It would be awesome.
It would be awesome.
I would suggest signing into a separate Apple account that's under your control to pair the AirTag, however. Not due to the risk of being banned, but because I have the suspicion that removing an AirTag from your (friend's) account may prompt the device to instruct the AirTag to reset. But if you sign into another account, pair it using an iDevice and then log out, that shouldn't be an issue.
https://notes.stavros.io/programming/third-party-airtags-res...
Google have also launched their own network, Find, which is turned off by default and useless for now.
For the use case of identifying where they are on a map, I can certainly believe that an iPhone will connect more often than you move the object the tag is attached to. But when it comes time to actually trigger a sound to find it stuck under a cushion or what have you, is there going to be an iPhone within range at that moment?
The difference between "airtag is in under the top left corner of the couch cushion" and "airtag might be in the same building as you" is so large that I wonder why you don't get a old used iPhone and swap the battery to create a functional phone.
> Can I buy an AirTag, initialize it with the help of a friend who has an iPhone, and then locate the AirTag or ring it from my PC with this Python lib?
Ringing it might be an unusual case for you, but it's exactly what OP was asking about.
(It's also by far the most common use case for this category of device for me. I misplace things all the time and it's super convenient to not have to wander all over the house looking for it.)