Other Why not have touchID on the power button, à la iPad?

[Thor_9]

Were you aware COVID impeded the use of FaceID?

Oh. I didn’t wear a mask. So it didn’t impact me.

 

[Jackbequickly]

The only device I have that uses Touch ID on the power button is my iPad Mini. Hate it. FaceId is fast and transparent to the user.

 

[now i see it]

There’s something distinctly unsettling about having 30,000 IR lasers shot directly into your face at least 85 times a day. Aka Face ID.
Apple has a warning on its iPhone warning page that using an iPhone is hazardous if the lasers malfunction.

 

[537635]

Apple has a warning on its iPhone warning page that using an iPhone is hazardous if the lasers malfunction.

Really? Could you please point this out?

 

[thecautioners]

There’s something distinctly unsettling about having 30,000 IR lasers shot directly into your face at least 85 times a day. Aka Face ID.
Apple has a warning on its iPhone warning page that using an iPhone is hazardous if the lasers malfunction.

This sounds a little conspiracy theorist nutjobby but I’m willing to be proven wrong

 

[knirirr]

Really? Could you please point this out?

I'm not sure if it's what @now i see it meant, but there's https://support.apple.com/en-vn/guide/iphone/iph0d0b537f0/ios

 

[537635]

I'm not sure if it's what @now i see it meant, but there's https://support.apple.com/en-vn/guide/iphone/iph0d0b537f0/ios

OK... so "little conspiracy theorist nutjobby" if this is what he meant.

 

[subjonas]

Of course people complain all the time. It does not mean your opinion is valid, if your knowledge of the subject is almost non existent.

Most people consider FaceID to be just Apple's version of a selfie camera. It is not. Apple bought an Israeli company Realface back in 2017 and implemented their tech as FaceID.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/faceid-analysis.2153432/page-2?post=27534165#post-27534165
Some details about its operation are in this topic.

The technology behind FaceID is so complex, that Android manufacturers probably just thought "nah, this isn't worth it, let's just use fingerprints".

I wrote 5 years ago: "Honestly the tech behind faceID is just incredible. The rest of the herd are just crawling behind here."

You’re making a new argument and one that is an assumption if you mean to apply it to anyone who wants Touch ID. There are many people who do understand the technical sophistication of Face ID and simply prefer Touch ID in certain situations, and some prefer it in enough situations to wish it was offered in place of or in addition to Face ID. They each have their functional strengths and weaknesses, so it should be obvious this would be the case.

And no, adding FaceID to external devices is not as straightforward, because this is low level software tech and if you want to have decent security, it just isn't as simple as doing it on a single device as a phone. Hashing fingerprints on a Magic Keyboard is one thing, hashing complex face 3D data is another.

What low level software on external devices are you taking about? On Apple displays? Also the iMac is not an external display, but Face ID was not added.

 

[subjonas]

How would you authenticate an ApplePay transaction? iPhones and iPads with Face ID, you double tap the sleep button to start the authentication but how would you do that on a Mac with Face ID?

I’m guessing click the ‘ok’ button.

 

[537635]

You’re making a new argument and one that is an assumption if you mean to apply it to anyone who wants Touch ID. There are many people who do understand the technical sophistication of Face ID and simply prefer Touch ID in certain situations, and some prefer it in enough situations to wish it was offered in place of or in addition to Face ID. They each have their functional strengths and weaknesses, so it should be obvious this would be the case.

What low level software on external devices are you taking about? On Apple displays? Also the iMac is not an external display, but Face ID was not added.

FaceID doesn't simply relay raw data to iOS, but there is a whole process in between, which is done by a separate processor. This complicates things for external devices.

iMac 24 is a low tier device, besides it was speculated that they had problems because how thin it is (same problem with laptops). Certainly an iMac Pro will have it when and if it's introduced.

I agree that both methods have their pros and cons. But for majority FaceID is by far a superior method.

There are still people who would like BluRay in their MacBooks. Moving on...

 

[polyphenol]

How would you authenticate an ApplePay transaction? iPhones and iPads with Face ID, you double tap the sleep button to start the authentication but how would you do that on a Mac with Face ID?

Last time I used Apple Pay on my mac mini, I chose to pay for the goods by Apple Pay and it used my iPhone to authenticate.

I really don't see an issue.

 

[BostonQuad]

@BostonQuad my dad's 13 mini behaved the exact same way when adding him with sunglasses.
But in contrast to you, we did not try it indoors.
His normal glasses worked fine though.
Are your glasses (dim) adaptive by any chance?

No, my sunglasses are not adaptive.

Also, my FaceID fails in sunlight when wearing regular glasses, and when wearing no glasses at all.

 

[BostonQuad]

From the shadow on your face, it looks like the sun is high overhead and slightly behind you, shining directly on the Face ID sensors, creating a lens flare.

I guess many people subconsciously hold the phone at an angle slightly away from the sun since they want to see the screen, so the problem isn’t widely reported.

Thanks for the thought, but I've tried it at many different angles, not only in relation to the sun, but also with the phone angled low (I look down toward it) and high (I look up toward it). In fact, I tried that just today, and it failed about 90% of the time. And the few times it did work were inconsistent, meaning I couldn't reliably repeat the angle to get it to work.

 

[BostonQuad]

It would be nice but what a nightmare for phone cases, imagine how big that button cutout would have to be to accommodate a whole fingertip. I like my buttons covered. I do love touchID on my iPad but I don’t have it in an enclosed case like I would a phone.

What iPad do you have? The cutout for my iPad mini seems fine to me.

(power button with TouchID on left)

 

[BostonQuad]

I learned from this thread that I seem to be alone with having FaceID issues in sunlight. I have another device with FaceID, an old iPad Pro. So I took both it and my iPhone outside, and while my iPhone choked, my iPad Pro worked every single time. Any crazy angle I threw at it (relative to either the sun or the ground) it handled easily and quickly. If you don't know what it's like to have FaceID fail all the time, you might not appreciate how refreshing that was.

I took my phone to the genius bar. They ran a diagnostic which turned up nothing, and directed me to online support.
I had 2 chat sessions with Apple support during which I accommodated various experiments and had another diagnostic run.
They elevated it to a phone call from a senior Apple support person, which resulted in a best best guess of...

the battery. My battery's capacity is at 76%, which according to the support person, could cause systems such as FaceID to fail.

So now I want to ask the community here: does that ring true? I had been thinking of a degraded battery as a nuisance for taking longer to charge, and for not holding as much charge. But causing FaceID to fail in some situations?

I suppose a downgraded battery could also have less voltage, resulting in less power being available... and perhaps FaceID needs more power in sunlight?

What do others think?

 

[537635]

There has been an upgrade of FaceID hardware, but I cannot remember when exactly. So if you have an older iPhone and a newer iPad, this could be it.

 

[subjonas]

I learned from this thread that I seem to be alone with having FaceID issues in sunlight. I have another device with FaceID, an old iPad Pro. So I took both it and my iPhone outside, and while my iPhone choked, my iPad Pro worked every single time. Any crazy angle I threw at it (relative to either the sun or the ground) it handled easily and quickly. If you don't know what it's like to have FaceID fail all the time, you might not appreciate how refreshing that was.

I took my phone to the genius bar. They ran a diagnostic which turned up nothing, and directed me to online support.
I had 2 chat sessions with Apple support during which I accommodated various experiments and had another diagnostic run.
They elevated it to a phone call from a senior Apple support person, which resulted in a best best guess of...

the battery. My battery's capacity is at 76%, which according to the support person, could cause systems such as FaceID to fail.

So now I want to ask the community here: does that ring true? I had been thinking of a degraded battery as a nuisance for taking longer to charge, and for not holding as much charge. But causing FaceID to fail in some situations?

I suppose a downgraded battery could also have less voltage, resulting in less power being available... and perhaps FaceID needs more power in sunlight?

What do others think?

I have no technical knowledge to base this off of but my first reaction is they’re just throwing that suggestion out there as a hail mary because they’re out of ideas, because it doesn’t sound like the battery should have anything to do with it. But there’s a lot I don’t know and the world is weird so who knows. Plus you might want to change the battery anyway, unless you plan to get rid of the phone soon.

 

[537635]

Thanks for the thought, but I've tried it at many different angles, not only in relation to the sun, but also with the phone angled low (I look down toward it) and high (I look up toward it). In fact, I tried that just today, and it failed about 90% of the time. And the few times it did work were inconsistent, meaning I couldn't reliably repeat the angle to get it to work.

Try retraining and adding an alternate appearance with the same face. Also enable mask and sunglasses.

In direct sunlight sometimes you are squinting and this might be the cullprit (happened to me).

For me, even in bright sunlight (UV index 9+) accuracy is 95+%.

 

[BostonQuad]

There has been an upgrade of FaceID hardware, but I cannot remember when exactly. So if you have an older iPhone and a newer iPad, this could be it.

Thanks for the suggestion, but that's not it. My iPad Pro is 3rd generation from 2018, and my iPhone 13 mini is from 2021.

 

[BostonQuad]

I have no technical knowledge to base this off of but my first reaction is they’re just throwing that suggestion out there as a hail mary because they’re out of ideas, because it doesn’t sound like the battery should have anything to do with it. But there’s a lot I don’t know and the world is weird so who knows. Plus you might want to change the battery anyway, unless you plan to get rid of the phone soon.

That was my first thought too!

My 2nd thought was, "well, Alkaline and NiMH batteries have less voltage as they age, which likely results in them providing less power (energy per time), and features would have a minimum power draw to work properly, and I suppose for FaceID that minimum draw could be different in different situations..."

So clearly, like you, I don't really know.

(And I agree about changing the battery anyway, though I think I'll just upgrade the whole d*mn phone.)

 

[BostonQuad]

Try retraining and adding an alternate appearance with the same face. Also enable mask and sunglasses.

In direct sunlight sometimes you are squinting and this might be the cullprit (happened to me).

For me, even in bright sunlight (UV index 9+) accuracy is 95+%.

Thanks for the suggestion. However, I have already tried adding an alternate appearance. It couldn't even recognize that I had my face in frame. I tried it from different angles relative to the sun, so most of the time I was not squinting. If I was lucky, sometimes it would recognize it had a face, but not for long. Before it could finish a scan of me moving my head around the circle, it would conk out.

 

[537635]

You should train the faceID indoors!

 

[Dented]

What surprises me is that Samsung and other high-end Android manufacturers did not jump on FaceID train, instead opting to use under the screen TouchID.

They’re using fingerprint sensors still because it’s cheaper to implement and doesn’t require the same level of R&D and patents to get right, that’s all. Not because it’s better for anyone else.

 

[Dented]

I appreciate Face ID, but it almost always fails outside. TouchID would be a great complement, but building it under the display is problematic.

So what's wrong with putting TouchID on the power button? It works perfectly on my iPad mini. I might even prefer it on the power button than on the screen.

Edit: I don't want Face ID replaced; I love it. I want both.

As you’ve discovered, the problem is with your particular phone, not FaceID as a technology. It sounds likely to me that a heavily degraded battery might not be able to supply the peak power demands of the IR projectors etc and fail for that reason (the same way that a poor health battery can lead to restarts if the processor isn’t throttled in software).

Either way the real answer to your question “why not” is that it would add parts cost and most people don’t want or need it. Apple would never have released FaceID in the first place if they didn’t think it was more than good enough to replace TouchID in its entirety - there was never any chance they’d put both in the same device.

 

[BostonQuad]

You should train the faceID indoors!

It was. This was the original failure.