Apple does caution that masked Face ID accuracy won’t be as good. And it won’t work with sunglasses obviously, since the area around the eyes is what they’ll be using. So to some degree it becomes a personal trade-off between convenience and security, as so often.
I do have quite some faith in Apple though, that once/if they unleash this on the gen pop, it will work sufficiently well for 99.9% of all applications. Imagine the embarrassment (and the potential liabilities) if it came out that spoofing FaceID was easy with masks. In all the years of Touch ID and Face ID, all the so-called “exploits” always turned out to be either hoaxes or they involved a lot of delicate tweaking and fiddling often relying on professional instrumentation (3D face prints and the like) and at great cost. I’m thinking especially once they allow it for Apple Pay, they must have quite some certainty in what they put out. The damages would otherwise likely be prohibitive. Just my 2¢ of course.
I wear an Apple Watch, so the headline ability doesn’t apply to me. However, the fact that it wants 2 scans for glasses wearers is interesting.
Case 1: I have found that when I try to use my iPhone 13 without glasses (for example, as I wake in the morning before putting on my glasses), Face ID fails most of the time. the double scan may help here.
Case 2: With Touch ID, folks have been able to allow a secondary user to log in by having one of the fingers of the secondary user. Will people be able to use a totally different face for the second face scan or will it need to broadly match the first one?
The rumor is Apple will be selling COVID masks at $5 each in the App Store with QR codes printed on the front. You simply link the QR code to your profile.
OK, that is a joke, but seriously, you believed it for a second or two, right?.
It is kind of inline with some of what I consider recent Apple blunders:
Making Notifications non-interactive. The result is binary questions in notifications (Yes/No. Except/Decline) requiring two clicks instead of just one. First click on Options, then you get your two choices.
And today I discover that there is no more Calculator widget available for Notifications. I’m, of course, looking to further clutter my menu bar with a permanent calculator icon instead of having access only when I need to use it in Notifications.
This is what happens when a company is so successful and without real competition (anyone ready to switch to Windows? Not me.) they can simply stop listening to users and do whatever the heck they want.
And don’t get me started on the bad decision to kill TouchBar. Wanted an M1 but not buying. I’ll keep me 2018 MacBook Pro, then buy a 2020 MacBook Pro with TouchBar. When Apple’s macOS stops supporting the TouchBar, I’ll have no choice but to move to the otherwise super speedy and fan free M1.
Apple management are financial and marketing Geniuses without any real product vision or expertise.
If Apple management were not super brilliant financial and marketing geniuses and visionaries, they would never have been able to ever have joined, or spent decades leading, the first billion and first trillion $ international revenue club. They would never have made any of the Fortune 500 lists if they were not focused on thinking different and how Apple products and services continue to change the world, and that their super expensive products can change your life.
Apple has been thriving because they continue to “think different,” and follow Steve Jobs’ fiduciary and creative vision. IMHO, “here’s to the crazy ones.”
I installed iOS 15.4 Beta on my iPhone13 Pro today. I tried the"Use Face ID with a Mask" option, but it does not work at all. I get the error message, “Face ID is not available. Try setting up Face ID later.” Apparently, it needs more work.
