Actually, Two of the Third-Party ‘Find My’ Products Announced Yesterday Are Months Away From Availability

Thursday, 8 April 2021

In my post yesterday linking to Apple’s announcement of three new products that work with their Find My network accessory program, I pointed out that Belkin’s Soundform Freedom True Wireless Earbuds aren’t shipping until June. I should have dug deeper into the other two products:

• Chipolo’s One Spot tracker isn’t shipping until June either, and might be in limited supply after it does ship. (“Join the waitlist for the very limited first batch and get exclusive access to pre-orders before it sells out.”) Chipolo’s existing One trackers that are already on sale won’t work as Find My accessories.

• VanMoof’s $2,000 S3 and X3 bikes are available to order today, but new S3 orders will be delivered “within 9 to 11 weeks”, and X3 deliveries are “within 18 to 20 weeks”. [Update: Turns out VanMoof’s new Find My-enabled bikes will start shipping in a week, on April 15, but the current delivery dates for new online orders are months out because they’re already backordered. There should be some availability in VanMoof retail stores next week as well. So there is a simple reason to announce them this week.]

So it just makes yesterday’s announcement all the more curious: neither Belkin’s earbuds nor Chipolo’s tracker will be available until June, so why announce any of it now? Putting Find My integration in VanMoof’s bikes is cool, but they’re not exactly mainstream products. It only makes sense to me if Apple is on the cusp of announcing AirTags very soon, and wanted to get their “Find My supports third-party products too” story out the door beforehand, even if the products aren’t shipping for months. Apple also has significant updates to iOS, MacOS, WatchOS, and tvOS that all feel ready to ship, and iOS 14.5 is the version that introduces the much-publicized “opt-in to allow apps to track you” changes — a feature I suspect Apple wants to explain on their own terms during an event. Then, at the end of the show, Tim Cook can conclude by telling everyone these OS updates are all available now.

But yet here we are on Thursday, a week into April, and still no word from Apple about an online event next week. Their COVID-era online events, after WWDC last year:

• The “One More Thing” M1 Mac event was held on Tuesday 10 November, and was announced eight days in advance.
• The “Hi, Speed” iPhones 12 event was held on Tuesday 13 October, and announced seven days in advance.
• The “Time Flies” Apple Watch Series 6 event was held on Tuesday 15 September, and announced seven days in advance.

Apple has always liked holding product events on Tuesdays, and, for last year’s online-only events, they sent the event announcements out 7–8 days in advance. Who knows, maybe they’ll send out an announcement for a special event to be broadcast next week as soon as I hit “Publish” on this post. But it’s starting to feel like something has gone awry.