What merely happened? Officeworks, a major chain of office supply stores in Australia, has paused sales of Apple'south AirTags for an undisclosed reason. It's believed that the temporary removal is due to safety concerns over the ease at which the push button-cell battery can exist removed.

Gizmodo has highlighted a postal service on Reddit's r/Australia that claims a user tried to buy an AirTag from Officeworks with a voucher. While staff members could run into the trackers in stock on the system and remembered selling them previously, they couldn't notice any devices.

"Eventually someone came downstairs from the office and explained that the AirTags take been recalled due to safety concerns of how easily the button-cell battery can exist removed by a child. AirTags have also been removed from the Officeworks website," wrote shwaaboy.

The Reddit post has been labeled equally Unverified by moderators, just Officeworks has confirmed that the AirTags volition be unavailable for purchase until further guidance is provided from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

The ACCC confirmed concerns over the AirTags' batteries to Gizmodo. "The ACCC is aware of reports raising concerns about the accessibility of button batteries in the Apple AirTag product," a spokesperson wrote in an email.

"If a supplier finds that a product they supply is dangerous, the ACCC expects the supplier to behave a voluntary recall to advise consumers of the risk, address the prophylactic effect, or remove the production from the market," the spokesperson added.

Three children have died after swallowing button-cell batteries in Australia since 2022, and around xx children are taken to emergency departments each week for the same reason. Gizmodo notes that the country has introduced a new standard that requires alarm symbols on product packaging and certain information in production instructions for button-prison cell bombardment products. Apple is planning to update its AirTags packaging and warnings to comply with the new standards.

Ironically, a recent iFixit teardown found that the AirTags' bombardment was more than difficult to remove than those in the rival Tile Mate and Samsung Galaxy SmartTag.

"AirTag is designed to meet international kid safety standards, including those in Australia, by requiring a two step push-and-turn mechanism to access the user-replaceable bombardment," said an Apple tree rep. "We are following the regulations closely and are working to ensure that our products will see or exceed new standards, including those for package labelling, well ahead of the timeline required."