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Comment by TameAntelope | Hacker News Reader

I'm super excited to see them figure out/be comfortable with a detached Touch ID.

I've wanted my watch to be set as a Touch ID, or my wireless keyboard for my mac mini, and historically Apple seemed like they'd only allow physically attached Touch ID. With this product, it looks like they're providing a Touch ID keyboard that's wireless. I'm very curious how that works logistically, and if they'll make the keyboards compatible with other Apple products.

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MacOS already supports TouchID -> Watch for Unlock. Also for sudo [1]. So this is a good evolution of that!

[1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/259093/can-touch-i...

I was super happy to see that option for sudo, and it worked great. Until MacOS reverted it. Not sure if I did an update or what, but the change was undone.

It is reset every time MacOS updates. Quite annoying but you can just set it again.

I have a shell script that runs at every boot and replaces the config change if it's missing.

Now only if I could somehow use the Secure Enclave on my Apple Watch to store webauthn and other u2f authentications, so the device I have on me most of the time could act like yubikey

Is them releasing a keyboard (detached and presumably replaceable) with a Touch ID sensor basically an admission that the iPhone Touch ID did NOT have to be permanently paired to the phone to keep it secure?

Because in this case you can replace the keyboard and keep it secure, which contains the Touch ID sensor.

I would not be surprised if the sensor is permanently paired to the keyboard's controller chip, and then there's a load of security involved there to keep you from swapping the sensor on the keyboard itself.

Still, better to replace a $100 wireless keyboard than a $1200 computer.

The keyboard probably has a T2 or similar chip, or even basically an apple watch without a screen.

Two months until someone runs Doom on that :)

I was really hoping they would add touchID to the magic trackpad. I love my trackpad but there's no way I'm trading in my nice mechanical keyboard for a magic keyboard, and I doubt they'll add it to both peripherals.

I’d love to see Face ID on a Mac next.

Yes. And automatically log in to the right user account on shared Macs.

In the keynote they mentioned that Touch ID would switch user profiles, so I think this is coming too.

They could even use it for the screen saver/auto lock functionality so the computer doesn’t lock because I am staring at code for 5 minutes.

Hopefully it'll be on the larger model.

I think they may segment it as "iMac Pro"

eh FaceID is more like a software feature rather than hardware, even a basic windows laptop these days have it

They have facial recognition, but Face ID involves a complicated array of sensors and an IR projector to create a 3D mapping of your face. Iirc, the module is fairly expensive to produce which is why we aren’t seeing it on more products.

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