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Comment by gizajob | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I’m pretty impressed by this, even though it’s essentially a rejigged iPad running MacOS.

Touch ID is nice but I’m fairly sure if you have an Apple Watch then you don’t need Touch ID - the MacBook will unlock if you’re in proximity. I even have an 11inch MacBook Air 2011 that unlocks with the Apple Watch and that doesn’t have Touch ID either.

As someone who started on a PowerBook G4 which was like some kind of unreachable holy grail with a base price of about £2500 (2002 pounds mind) this does make me happy.

Would be nice to have a 12GB or a 16GB ram option even though typing Arts essays and talking to ChatGPT in a browser is never going to need that, and this is Apple’s new first step on their infernal pricing ladder.

Citrus looks cute. Might treat myself.

The pink “Blush” colour is going to sell like hot cakes to the Legally Blonde crowd this upcoming fall semester.

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> if you have an Apple Watch then you don’t need Touch ID

Yeah, the move to Watch auth reopened the Macbook to the good old PowerBook System 7 days as far as effortless use goes. Touch is still great for escalation, 1Password, etc, but being able to be logged in by the time the screen is open is significant.

My experience with the Apple Watch is that Touch ID is faster to unlock my Mac. The “unlocking with Apple Watch…” thing takes too much time and by the time it would have completed my finger already reached the Touch ID and unlocked it.

Depends if you can win the race between it unlocking with the Apple Watch and you typing in your password.

Between touch and watch for machine login and 1Password everywhere else, it is a rare day that I actually type in a password. On those rare occasions, I feel some gratitude to be forced to type it so that I don't forget it entirely.

Yes, Touch ID is faster to unlock in a desktop context. Watch auth works fast enough to unlock a Macbook by the time I open it in order to place a finger on Touch ID. Ymmv, this is me on reasonably updated and stock Air M1 and Pro M3 units.

It's nice to be able to authenticate sudo via biometric id with the help of Pam, or unlock your password manager like bitwarden.

I don't think an apple watch would help there?

Wait, one can wire up sudo to touch ID? I don't know how I never learned that before

Yeap, it's possible starting from Sonoma: https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/11/quick-tip-enable-touch-id...

It's been possible since Big Sur at least, the method for enabling it just changed woth Sonoma

> I don't think an apple watch would help there?

You can authorize via Apple Watch everything you can authorize via Touch ID. You get the notification on the Watch, and you need to press the button twice to auth.

I don't remember if it works every time, or only when MacBook is closed and connected to external display/keyboard.

I've got this functionality in linux with the framework laptop, and it really isn't much faster than typing in a password.

It can be, if your typing is impaired.

either you have killer typing speed or your password isnt long enough or your fingerprint scanner is slow

Apple Watch costs half this thing, but then again maybe there's a large percentage of phone/watch only users.

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