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Comment by huebnerob | Hacker News Reader

I don't see how Face ID is inherently an "epic pain" unless you're building in the assumption that it doesn't work well. If you instead assume that it works fairly well and your device is unlocked when you look at it, it seems that it could be much more convenient in many scenarios than Touch ID. Like when you're wearing gloves, when your finger might be dirty/wet, etc..

I've used Touch ID since inception, and I can honestly say that I'm excited to explore the different set of tradeoffs that Face ID will bring. What I will grant you is that we don't actually know how well it works yet, but we will soon.

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I don't see how Face ID is inherently an "epic pain"

The fact that the phone only allows one face is a deal-breaker for me. My wife needs access to my phone (and vice versa). I'd prefer we don't have to memorize each others long/complex passcodes. With TouchId, this scenario is handled. With a single FaceId, it's a loss of functionality.

There’s no fundamental reason they couldn’t let you add more than one face the same way they let you add more than one finger now.

They said it was one face for now.

We don’t know if that means ‘until a software update next year’ or ‘for this hardware recision’.

I’m hoping for the former. For that use case it is certainly a step down from TouchID.

Sure, but until they actually allow it, I'll stick with a 7 or 8.

I know these comments are generally frowned upon, so I apologize for veering off topic in advance – but I'm genuinely curious.

For the most part, there's no reason for my wife and I to interchange phones at any time. Functionality can be replicated easily between devices to the point where there are zero essential situations where she needs access to my device, or the other way around. Would you be willing to share the use case where your

> wife needs access to my phone (and vice versa)

A few things come to mind...

1. I'm driving, I've started Waze on my phone, and she needs to adjust destination/settings. Same for Pandora or anything else while I'm driving.

2. We're in Europe, and only using a single phone to avoid massive data fees. Verizon is $10/day/phone to use existing data plan, which works well for long weekend trips (longer trips, I'd buy a local SIM and deal with using a different phone number).

3. One of our phones is unusable (forgot it, battery dead, etc), so need to use the other.

My GF who usually use her phone as mirror won't buy iPhone X because it'll unlock automatically every time she holds it to check makeup.

I heard iPhones have a front facing camera ;)

I always check myself out with the display turned off, works okay for hair. I guess that's what he was referring to.

So, not because it's a 1000$ piece of plastic for sending emojis and playing candy crush saga? My my, always when I think I'm doing good in life, I get reminded how westerners always have more money to burn.

Ooops, forgot to say it more ironically, my bad, here's a #firstworldproblems.

FYI, current iPhones already light up the display when you hold them in a position where you can see your reflection.

> FYI, current iPhones already light up the display when you hold them in a position where you can see your reflection.

That's only if the "Raise to Wake" option is turned on under Display settings.

The iPhone 7/8 already turn the screen on when you hold them up, so not sure how it's any worse to unlock.

She could get the black one and use the glass back.

This feature can be disabled.

You have to swipe up on the screen to get out of the lock screen when unlocked...so I doubt it'd stop that use case.

She can cover the notch with her thumb.

I don't see how the Apple Pay use case is going to be anything but awkward - I don't think many payment terminals are at the right angle to do face unlock and NFC at the same time. So I guess there'll be some way to authenticate, then NFC tap to pay or something.. but it'll surely be more fiddly. Apple Pay with TouchID is a perfect UX.

For whatever reason, my finder is to sweaty or dirty for 20% of my TouchID attempts to work. I have to clean the home button with my shirt, clean my thumb, try again. The onstage demo didn't require cradling the iPhone like a babby to get FaceID working -- it can read your face from an angle. This is not like previous, selfie-based face-unlock strategies from other companies.

You don’t have to face unlock while It’s on the terminal. You can do it before.

Either way Apple Pay works much better in the Apple Watch than the phones and I doubt FaceID would change that either way (better or worse).

I live in a major metropolitan area and frequently travel to many others; I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually used Apple Pay. And two of them were at an Apple Store. Where are all these vendors with Apple Pay?

Are you in the US? In the UK Apple Pay works anywhere contactless debit/credit cards work, and banks have been pushing contactless for years now. It's very rare not to see a contactless card machine at a shop here. In London the whole Oyster system is contactless too - so tube, buses etc., and other places are starting to get it for public transport too.

It's much more common not to be able to pay with it because of the £30 limit (again inherited from contactless) than because it's not available.

Interesting you mention the gloves / 'soiled'-fingers scenarios — as those do indeed make it pain to use TouchID! However, they usually also restrict your usage of the entire touch display as well (unless you have ultra-snazzy touch-gloves)... So it might be more of an edge-case, but a good one nonetheless.

I'm also very interested if they introduce TouchID into the next generation's screen. Would be an admission of guilt that the combo of both is the sweet-spot, and is sure to annoy X-gen1 users.

It just doesn't feel ready to me at all.

TouchID won't be back until it is built into the entire display for all-touches-can-be-authenticated goodness

Not even “soiled”. If you’ve just washed your hands Touch ID will likely not work. Touchscreen works just fine. Pretty annoying.

Yep. This happens to me all the time, and is not an edge case at all. Cooking in particular I think will be a much better experience with FaceId. I'm constantly washing my hands, and (at least on my iPhone 6) this means I'm constantly entering in my ~10 character lock code to have a look at the recipe.

I've bought gloves at dollar stores that are touch sensitive. In this era, it's table stakes for things that you put on your two trusty smartphone operators. However, exactly zero gloves that cover your fingertips also work with Touch ID (naturally), so I don't think the gloves case is as edgy as you think.

TouchID works fine if the gloves are thin enough. Nitrile lab gloves cause no issues at all.

> I don't see how Face ID is inherently an "epic pain" unless you're building in the assumption that it doesn't work well.

My assumption is that it will always take longer than just using a button. If it doesn't take longer, then it will be unlocking at incorrect times.

That's why I think it will be an epic failure.

The degree of muddled thinking around Apple's competence never cease to amaze me. Do you really think that Apple went about trying to replace TouchID, a fundamental part of the experience of using their most important product, with FaceID and didn't consider time to unlock as one of the most important engineering considerations?

Apple has made plenty of very questionable design decisions in the past.

I fully expect to be proven correct when this POS is released.

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