iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new privacy controls, and more

Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by mirthflat83 on Monday April 26, 2021 @03:59PM (#26947265)

Sorry, it’s not. Face ID: Just pick up your phone and your phone automatically unlocks with your face. This experience is way superior than having to position your finger at a specific place every time you want to unlock it. Putting it on the back is even worse, you need to actually pick up your phone from the desk just to unlock it. I swear HN readers would create devices with the worst UX possible.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by lwansbrough on Monday April 26, 2021 @09:02PM (#26950444)

If you haven’t unlocked your phone by the time you’re looking at it you’re doing it slower than I am. Typically my phone is unlocked before I’ve even fully pulled it out of my pocket. The muscle memory for thumb (or finger placement if it’s on the back) is a pretty low barrier to usability, and can be learned quickly.

Can you unlock your phone without moving it in front of your face? I can, if it’s sitting across my desk I can unlock it without picking it up or moving my head towards it. I do this regularly.

Perhaps you’ve forgotten how many usability compromises you’ve made in using Face ID, but I guarantee it’s slower.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by culturestate on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @12:49AM (#26952118)

> Perhaps you’ve forgotten how many usability compromises you’ve made in using Face ID, but I guarantee it’s slower

Counterpoint: with Face ID, if my phone is facing me I can interact with it just by looking in its direction.

Got a message while I'm at my desk? I look at it, it unlocks and shows me the notification. Cooking and a timer goes off? I look at it, it lowers the volume of the alarm.

Everything has trade-offs and different people use stuff in different ways, but I personally prefer Face ID to Touch ID.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by mackrevinack on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @02:31AM (#26952722)

but what do you if you don't want it to unlock? like if you were in work and someone send you a nsfw message that you don't want your coworkers to see, or maybe you are in a car with other people etc etc. ...there's no way to stop that right?

at least with a fingerprint reader you can choose to glance at the lockscreen messages first before unlocking

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by culturestate on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @04:02AM (#26953279)

You can disable the attention-aware features if you want to, even independent of Face ID itself, and it obviously respects DND settings.

I keep notification contents hidden while the phone is locked anyway, so I'd need to authenticate before it shows me the message in either case.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by asutekku on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @02:43AM (#26952799)

Just looking at the screen does not unlock the device as you still need to swipe up to close the lockscreen. Before that, it does exactly as you describe, shows a glance on the lockscreen.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by culturestate on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @04:05AM (#26953297)

To clarify, it does unlock the phone - i.e. you are authenticated as you after you look at it - but you're right that it doesn't open the full message unless you tap on the notification.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by NoPicklez on Monday April 26, 2021 @08:58PM (#26950409)

I'd argue that when I used to pick my phone up, I'd place my thumb on the touch ID location as I was raising the phone to my face and it would unlock quicker than face ID.

I don't have a problem with either options, but I do think touch ID was slightly faster.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by microtherion on Monday April 26, 2021 @04:12PM (#26947461)

I like Face ID with phones. For iPad, getting the angle right for the face to be recognized seems trickier, so overall the Touch ID experience was superior.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by neilalexander on Monday April 26, 2021 @04:19PM (#26947544)

I've actually found the opposite to be true - my iPad Pro will Face ID happily in any orientation and quite far off centre, whereas my face has to be very much centred for my iPhone to do the same.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by cpuguy83 on Monday April 26, 2021 @05:03PM (#26948094)

Probably you have the "requires attention" mode activated on your phone.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by neilalexander on Monday April 26, 2021 @05:23PM (#26948333)

I have "Require Attention" enabled on both devices.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by stjohnswarts on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @01:55AM (#26952502)

It's not "way superior" it's just different and slightly easier.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by katbyte on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @01:43AM (#26952435)

they both have their place, but with touchid my phone is often unlocked before i even look at it or without looking at it which is nice at times.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by apetrovic on Monday April 26, 2021 @02:55PM (#26946507)

I have a dry skin and Touch ID works for me 50% if I'm lucky.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by kiwijamo on Monday April 26, 2021 @03:40PM (#26947044)

I have sweaty skin and my success rate is at least as bad as yours. I confess to be very surprised at the love for TouchID here. I've used both TouchID and FaceID and I find the success rate of the latter to be much better. Perhaps we, dry and sweaty skins, are edge cases and most people apparently have 'normal' skin?

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by askonomm on Monday April 26, 2021 @06:43PM (#26949248)

Also a sweaty skin person here and can confirm, never liked TouchID because of how little it worked for me and was very happy when FaceID came out.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by Grustaf on Monday April 26, 2021 @04:35PM (#26947742)

After skateboarding my success rate is close to zero...

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by conception on Monday April 26, 2021 @02:52PM (#26946465)

Both is fine with me. FaceID is great for any time you've got gloves on.

I wish they had an external version of it, e.g. an apple keyboard with touchID or support for generic webcams for FaceID so it'd work when docked, etc.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by csmiller on Monday April 26, 2021 @07:04PM (#26949445)

The Apple Watch has a nice function where it can substitute for TouchID/password entry for things like unlocking your Mac, authorizing changes to settings, unlocking 1Password etc.

Makes using my laptop docked way more enjoyable.

https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/unlock-your-mac-with-a...

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by crazygringo on Monday April 26, 2021 @03:12PM (#26946698)

The new iMac has it on its external wireless keyboard.

So it's coming, just slowly.

FaceID surely won't ever work with webcams however -- it uses a custom-built depth sensor separate from the camera.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by masklinn on Monday April 26, 2021 @03:50PM (#26947176)

> FaceID surely won't ever work with webcams however -- it uses a custom-built depth sensor separate from the camera.

iMacs could absolutely have the entire camera module, depth sensor included. Things would be rather more complicated for the laptops, the cover is thinner than an iPhone. Though obviously not as bad as the protruding back cameras, the front cameras module is still rather deep and would likely require increasing the depth of the cover to fit flush.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by WorldMaker on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @02:01PM (#26959282)

On the Windows side you can find Windows Hello certified third party cameras with the necessary IR and depth sensors. (I've seen Intel and Logitech options in stores.) Since the death of the Kinect the cost has generally gone way back up as it is a niche of a niche just to support easier logins and few applications anymore are using the IR/depth sensors as much (though even this far past the Kinect, Windows itself has additional eye tracking/attention tracking features these days than it ever had before for accessibility reasons).

Surely Apple could release a FaceID-compatible USB webcam if they wished. It's probably less likely for them to FaceID certify third party hardware, though.

(That said, I think Apple's other excuse for not supporting FaceID on more hardware is it uses the ML capabilities of some of their mobile A* chipsets. Maybe another thing they might claim can only be done with M1+ macOS.)

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by robertoandred on Monday April 26, 2021 @05:45PM (#26948612)

Plain webcams don't have the 3d/infrared tech that FaceID uses.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by r00fus on Monday April 26, 2021 @05:39PM (#26948539)

I used to think that way, then I was forced (through damaged previous device) to consider a FaceID phone and I'm sold now.

Cooking with TouchID is an exercise in frustration.

Ideally I'd like them to be able to combine auth mechanisms but we can't have everything.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by TetOn on Monday April 26, 2021 @02:53PM (#26946471)

Apple Watch is not required; it is a convenience option that can be used to unlock the phone if you are masked.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by lwansbrough on Monday April 26, 2021 @09:05PM (#26950475)

What I said was "requiring an Apple Watch to unlock the phone with your mask on", so I'm not sure what you're correcting.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by WorldMaker on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @02:02PM (#26959298)

You can always unlock a phone with your mask on with a passcode. The Apple Watch method is an added convenience, not a "requirement".

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by esolyt on Monday April 26, 2021 @02:53PM (#26946473)

Another reason to buy an Apple Watch. It works out perfectly for Apple.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by hkh28 on Monday April 26, 2021 @03:05PM (#26946613)

Completely agree. The new iPad Air even got it integrated in the sleep button, so Apple has the ability to continue offering Touch ID on all devices and keep the full screen display.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by norbertdragan on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @12:14AM (#26951938)

Apple should bring the same Touch ID-enabled power button to the iPhone that they have on the new iPad Air. That would make both the Touch ID and Face ID folks happy.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by hipjiveguy on Friday April 30, 2021 @08:47PM (#27001689)

touch id never works - i've tried it a ton of times, and it eventually forgets my fingerprints or something, and just stops working... max it works is like 2 weeks, then... it's like i'm a new person. I have even tried training the same finger lots of different times, still no luck. And I've tried it on iphone and mac, no go.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by ascari on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @04:26AM (#26953430)

I have sweaty palms most of the time so Touch ID has been a massive problem for me.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by Dort on Monday April 26, 2021 @04:24PM (#26947591)

Putting TouchID on the back would render it unusable for me due to my phone case.

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Re:iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new pri... by drngdds on Monday April 26, 2021 @04:29PM (#26947653)

Cases can (and do, for other devices) have a hole in the back for the fingerprint scanner

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