Most iPhone X owners say they’d never want to go back from Face ID to Touch ID, and can’t wait for it to be available on other devices.
It seems clear that Face ID is being added to the new iPad Pro models this year, while a fresh patent granted today points to the same technology coming to the Mac somewhere down the line …
The first Apple patent application spotted for facial recognition on the Mac actually predates the launch of the iPhone X. It described a pretty clever way of allowing Macs to automatically log you in, even if they were in sleep mode when you approached them.
The patent granted today references face-detection almost in passing.
If your Mac spots a face, it then uses facial recognition to wake the Mac if the user is identified […] Essentially, the Mac can remain in sleep mode while doing the easy bit – just figuring out whether or not any face is in view – and then enter a higher powered mode to run the facial recognition part before fully waking the machine.
Most of it relates to something else we’ve seen in an earlier Apple patent: using gestures to control a Mac. The inventors named in that patent were from PrimeSense, the company that developed Microsoft’s Kinect sensor, and which Apple acquired back in 2013.
This patent is a little broader, appearing to show how body language more generally – head, torso and arm – could be used to used to signal intent to the Mac. However, the focus of the patent is on the mechanisms used to create the depth maps, so there is little clue to exactly how Apple might plan to use the information.
Via Patently Apple. Illustration: Mac mini concept by Aoirostudio.
