'Knock' Aims to Let You Unlock Your Mac With Your Apple Watch

[2457282]

+1... tried both, MacID is vastly superior to Knock... I use MacID all the time. Knock was a gimmick that didn't even last a day.

Based on all the comments here I downloaded MacID. Have not tried knock. I actually had no idea that this existed, so thanks MR for the article. So far MacID seems straight forward and works. But having to take the phone out of my pocket makes it no easier really compared to typing in the password (except for the remembering part). But I can see how the watch could really make a difference here.

Will continue to play with it and see.

 

[VirtualRain]

Based on all the comments here I downloaded MacID. Have not tried knock. I actually had no idea that this existed, so thanks MR for the article. So far MacID seems straight forward and works. But having to take the phone out of my pocket makes it no easier really compared to typing in the password (except for the remembering part). But I can see how the watch could really make a difference here.

Will continue to play with it and see.

Try the "Tap to unlock" feature if you have a trackpad or a Magic Mouse... then you don't even need to take your phone out of your pocket.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Based on all the comments here I downloaded MacID. Have not tried knock. I actually had no idea that this existed, so thanks MR for the article. So far MacID seems straight forward and works. But having to take the phone out of my pocket makes it no easier really compared to typing in the password (except for the remembering part). But I can see how the watch could really make a difference here.

Will continue to play with it and see.

With the new version, (currently in beta) you will be able to unlock the Mac automatically with the new Proximity Wake setting, without having to touch your phone. I am guessing that said feature will also apply to the Apple Watch.

You can also control iTunes with MacID as well as have the screen saver automatically turn on when your Mac locks either by you walking out of range, or manually locking it within the app.

There are a lot more features coming with this next release.

I also want to mention, that the next release will work with the new force track pad.

 

[ErikGrim]

It takes, what 5 seconds to type in a password? Seems kinda pointless to me

Changing 5 seconds to zero seconds is pointless?

One of the things that bothered Steve Jobs the most was the time that it took to boot when the Mac was first powered on. It could take a couple of minutes, or even more, to test memory, initialize the operating system, and load the Finder. One afternoon, Steve came up with an original way to motivate us to make it faster.

Larry Kenyon was the engineer working on the disk driver and file system. Steve came into his cubicle and started to exhort him. "The Macintosh boots too slowly. You've got to make it faster!"

Larry started to explain about some of the places where he thought that he could improve things, but Steve wasn't interested. He continued, "You know, I've been thinking about it. How many people are going to be using the Macintosh? A million? No, more than that. In a few years, I bet five million people will be booting up their Macintoshes at least once a day."

"Well, let's say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that by five million users and thats 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a year, that's probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you've saved a dozen lives. That's really worth it, don't you think?"​

 

[McFreggle]

Great! I was waiting for this!