Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

AirTag shows Apple’s masterful tactic of accessorizing your accessories

You’ve got to hand it to Apple, it really knows how to energize a healthy product ecosystem. AirTag, the long-rumored Bluetooth location tracker announced during the Spring Loaded event, isn’t just another add-on product like a case for your iPhone.

It’s a core product around which it and third-party companies can make a wealth of accessories, and Apple’s latest piece of tech jewelry. And like a piece of jewelry, you won’t stop at buying just one piece.

Apple

A new ecosystem

The iPhone and the Apple Watch have a very healthy product ecosystem built around them, ranging from thousands of different straps, chargers, and even cases. The $29 AirTag is an accessory just like the Apple Watch — in that you need an iPhone for it to work — and has been designed in such a way that it’s ripe for personalization, also just like the Apple Watch.

Apple Air tag
Apple

Apple’s not making any secret about its hopes for the AirTag. Right from the start, you can order one with a free engraving, automatically personalizing it, plus it has a range of cute accessories ready too. Apple makes a leather loop, a leather key ring, and a polyurethane loop too, all in different colors, ready to accept the tiny AirTag and attach it to the possession of your choice. Long-time collaborator Hermés is also on board with its own tags and charms for the AirTag.

Make no mistake, the AirTag may be cheap, small, and relatively inconspicuous, but it’s tech jewelry and made to be seen. Like all jewelry, the costs involved vary wildly, but there will be something for everyone. Like the Apple Watch at the start of its life, the AirTag is all set to be a must-have summer fashion accessory. If we don’t get photos of D-list celebrities’ children with an AirTag around their neck, encased in some kind of necklace, at some point, I will be very surprised.

Prepare to pay up

The $29 entry price for an AirTag makes it look like a reasonably priced Apple product, right? It’s absolutely not, and that price can soon rocket up, mainly because Apple has made the product in a way that forces you to buy an accessory. The AirTag is a solid disc, so unless you’re using it to track something with a pocket into which it can slip, there’s no way to attach it to anything.

Hermés AirTag key ring, strap, and charm Image used with permission by copyright holder

I quite like the idea of attaching an AirTag to my car keys and my house keys, for example. This makes a total of four sets of keys, so I’ll need the $99 pack of four AirTags, and the key rings to attach them. The Apple leather tag is $35, so I’ll need four of those. That’s $240, or not far off the price of an Apple Watch SE. Laughably, if I went for the $350 Hermés key ring, the total would be $1,496, or more than a top iPhone 12 Pro Max.

It’s not all like that. Belkin will be one of the first companies to offer accessories for the AirTag. It has made a key ring and a secure strap, both come in different colors, show off the AirTag engraving, and cost a far more reasonable $13 each. Well, I say reasonable, but $13 for a key ring still borders on the extortionate and still makes my total $151 if I want to keep track of all my keys.

But keyrings are only the start of Apple’s accessory master plan.

Roles reversed

Accessory companies are already coming up with ideas that will reverse the normal accessory buying process, by which I mean you will see a cool accessory first, which will then prompt you to buy another AirTag. It’s the ultimate “I didn’t know I needed that” situation, and where the AirTag deviates from the Apple Watch and the iPhone, where ownership of the watch drives accessory purchases and not vice versa.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Nomad is one of the first to think differently with its AirTag Glasses Strap. As the name suggests it’s an AirTag holder attached to a strap for your glasses, offering double the protection. They’re not going to fall off your face and onto the ground, and you’re not going to lose them in a coffee shop either. Nomad’s charging $30 for the strap at the moment, but it’ll go up to $40 if you don’t pre-order.

Due to the AirTag’s design, it needs a specially designed holder to be truly useful, and creative brains are almost certainly figuring out ways to attach it to anything and everything already. Moment already has sticky AirTag mounts, for example.  If it’s not something that’s nailed down, expect some kind of AirTag holder to be available for it over the next months.

Endless loop

It may all start with the little AirTag disc then, but it won’t stop at a key ring. The more creative accessories that get made, the more AirTags will be purchased to go along with them. That’s before Apple inevitably introduces seasonal colors for the AirTag key rings, or a special Nike edition arrives, and so on, all pushing follow-up purchases to go with the AirTag. This is tech made fashionable, and fashion changes all the time.

The AirTag definitely has its uses, and many of the accessories will be very well designed and made. But you can’t help smile at the audacity of making an accessory that needs an accessory, which we then attach to our accessories. If this wasn’t genius enough, there will be many and varied accessories in the future specifically designed to prompt us to buy the accessory first, and then a new AirTag to go with it.

Round and round we’ll go. The address of Apple’s Campus in Cupertino, California is 1 Infinite Loop, and the AirTag is already well on its way to becoming an infinitely looping product.

Editors' Recommendations

Andy Boxall
Senior Mobile Writer
Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…
Everything announced at Apple’s September 2022 event: iPhone 14, Watch Ultra, AirPods Pro 2
Photo of Apple Park during the Far Out event.

Apple's September 2022 "Far Out" event is over, and it was packed full of announcements. The 90-minute show saw updates to a wide range of Apple products, including iPhones and the Apple Watch, as well as a few software features that could make using your Apple products more seamless than ever. Here's everything Apple announced during its September 2022 event.

There were some announcements missing, though, so make sure to pull up our roundup of everything Apple didn't announce, as well.
Apple Watch Series 8

Read more
Want to put a USB-C port on your AirPods case? This video shows you how
AirPods 3, AirPods, and AirPods Pro sitting in their charging cases.

Tired of using the Apple-exclusive Lighting cable to charge your AirPods? Now, you don't have to. That is, if you're willing to put the work into taking the case apart and swapping the Lightning port for a USB-C. Ken Pillonel (the mind behind the Exploring the Simulation YouTube channel) is an engineer on YouTube who went viral late last year for putting a USB-C port on an iPhone. He also brought USB-C to AirPods this past May, and now, he's willing to share his secret with everyone through an open-source "how to" guide.

The written guide can be found here at airpodsdirtysecret.com, but be warned: it's not exactly an easy build. As detailed in Pillonel's video, there's a lot that goes into modding Apple products. To successfully do the mod, you'll need to cut open your AirPods case, 3D print new pieces, solder new pieces together, and much more. In summation, this isn't a beginner-level project. However, if you have experience with putting together and modding hardware, it's certainly doable.

Read more
3 states propose legislation in response to AirTag stalking
Person holding an Apple AirTag.

Apple's AirTag seems like a great idea in concept, but following numerous reports of the devices at the center of stalking cases, three U.S. states have proposed new legislation for the tags. Pennsylvania proposed a bill in January that seeks to "prohibit Apple AirTags from being used outside of their intended use as a locator for misplaced personal items" and now Ohio and New Jersey have followed the state's lead.

Both Ohio and New Jersey have brought new bills to their respective tables over the past week looking to prohibit the non-consensual tracking of individuals with some exceptions made for the guardians of minors and the elderly and select law enforcement cases. The two bills, as first reported by Android Police, seem likely to be passed as they've both received bipartisan support, but have raised many questions regarding GPS tracking and the law.

Read more