your kit. One AirTag might not be enough, so you should consider buying Apple’s discounted AirTag four-pack. And if you take advantage of Amazon’s latest deal, you can score a decent 12% discount off the regular price of $99.

Right now, you can get an AirTag four-pack for $86.88. That’s just $21.72 apiece.

Apple sells millions of AirTags because people want to track the location of their stuff. But the tracker does only part of the job — it only warns the user when their iPhone moves too far away from the tag. Making it also set off an alarm when the tag moves away while the user is sitting still would be a welcome improvement.

This could be done with a changes to the Find My application. No new hardware is required.

When the Apple AirTag item tracker launched, it could only link to one person. Apple is now expanding that, enabling up to five people to track each tag.

Here’s how to share an AirTag with family or friends.

If you have a knack for losing items like car keys and handbags — or if you’re often targeted by thieves — you need a location-tracking device. And it doesn’t have to be Apple’s AirTag. That’s because you can get something very similar for less with the Momax Tracker Tag.

Did you miss buying your favorite Apple gear or accessory during Prime Day earlier in the year? Worry not, as Amazon is back with its Prime Big Deal Days, offering hefty discounts on a hoard of Apple products and accessories.

There are great deals on MacBooks, AirPods, Apple Watches, iPads and other Apple accessories that make your favorite products much more affordable.

Attach the Pebblebee Clip to your keys, backpack or purse and you won’t need to worry about misplacing your item or leaving it behind. You can locate the missing item with your iPhone, or have the tracker tag play an audible alarm.

The item tracker is a rival to Apple’s AirTag, and both use Apple’s Find My network so they can be located almost anywhere on Earth.

I tested Pebblebee’s tracker tag and found a lot to like. It even improves on Apple’s offering, but not in every way.

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Which gets you more excited, an AirTag with new AR capabilities, a pink Apple Watch or a black titanium Apple Watch Ultra? This week’s top Apple rumors fuel our imaginations …

Also on The CultCast:

• Apple touts 1 billion paid subscribers, a gigantic number that pushed the company to record-high revenue for its services division last quarter.
• Leander cooks up a cheap-and-dirty way to add CarPlay to any car, even an old beater. (Still can’t get him to come on the podcast, though, because … 👀.
• Tim Cook finally plays the AI card as Apple tries to cash in on the latest tech buzzword.
• Griffin proves he’s a total nerd the consummate tech collector by revealing what he uses an ancient Apple Newton for these days.

Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.

The Apple AirTag item tracker sells well enough that an updated version is in early development, according to a reputable analyst. And it might include the AR capabilities that were rumored years ago.

The tiny tracker has reportedly been selling by the millions since the product launch in 2021.

Google thinks Apple’s Find My network is so clever it’s “borrowing” the idea. But the upcoming extension of Android’s Find My Device network to tracking tags has been delayed — and Google says it’s all because of Apple.

The snafu supposedly stems from the companies working together on a scheme to prevent stalkers from misusing tracking tags made for the two rival platforms.

You people apparently love your trackers. The Momax Tracking Tag — an affordable AirTag alternative that uses Apple’s Find My network — topped the list of items purchased by Cult of Mac readers during Amazon’s Prime Day event this week. And AirTags themselves didn’t come in far behind.

What else proved popular with our readers? Here’s the list — and some of these deals are still available!

iOS 17 has a lot of great headlining features — and many more features Apple didn’t have time to mention during the WWDC23 keynote. Today, I’m going one level deeper: Here are 10 more tweaks and smaller changes that could have a big impact on daily life with your iPhone after you update to iOS 17.

For this week’s giveaway, we teamed up with Device Therapy, which makes a clever disguise to keep an eye on your bicycle. Three lucky winners will receive an awesome Bike Reflector Mount that can help foil thieves who want to steal your two-wheeler.

The AirTag bike mount’s reflective surface is made from genuine 3M diamond-grade reflective material. The durable mounts are made from plant-sourced bioplastic, 3D-printed in-house by the product’s creator.

The massive Memorial Day Sale is still going on in the Cult of Mac Store, running through the end of the day on Monday, May 29. You can get up to 30% off great accessories for Apple products from half a dozen leading brands: Elago, Rilee & Lo, SwitchEasy, Mifa, Laut, Bucardo and Nine Twenty Eight.

See some sale highlights below and check out the whole sale on hundreds of items before it’s too late!