What you need to know
- AirTag helped a man find his lost wallet on the NYC subway.
- The wallet in question had been lost for over a day.
When Apple introduced AirTag to the world, they had to have had stories like this in mind.
As told by William Liu, Apple's new item tracker enabled him to track down his lost wallet on the New York City subway system an entire day after he originally lost it. Liu says that he realized his wallet was missing when he went to go to a friend's party.
I got up the next day around 1pm, so quite some time had passed since the wallet slipped out. I wasn't actually aware until I was about to leave the apartment with my girlfriend (her name is Ashley) to go to a friend's BBQ. I pulled up the Find My app and saw that it was all the way at Church ave. Suspicions confirmed, Church ave is the last stop on the G. I was worried that the wallet was still on a moving subway and I'd have to track it down en route, but I saw it was at Church ave 15 min ago, and 10 minute later there was another update that showed it was still there.
Liu and his girlfriend rushed on the subway towards his wallet and originally talked to someone at the MTA booth who didn't hear about a lost wallet. He noted that precision finding was not working either at that location until the person at the booth said it could be beneath them at another office.
We head down the stairs and precision find activates! It starts pointing us right to the booth. I'm getting really excited at this point, I really needed my wallet because we were traveling at the end of the week. We knock on the door and ask the lady inside about a wallet. She says she hasn't seen or heard about no wallet and shrugs us off. She really didn't want to deal with us and she seemed pretty sure that a wallet did not get turned in.
Thankfully, Liu was able to convince the woman at the office to use his phone to try and find his wallet. And, of course, the precision finding located it in the desk of a colleague of hers.
The best part about this was the surprise and excitement that lady had. She kept asking me, "How did you do that??" "What is that thing?". "That was so cool!!!". I was really happy to get it back of course, but seeing her in awe of this tech really made me feel proud to live that Apple ecosystem life.
There have already been multiple stories of people finding lost items with AirTag. Earlier this month, the Boston Police used AirTag to find someone's stolen bike.
If you want to take your AirTag to the next level and ensure it is secured to the item you are trying to keep track of, check out our list of the Best accessories for AirTags 2021.
Bottom line: For iPhone owners, this is the best item tracker on the market right now. With simple pairing and easy-to-use software, AirTags are a kind excellent Apple product of the same vintage as Apple's AirPod family.
