Yep, that's what frustrates me as well, especially for a technology that will be a massive gift to both security and usability.

Have a look around this thread. Lots of smart people having difficulties figuring out how this works. This is a bad sign. It shouldn't be this hard to figure out the basics.

I don't see people having trouble grasping the technical specifics, I see a lot of people having knee-jerk reactions and reacting to their own assumptions of how Passkeys work.

Because you are a) not explaining as well as you seem to believe and b) reacting with hostility and snobbery when you are called out on that fact.

> It shouldn't be this hard to figure out the basics

Why not? There are lots of great things in the world that are easy and a joy to use, but fairly challenging to learn the technical details of. The electricity grid, airplanes, microwave ovens, you name it. Tons of straightforward user experiences that take some work to understand.

Somewhat fair criticism, but also somewhat unfair. A lot of us are trying to read up and understand, and so we post questions in forums like these with knowledgeable folks, in hopes to enhance our understanding and reduce our concern.

One counter point though is that... if there is a new lifesaving technology, and even the somewhat IT literate / somewhat geeky / folks who WANT to understand it, are struggling... it may not be as simple and easy and safe. If I ask "how do I backup my passwords", I'll have 10 million folks answer "use a password manager, backup the file". When I ask similar questions with passkeys, the breadth,inconsistency and complexity of answers is as insightful as it is worrisome.

No complaints with questions, but many of the questions are in the form of assertions that are incorrect.

"Does that mean that passkeys can't be shared between users or devices?" is a 100% reasonable question.

"Passkeys are a step backward because they can't be shared between users or devices" is not really a question, it's an opinion based on imagination.

And passwords are just as complex. How do you securely share a login with another user?

Yes, there's complexity, but it's complexity born of a change in paradigm. The actual new thing is either equally simple or simpler than traditional passwords, once you factor in scenarios like backup, transfer, multi-device sync, sharing, etc. It's just different.