BERLIN—Apple’s Find My platform largely helps locate Apple phones, tablets, watches, and laptops. But as the company has opened up this system to third parties, the menagerie of objects that you can track via this network has gotten bigger and weirder.At the IFA trade show here, we saw three items with Find My capability that you’d previously have to track with an AirTag and some tape.ESR Geo Wallet
A wallet is one of the more important things you don’t want to lose, and this $55 vegan-leather billfold incorporates a Find My receiver, RFID shielding, and a lithium-polymer battery. Per the specs on ESR’s Kickstarter-project page, the battery lasts five months and recharges in two hours via a MagSafe connector, at the possible cost of you having to explain to friends “wait, I have to recharge my wallet.”Satechi Vegan-Leather Passport Cover with Find MyDuring international travel, your passport ranks even higher than your wallet among paper-centric items that you can’t misplace. This $59.99 vegan-leather cover from the longstanding vendor of Apple accessories also embeds a Find My receiver and RFID protection (note that data breaches represent a much bigger risk to your personal information than attempted RFID skimming), but it charges cordlessly on any Qi surface. Satechi’s FAQ recommends a recharge every three months. Twelve South PlugBug with Find My
Pocket-sized power adapters with a pair of USB-C ports and fast-charging capability are not exactly an endangered species, but this accessory vendor’s latest device adds Find My support to the charger genre. As CEO Andrew Green said Friday: “It’s the number one thing that people lose.” (I’ve almost lost chargers enough times that I now have my business card taped to my laptop charger.) The base PlugBug model, $69.99, delivers 50W over its two USB-C ports; a four-plug model, $119.99, handles a combined 120W.
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If you were wondering about people with Android phones, Google’s Find My Device network, recently relaunched on a privacy-optimized model. So, it could, in theory, work on these devices like that, but you’ll need to direct your requests to the device vendors in question. Green’s response: “We could, but we have no plans at this time.”
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About Rob Pegoraro
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Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.
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