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Personally, I find FaceID to be vastly inferior to TouchID for many of my regular use cases. Perhaps the worst one is that you cannot easily unlock your phone

Personally, I find FaceID to be vastly inferior to TouchID for many of my regular use cases. Perhaps the worst one is that you cannot easily unlock your phone while it lays on a conference room table to see the contents of a message. You need to picking it up and point it at your face. Likewise when using the phone while it is in a stand/holder. The one and only benefit I found is during the winter, it is easier to unlock the phone with gloves on. Both of them are terrible for security.

matthewmacleod 8y ago
Both of them are terrible for security. Please stop propagating this falsehood, or at least accept that it comes with caveats. Biometric ID on Apple devices is likely to be a significant improvement for many users.
- Skunkleton 8y ago
  It _always_ depends on your threat model. Most people need protection from snooping family members, or people who find your phone if you lose it. For these use cases Face/Touch ID both work great. If you are trying to secure your data from the NSA, well you have probably already lost, but by all means, turn off Face ID.
  - natch 8y ago
    "for many users" I think the OP is signaling they were already aware of the threat model point before your comment.
  - southerndrift 8y ago
    How do you protect against family members who have enough pictures of you to create a 3D printed model of your head [1]? [1]: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/hackers-trick-apple-iphone-x-face-id-3d-mask-security https://www.wired.co.uk/article/hackers-trick-apple-iphone-x...
    - graeme 8y ago
      Was that ever confirmed? The article you link raises doubts about it, and I could find no followup when searching, just contemporary press. Here's a contemporary article doubting it: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/hackers-say-they-broke-apples-face-id-heres-why-were-not-convinced/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/hacke...
    - threeseed 8y ago
      After 10 attempts it's going to wipe the phone. Given how sensitive FaceID is I don't think this is a realistic bypass approach. Not that it was even confirmed anyway.
    - sbuk 8y ago
      If they are that desperate, you’ve got bigger problems.
    - Skunkleton 8y ago
      > How do you protect against family members who have enough pictures of you to create a 3D printed model of your head [1]? With therapy.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    > If you are trying to secure your data from the NSA, well you have probably already lost, but by all means, turn off Face ID. If you're trying to secure your data from the NSA, carry a flip phone and turn it off and throw it in the freezer before you have any sensitive in-person conversations. Also have all of your sensitive in-person conversations right next to a loud white noise generator (i.e. on the seashore). And memorize all of your confidential information. And always carry a highly reliable suicide method in case you get captured and interrogated. I'm not being funny here, these are literally the precautions that people take against state-level espionage.
Reason077 8y ago
I find Face ID to be a vast improvement over Touch ID. It's much faster and less fiddly to unlock the phone than with the old Touch ID. I love that you can activate and unlock the phone just by looking at it. Apple Pay is much faster. And I like that it's smart enough to not dim the screen when you're looking at it, even if you haven't interacted with the device for a while.
- drdaeman 8y ago
  My personal inconvenience is that I'm myopic so I tend to hold my phone too close to my face. The camera doesn't see me and have to tap the PIN every other time. TouchID doesn't depend on that and where my face is. My fingers are always near the phone. However, I recognize this is an edge case.
  - Skunkleton 8y ago
    I am also near sighted. I have to back the phone away from my face to get it to unlock when I am not wearing glasses/contacts. At least it will retry on a swipe-up.
- threatofrain 8y ago
  I find that Face ID is only a mild win over Touch ID in situations where it's better, such as when you're taking the phone out of your pocket in one motion, or when the phone is propped upright and you get more details on a notification. But in situations where it fails I find that it fails harder and repeatedly, which makes you want to choose a simple password (perhaps that's why Apple tucks away the alphanumeric option). When a phone is laying flat on a desk, you can lean your face over the phone. When your head is on a pillow, you can lift your head off the pillow. When the lighting conditions aren't good, you can just turn on the lights and position the phone at that "magic distance" until it unlocks. But if you don't it'll just fail again and again. As a minor point, I'm surprised that you prefer to double press while looking at your phone, versus having a fingerprint reader on the back so you can unlock your phone in one gesture of hand toward the payment system.
  - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
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snowwrestler 8y ago
Ok, but whether or not you like it, it's certainly a new feature that is technically sophisticated. Apple did not need to introduce FaceID... seems to me a non-inventing landlord would have just ridden TouchID as long as possible.
elicash 8y ago
I have an old iPhone, so I can't compare the two. But what I will say is that I REGULARLY have trouble with TouchID. Hands not dry enough, or just failing to recognize fingerprint for other reasons. If FaceID does better than work, say, 2/3 of the time then I'll have a better experience than TouchID.
philwelch 8y ago
I have unusually greasy fingers, so TouchID never worked for me on iPhone. (It seems to work fine on my MacBook Pro, though, so maybe it got better). FaceID doesn't consistently recognize the particular smushed shape of my face first thing in the morning, but other than that, it's perfect.

matthewmacleod 8y ago

Both of them are terrible for security. Please stop propagating this falsehood, or at least accept that it comes with caveats. Biometric ID on Apple devices is likely to be a significant improvement for many users.

Skunkleton 8y ago
It _always_ depends on your threat model. Most people need protection from snooping family members, or people who find your phone if you lose it. For these use cases Face/Touch ID both work great. If you are trying to secure your data from the NSA, well you have probably already lost, but by all means, turn off Face ID.
- natch 8y ago
  "for many users" I think the OP is signaling they were already aware of the threat model point before your comment.
- southerndrift 8y ago
  How do you protect against family members who have enough pictures of you to create a 3D printed model of your head [1]? [1]: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/hackers-trick-apple-iphone-x-face-id-3d-mask-security https://www.wired.co.uk/article/hackers-trick-apple-iphone-x...
  - graeme 8y ago
    Was that ever confirmed? The article you link raises doubts about it, and I could find no followup when searching, just contemporary press. Here's a contemporary article doubting it: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/hackers-say-they-broke-apples-face-id-heres-why-were-not-convinced/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/hacke...
  - threeseed 8y ago
    After 10 attempts it's going to wipe the phone. Given how sensitive FaceID is I don't think this is a realistic bypass approach. Not that it was even confirmed anyway.
  - sbuk 8y ago
    If they are that desperate, you’ve got bigger problems.
  - Skunkleton 8y ago
    > How do you protect against family members who have enough pictures of you to create a 3D printed model of your head [1]? With therapy.
- philwelch 8y ago
  > If you are trying to secure your data from the NSA, well you have probably already lost, but by all means, turn off Face ID. If you're trying to secure your data from the NSA, carry a flip phone and turn it off and throw it in the freezer before you have any sensitive in-person conversations. Also have all of your sensitive in-person conversations right next to a loud white noise generator (i.e. on the seashore). And memorize all of your confidential information. And always carry a highly reliable suicide method in case you get captured and interrogated. I'm not being funny here, these are literally the precautions that people take against state-level espionage.

Reason077 8y ago

I find Face ID to be a vast improvement over Touch ID. It's much faster and less fiddly to unlock the phone than with the old Touch ID. I love that you can activate and unlock the phone just by looking at it. Apple Pay is much faster. And I like that it's smart enough to not dim the screen when you're looking at it, even if you haven't interacted with the device for a while.

drdaeman 8y ago
My personal inconvenience is that I'm myopic so I tend to hold my phone too close to my face. The camera doesn't see me and have to tap the PIN every other time. TouchID doesn't depend on that and where my face is. My fingers are always near the phone. However, I recognize this is an edge case.
- Skunkleton 8y ago
  I am also near sighted. I have to back the phone away from my face to get it to unlock when I am not wearing glasses/contacts. At least it will retry on a swipe-up.
threatofrain 8y ago
I find that Face ID is only a mild win over Touch ID in situations where it's better, such as when you're taking the phone out of your pocket in one motion, or when the phone is propped upright and you get more details on a notification. But in situations where it fails I find that it fails harder and repeatedly, which makes you want to choose a simple password (perhaps that's why Apple tucks away the alphanumeric option). When a phone is laying flat on a desk, you can lean your face over the phone. When your head is on a pillow, you can lift your head off the pillow. When the lighting conditions aren't good, you can just turn on the lights and position the phone at that "magic distance" until it unlocks. But if you don't it'll just fail again and again. As a minor point, I'm surprised that you prefer to double press while looking at your phone, versus having a fingerprint reader on the back so you can unlock your phone in one gesture of hand toward the payment system.
- 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

snowwrestler 8y ago

Ok, but whether or not you like it, it's certainly a new feature that is technically sophisticated. Apple did not need to introduce FaceID... seems to me a non-inventing landlord would have just ridden TouchID as long as possible.

elicash 8y ago

I have an old iPhone, so I can't compare the two. But what I will say is that I REGULARLY have trouble with TouchID. Hands not dry enough, or just failing to recognize fingerprint for other reasons. If FaceID does better than work, say, 2/3 of the time then I'll have a better experience than TouchID.

philwelch 8y ago

I have unusually greasy fingers, so TouchID never worked for me on iPhone. (It seems to work fine on my MacBook Pro, though, so maybe it got better). FaceID doesn't consistently recognize the particular smushed shape of my face first thing in the morning, but other than that, it's perfect.