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 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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