alt Hacker News> We have removed the product and will use our patent on it to prevent anyone else from making one in the future.
I am not sure I follow the unique technological aspects of this solution. The last time I needed to silence a beeping contraption, I broke out the cordless drill and ran it through the offending PCB element. Air tags seem affordable enough to practice this operation a few times. Not sure what is actually protected here.
It's all from people not understanding the very trivial technology that's is the hardware of an AirTag. Most tech is magic to most people. To be fair, fact that we use electric fields to bend a literal crystal, to make sound, is pretty damn magic. :)
Anyone that knows how a speaker works also knows how to silence an AirTag, without instructions required. Anyone that wants to silence an AirTag can just find one of the hundreds of videos on youtube [1], and spend some minutes carrying out the act.
The removal of this product will stop exactly zero people from silencing an AirTag, besides those that are probably doing it for legitimate purposes. For example, I silenced the one in my car, because I was tired of it constantly beeping anytime someone with a iPhone drove with me (including my family).
[1] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to++silence...