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It seems obvious that Apple will bring Face ID to Macs sooner than expected, now that technology has also been extended to iPhones to iPads. We have today seen the latest in a string of Apple patent applications in this area.
But the patent also suggests that the touch bar could come on Magic Keyboards …
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While Apple first created Face ID on the iPhone, the first Apple patent we have ever seen for technology, in 2017, was actually not the phone, but the Mac. The patent describes a clever feature of automatic wake up.
The patent describes how Macs in sleep mode could use their camera to search for faces. This would probably be a feature added to Power Nap, in which a Mac on standby is still able to perform some activities in the background without using a lot of energy.
If your Mac spots a face, it then uses facial recognition to reactivate it if the user is identified. […]
Essentially, the Mac can stay in sleep mode while doing the simplest things (by simply determining whether a face is visible), then switching to more powerful mode to perform the facial recognition portion before waking the machine completely.
Last year, we saw another that described Face ID on a Mac almost by the way, as it allowed users to control a Mac via gestures detected by the camera.
Today's patent application
The patent application spotted today by Obviously Apple is actually for face identification using a retina scan rather than a 3D facial card. This is a type of technology used in some high-end security systems.
Apple states in Patent Claim 86 that devices equipped with the touch bar can also use a biometric sensor which is a "facial detection sensor". In Patent Claim 87, Apple notes "wherein the biometric sensor is a retina scanner".
This may be a real interest on the part of Apple to move to a new technology for Face ID, or it can simply act of the company that covers all the bases – as it is usually the cases in patent applications.
At the launch of the iPhone X, Apple warned that Face ID could be fooled by twins and sometimes by other close family members, such as non-identical siblings or children. It was also once usurped by a 3D mask, although this is an extremely sophisticated attack should not worry anyone who is not the CEO of a start-up or a promising leading company.
The extended application also illustrates the touch bar on a stand-alone keyboard. That too is not new, a previous patent application showing the same thing in 2017. We also saw how such a device might look like.
Of course, we know that Apple is patenting a lot of things that it never does. I would have particular doubts about this idea of turning it into production, for two reasons. First, an OLED panel that is still active in a wireless keyboard would drastically reduce the life of the battery. Secondly, I'm not personally convinced that the Touch Bar is a gadget anyway – and the majority of 9to5Mac readers are in agreement.
I am confident that the long-term evolution of the keyboard will be fully dynamic, perhaps via an intermediate step, but only at a time when the touch experience will reflect a physical keyboard. We will eventually get there, with the haptic, but we must be able to feel the edge of the virtual keys and feel them react, and we are still far from that.
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