Originally published at: Two Siri Remote Sleeves That Incorporate AirTag Pockets - TidBITS
When Apple unveiled its AirTag tracker, many wondered why the company failed to build Find My technology into its second-generation Siri Remote, introduced at the same time. Now a couple of accessory makers are solving this issue with silicone Siri Remote sleeves that incorporate AirTag pockets. Julio Ojeda-Zapata tried both.
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Okay. Call Apple and ask for your referral fee.
Iām going out to buy a new Siri Remote, a Siri Remote Case, and an AirTag. My wife and I donāt lose or misplace that much. Well, me with umbrellas, but I usually know where I left them.
However that stupid Siri Remote! Grrrr! It too easily falls inside cushions. It tends to get left around. I actually have three of these because weāll be unable to find one, order a new one from Apple, then find it (Oh, it was on top of the fridge.).
[S]he is enamored of her ancient iPhone 5s due to its small size and hasnāt upgraded to an AirTag-compatible model yet.)
My wife had an iPhone 5C. She kept it in her purseā¦ many times uncharged or with the phone on mute. Her friends contacted me rather than her because I was reachable. It got to the point where her Israeli Hebrew only speaking relatives called me via WhatsApp that pushed me over the edge.
For her birthday, despite all protests, I got her an Apple Watch. Of course an Apple Watch doesnāt work with an iPhone 5c, so she also got a new iPhone.
She was extremely upset by the fact. A new phone and a watch. I was āputting her on a leachā (although she knew I could track her via Find My). She loved that phone. She didnāt want to learn a new phone.
I got her an iPhone SE (2nd edition). It has a Home button, so it worked just like her old one. Plus it had Touch ID. She loves the phone. Itās almost the exact same dimensions as her older one.
The iPhone 12 Mini is actually smaller than her iPhone 5c, and I was thinking of getting that. The SE isnāt available in blue, and she wanted a blue one. However, not having to learn new gestures is a big help for her.
And she loves the watch. I got about a dozen cheap bands on eBay, and she matches the bands to her outfits. She answers it like Dick Tracy, something I never did. Sheās learned to reply to text, Facebook messages, and other things on it via the built in messages and using the microphone. She uses to track her health and exercise.
Just want to say if you need to get your wife a more up to date phone, look at the iPhone SE. itās the same size and with the Home button, works the same way. Plus, itās faster, has a better camera, and will last her another five years. The iPhone 5S is going to be unusable next year when all the major companies shutdown their 3G networks.
Let me know if you do get one. I want to use my referral fee to help pay for the new Siri Remote, AirTag, and that case.
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We use Elago covers for our two remotes. Mainly for the orientation and grip issues they fix, theyāre also reasonably cheap and add to the overall robustness of the glass-edged remote.
Thereās also the built in remote in Control Center in iOS. Thatās what we use when the āwhere the heck is the remoteā query arises.
Canāt see myself forking out fifty bucks for the Airtags and more for fresh cases for our two remotes though. Theyāre not like wallets or keys and on the move, theyāre typically somewhere near the sofa.
I do to, but sometimes my iPhone is in my office charging up. Then I have to work out if itās better to find the remote or go to my office to get the phone.
Rather than using semi-permanent adhesive as TechHive did with the Tile, just use cheap hook-and-loop dots.
Personally, I wish the new remote was also available in black.
That Elago R5 is almost disgusting. Not because it holds an AirTag, but because it enables you to chain yourself to your TV. Thatās pathetic!
(Iām triggered by personal history; in my first real job, in 1979, I was assigned to manage an apparatus which measured electrolytes extracted from the tiny tubules in rat kidneys for physiology experiments. The sample sizes were measured in NANOliters. Analyses from thousands of samples from hundreds of rats over the 18 months I did that were made from an aggregate tubular fluid collection of probably a tiny percentage of one teaspoonful, but the analyzing equipment filled an entire room: A scanning electron microscope integrated with X-ray spectrometers, mated to a DEC PDP-11 minicomputer that had no video monitor, just an ASCII line printer that made an infernal racket. That line printer failed fairly regularly, and each time that happened a guy would fly down from Boston with a suitcase full of circuit boards, figure out which to change, and Iād get back to doing or supervising the incredibly boring work. Finally, for one trip the DEC guy watched me work for an hour or two.
The humidity in that room was <10%; this was in ultra-humid Little Rock, AR, which felt like another planet to this CA guy, and keeping the equipment happy required another piece of equipment for that huge roomāa dedicated air conditioning unit to battle the sweltering Southern heat. My work involved peering at freeze-dried samples of tubular fluid that had been placed on a grid on a circular beryllium disk the size of a nickel that we mounted on the sample stage of the electron microscope and positioned beneath the electron beam by moving the disk with a joystick while looking at the disk with an optical dissecting microscope. When the electron beam was turned on, the samples would emit X-rays that the spectrometers could analyze so that we could measure the content (and by inference from the known sample volumes, the CONCENTRATIONS) of those electrolytes in the fluid samples. Doing so required repositioning the spectrometers by changing settings on the PDP-11, which took up most of the room. I sat on a metal-wheeled office chair, rolling back and forth among the electron microprobeās āobservation point,ā the enormous cabinet that housed the PDP-11, and the line printer, which itself was as big as a small dinner table. In that zero-humidity air, my excursions would often result in collisions with the metal legs of the line printer, and the static electricity discharge would fry one of its circuit boards.
The solution was a grounding strap, which for me was like being handcuffed to the machine from hell. The wrist strap for that AirTag enhanced Apple TV remote brought up some bad memories.
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The wrist strap is important if you use the remote as a game controller.
In the early days of the Nintendo Wii, there were many incidents of users accidentally throwing the controllers across the room because they were not wearing the strap while playing games like Wii Bowling.
I donāt think the Apple Remote has a motion sensor, so people wonāt be throwing it about, but if you are using it to play games, it may well slip out of your hands from time to time and fall on the floor. The strap will protect it, should this happen. (Of course, so will the rubber sleeve.)
Of course, if you only use your Apple TV to play videos, then the strap is pretty pointless.
Itās pretty handy for extracting it between sofa cushionsā¦.
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Now I know why the PDP-11 and the DEC-20 in College was behind a wall with technicians swatting us students away.
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Apple sold a wrist strap for the previous Apple TV controller. Since adding the wrist strap destroyed the symmetry of the device, it solved the problem getting the buttons and touch surface right by feel.
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I use that wrist strap to attach a Tile rather than sticking the Tile directly onto the remote. It saved us many times especially since multiple users can ring the Tile, unlike the AirTag.
Iāve recently been trying out this Nomad sleeve and Iām hooked. It has a minimalist design similar to the Elago sleeve, but it feels (and smells) fancy because itās leather. Most crucially, my wife likes it (or, at least, hasnāt said āwhat the heck is this?ā when I added it to the remote while she was away on a girls camping trip 
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