[illwrks]

I wonder is Apples AirTag networks could be utilised to send data, that would remove any need to have a data/wifi connection and it would also have an inbuilt way to keep tabs on a young child. And for most parents a short message is all that’s needed to send “Running 5 mins late, see you soon” etc.

[mikepurvis]

That's a fascinating thought, since obviously it is bidirectional + there's already the ability to send a small custom payload when an object is marked lost.

If I was Apple I'd be extremely cautious about opening that up, though. Not everyone would be excited about the idea of their data plans and bluetooth bandwidth being used up to enable a free texting plan for every kid within twenty meters.

Think of how that would play out at elementary schools, with hundreds of students piggy backing off a handful of teachers' iPhones.

[illwrks]

In my mind I was thinking it would be a more locked down parent/child relationship. So a parent could send a simple message to a child and child to then have predefined responses, ok/yes/no or perhaps a simple character input limit, whatever fits in the dead space of an AirTag message.

Then by it's nature it would be no more of an issue than a standard airtag ping.

I guess longer term you might have LoRa/meshtastic type networks that would make more sense.