After bringing it to the iPhone with the iPhone X in 2017, and later to the iPad Pro, it looks like Apple might be looking to bring Face ID to the Mac pretty soon. At least that’s what a newly granted patent seems to suggest.
The patent in question was first reported way back in 2017 by 9to5Mac, but it has only been granted today. The patent talks about using the camera on a Mac to do a bunch of things:
Firstly, it will be able to judge when someone is sitting in front of the device and will prevent the display from going to sleep — that’s useful for people reading long articles on their laptops.
Also mentioned in the patent filing, is something that looks like the Cupertino giant talking about the camera (and most likely added hardware) being able to wake the system and log a user in when they approach their device, even if the device is sleeping.
Apple’s filing says this: “[…]Based on the second set of data, the device determines if the object is a person. If the object is a person, the device determines a position of the person relative to the computing device and executes a change of state in the computing device based on the position of the person relative to the computing device.”
Needless to say, just because the company has been granted the patent doesn’t mean Face ID will make its way to the Mac. However, it’s only logical for Macs to move away from fingerprint and password-based authentication towards Face recognition.
