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Apple

Apple Reportedly Plans a Doorbell That Unlocks Your Door With Face ID (engadget.com) 42

Posted by EditorDavid from the familiar-faces dept.
Engadget reports: Apple is developing a smart doorbell and lock system that would use Face ID to unlock the door for known residents, Mark Gurman reports in the Power On newsletter. The face-scanning doorbell would connect to a smart deadbolt, which could include existing HomeKit-compatible third-party locks, according to Gurman. Or, Apple may "[team] up with a specific lock maker to offer a complete system on day one."
The Power On newsletter also reports that Apple is testing "health" features like heart rate monitoring and temperature sensing for its AirPods Pro earbuds...

Apple Reportedly Plans a Doorbell That Unlocks Your Door With Face ID More | Reply

Apple Reportedly Plans a Doorbell That Unlocks Your Door With Face ID

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  • What could possibly go wrong with this ridiculous scheme?

    • Off the top of my head... someone posts on social media that they're going on vacation, and then someone else takes a photo from their social media page, blows it up, and walks right in the front door to rob the place while they're gone.

      Or how about you're sick, puffy-faced, and just want to get in to throw up / pass out / get your next dose of meds / whatever, and the thing decides you aren't you and won't unlock.

      Or it gets hacked. This one's actually not really all that big a deal, because the typical do

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hwstar ( 35834 )

      I don't know if this is any better than what we are currently installing on household entry doors.

      The locks on most homes are (At least in the United States) junk. They're all built to the lowest cost possible, have crappy tolerances, and use Zinc instead of Brass for most of the moving parts. The doors they are used on are not much better.

      If you want reasonable security, you have to use commercial grade doors and grade 1 locks. Usually only the well-to-do can afford to install this type of hardware.

      • And better walls...

        https://www.fsstechnologies.co... [fsstechnologies.com]

        "Criminals have also been known to knock a hole through plastic siding and drywall and squeeze in between a set of studs."

      • The locks on most homes are (At least in the United States) junk. They're all built to the lowest cost possible, have crappy tolerances, and use Zinc instead of Brass for most of the moving parts.

        It won't be fundamentally different from what you'll find anywhere else.

        The doors they are used on are not much better.

        I don't believe there's any country you can point to and say "see, nobody robs the houses there because all of the doors and deadbolts they use are highly resistant to being kicked open."

        The locks that the masses use today are no worse than what you'd find in the past, arguably better in many respects, though they do come in different grades. Which grade you should use depends on how much security you need. You probably don't need an AN

      • The locks on most homes are (At least in the United States) junk. They're all built to the lowest cost possible, have crappy tolerances, and use Zinc instead of Brass for most of the moving parts. The doors they are used on are not much better.

        Back in 2007 I had to live in an apartment in Ohio. The apartment was actually well priced and nice, in a suburb of Toledo. Anyway, three years later when I'm moving out, the exodus was quite hectic. After I got (I thought) everything out, I dropped my keys in the key return bin at the office (it was a Sunday), and left. Almost as soon as I did, I realized that I left a load of clothes in the drier.

        Now, I could have gone back and called the property manager or maintenance man to go let me in, but I was on

      • The mind-boggling thing is how common burglaries and home invasions are in the US, while at best, the hardware is either garbage or one step from that. Even the higher end deadbolts and door knob locks are still, at best, symbolic when it comes to a kick-in.

        In Europe, security isn't just the awesome interchangeable cylinders, but multi-point locking in the doors, or even just mortise locks... Mortise locks used to be standard in the US, lasted forever, and had a lot more area to handle the force of a kick-

  • solution in search of a problem (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Sunday December 22, 2024 @03:16PM (#65033009)
    And exactly who is asking for this?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hwstar ( 35834 )

      The guy who looks for esoteric things who wants to impress his friends, and neighbors.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      A company that hasn't had a successful idea in decades that they didn't buy from another company.

      • I'd argue that designing their own SoCs and CPU cores has been an incredibly successful idea for Apple, even if they don't sell them directly. Having leading class performance across many product lines as a result of this has elevated their products considerably.

        Beyond that, I don't think they need a huge hit every year. Most companies only have one thing that they ever do incredibly well if they manage to be successful at all. Having more than one per decade or two is practically unheard of. They can't

        • I don't think there's anything you can point to that they actually did on their own in the last decade. It's always something they've somehow acquired from somebody else, even if they didn't acquire the company. They tried (and failed) to blatantly steal a newer method of pulse oximetry from another company. Happened earlier this year and almost resulted in the apple watch being banned in the US. The Obama admin wasn't around this time to veto it like when they stole other technology from Samsung, so they u

    • Who is asking for this? Apple itself is asking for this. Their servers will have a photograph of everyone who visits your house. I'm sure police authorities will enjoy having this information, too.

  • Until (Score:5, Funny)

    by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Sunday December 22, 2024 @03:23PM (#65033015) Homepage
    People will love it, until the first time their credit card expires and they can no longer get into their house.
    • I honestly wish this were a joke but its going to happen.
    • Next plan coming soon, iLavatory, including toilet papers, can be unlocked with Rectum ID. Just wait for Apple Ceo's saying you're wiping it wrong.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      People will love it, until the first time their credit card expires and they can no longer get into their house.

      Why? At what thing in the Apple ecosystem has there been a subscription on such things?

      The camera will be designed by Apple, so it'll likely use HomeKit. And all HomeKit devices must work offline, with no connection to the Internet.

      It's one of the reasons why the Apple HomeKit stuff is hard to get - because people don't want to make it offline-only. The only way to add Internet access is through a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        You may be right, but we have to wait and see.

        My experience with Apple is very dated, so maybe they are not a walled garden making large profits any more. I did have an iPod, but I couldn't get MP3 files off it when I wanted to transfer my music another player. It was retired. I had an iPhone, it was three months before use it in my country, with a special SIM shim. Jail breaking it to install apps was a pain, I replaced it a Nexus One. I had an Apple TV, it refused to play local media until created

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Or the cloud is down and their doorbell doesn't alert them to people ringing it.

      Delivery people hate smart doorbells anyway. Users hate that notifications often take tens of seconds to arrive.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQgM8gLE5DQ

  • ... use Face ID to unlock the door ...

    We don't talk about facial recognition being a security down-grade. It's not so bad for phones, where many apps (Google Wallet excepted) require a second authentication. This is great for disabled/elderly people and probably useful in low-crime suburbs with few intersections. But if your town suffers an economic down-turn (Eg. factory closing), that low-security door-lock becomes a risk.

  • How do you prevent them from entering your house and stealing all your stuff?
  • Or better put, fuck no.

  • When are they going to learn? (Score:3)

    by RUs1729 ( 10049396 ) on Sunday December 22, 2024 @08:03PM (#65033561)
    Biometrics are, at best, equivalent to a username. What they are proposing is equivalent to login into your system just supplying your username. Worse, because your face can change a lot, depending on time and circumstances.

  • When you update Android, you'll have to sign back in using your password, not your fingerprint. Google obviously trusts their fingerprint scanner less than what's probably a cruddy four-digit PIN. Biometrics is not security. It's a gimmick.

  • The first time I saw Face ID on a phone I took a picture of my friend framed about the same way and then pointed the picture at his locked iphone and it unlocked just fine. I am told it now uses IR and other unstated functions to be more secure, but I haven trusted any face ID on any device so far, and neither has my friend.

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