I looked back at some old reviews and news stories from when the AirTag launched about five years ago.
There was a lot of skepticism. Many reviewers simply shrugged their shoulders and expressed doubt that Apple’s tracking tags would prove useful.
Five years later, the AirTag has proven its worth. For many — like the Kahney household — they’ve become indispensable.
Here’s a short list of facts I dug up about AirTag:
340 million sold to date, according to the best estimate I could find.
1.65 billion devices in Apple’s Find My network – it truly spans the globe.
AirTag can find lost luggage in any airport worldwide (and it works great on the carousel, too, thanks to Precision Finding).
Lots of people use them to track pets or kids. Earlier this year, a dog in San Diego was rescued from the ocean thanks to an AirTag on its collar.
AirTags are very well-designed for privacy and security. The entire network is fully end-to-end encrypted. No one, neither finders nor Apple itself, knows the identity or location of lost items.
The newest model is pretty eco-friendly: It’s made of 85% recycled plastic.
High-end car thieves use AirTags to track luxury cars to steal.
Flushing an AirTag down the toilet and watching it navigate sewers became a popular craze on viral video platforms.
An AirTag was once used to reveal a secret government spy agency in Germany.
Apple’s tracking tag can act as a clever off-the-grid security device. If left somewhere remote, the AirTag will send a ping if anyone in the Find My network passes it!
We got our hands on the new AirTag and put it through some tests. We found that Apple’s claims stand up very well, and, yes indeed, the new version is better in every way.
Also in today’s newsletter:
Tim Apple just plopped down $2 billion for an AI startup to supercharge the smarter Siri’s language understanding. The tech must be good: It’s the second-biggest acquisition in Apple’s history.
Wow. I knew the iPhone was popular, but this popular? And the top-selling model is what now? (Before reading the story, take a guess in our poll below.)
Protect your privacy. Say bye-bye to spammers and scammers with Incogni, a highly effective and well-reviewed tool for automatically scrubbing your personal data from the internet. Get an amazing 55% discount with code CULTOFMAC.
This inexpensive finance app looks very interesting. It uses AI to analyze your finances — and one feature alone almost makes it worth the money: It’ll create invoices just from a voice description!
Keynote, Pages and Numbers were always free, but now they are “freemium.” Some features you have to pay for: Here’s the breakdown.
I already watch everything on TV with the subtitles on. Here’s how to do the same with live, face-to-face conversations!
As rumors swirl about Tim Cook’s imminent departure, here’s a refresher on one of his predecessors: Michael Spindler, who was so hard-charging he was known as “The Diesel.”
— Leander Kahney, EIC.
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Today’s poll
No cheating: Guess the top selling phone of 2025?
Results from yesterday’s poll: Apple Music or Spotify? Or something else?

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