Please stop propagating this falsehood, or at least accept that it comes with caveats. Biometric ID on Apple devices is likely to be a significant improvement for many users.

If you're trying to secure your data from the NSA, carry a flip phone and turn it off and throw it in the freezer before you have any sensitive in-person conversations. Also have all of your sensitive in-person conversations right next to a loud white noise generator (i.e. on the seashore). And memorize all of your confidential information. And always carry a highly reliable suicide method in case you get captured and interrogated.

I'm not being funny here, these are literally the precautions that people take against state-level espionage.

I think the OP is signaling they were already aware of the threat model point before your comment.

[1]: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/hackers-trick-apple-iphone-x...

With therapy.

Here's a contemporary article doubting it: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/hacke...

Given how sensitive FaceID is I don't think this is a realistic bypass approach. Not that it was even confirmed anyway.

However, I recognize this is an edge case.

But in situations where it fails I find that it fails harder and repeatedly, which makes you want to choose a simple password (perhaps that's why Apple tucks away the alphanumeric option). When a phone is laying flat on a desk, you can lean your face over the phone. When your head is on a pillow, you can lift your head off the pillow. When the lighting conditions aren't good, you can just turn on the lights and position the phone at that "magic distance" until it unlocks. But if you don't it'll just fail again and again.

As a minor point, I'm surprised that you prefer to double press while looking at your phone, versus having a fingerprint reader on the back so you can unlock your phone in one gesture of hand toward the payment system.

Huh? Face ID uses infrared. It doesn't need external light.

You're right about the pillow thing, but the way I see it, if you can't lift your head off a pillow you probably shouldn't be using your phone!

The double-press for Apple Pay? In many situations you don't actually have to do this. Just place the phone up against the store's reader, then look directly at the phone and Apple Pay will activate without further interaction.

On London Underground and Buses, though, that's awkward and might hold up the queue, so I do double-tap to activate Apple Pay in advance before getting to the reader. But that's certainly no more difficult than with Touch ID, when you had to double-tap the home button.

(Also, you don't have to double-press and look simultaneously. The double-press will activate Apple Pay, then a quick glance at the phone will unlock it for payment. You then have a minute or so to actually touch it on the card reader).

Apple did not need to introduce FaceID... seems to me a non-inventing landlord would have just ridden TouchID as long as possible.