Can you please edit out swipes from your HN comments and stick to posting thoughtfully? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Of course, this would also make it easier for someone to disable a speaker and track a person without their knowledge, making it more difficult for that person to find a stealthy AirTag.
I'm not surprised that someone didn't think this through. I am surprised at how many people this must have gotten by to make it into production. You'd think that with any AirTag related product, privacy would be more central to the planning.
It actually doesn't help as much for anti-theft, because a thief still might be smart enough at this point to check their phone for AirTag notifications. The audible tone may not even hit in a theft instance.
Was missing the “make it more difficult for a thief to find the AirTag and remove it” part.
Cheers!
AirTags are less useful for that use-case right now since the bike thief will get notified of the existence of the tracker on the bike once they transport it, and are hence prompted to find and remove the tag.