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Microsoft Authenticator Discontinues Apple Watch App

It's kind of frustrating that watch apps are getting less functionality or are even disappearing over time.

Having said that, I kind of loathe 2 factor authentification. First there was just a password, then there was a sms with a pin code (which I could read on my watch. Nowadays it's: Start login process, maybe solce increasingly unreadable captchas, pinging my phone, looking for the phone, opening the app, having touch ID not working when I got sweaty hands, closing iphone, reactivating TouchID with pin, opening app again, authenticate again. What used to take 5 seconds now sometimes takes over a minute. I haven't been hacked in the 20 years when there was only passwords and I'd happily trade the security of 2fa for convenience ir I had the choice. i hope, someone comes up with a better solution someday.
 
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Honestly, most Watch apps have been seriously neglected anyway. I assume the devs can only really test it on one device and then on an older watch it's either slow or doesn't fit the (smaller) display.

To me the watch is just a notification machine. Important stuff goes to the watch and giggles my wrist, everything else goes on the phone and ignored. Allows me to just leave the phone alone without missing out.

I honestly wouldn't mind a thinner watch that can only do watch faces and notifications, ditch the heart rate monitor. Step counting works great on the phone itself.

Edit: the "locate my phone" button is probably the feature I use most... if I add up the time I've saved not having to search for my phone... probably paid for itself a few times over by now.
 
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Treq said:
I guess it depends on the work. In the film business you would be hard pressed to find a windows pc anywhere except as a prop on a show with a MS sponsorship. I’m sure there a few people who use them occasionally, but I rarely seem them. I, for one, never use any MS software outside of a gaming PC I built a few years ago just for games… and I’m considering converting it to Linux.
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You need to get out more! Windows still absolutely dominates the desktop OS market at over 75%! MacOS comes a very distant second... at about 15%. I get that certain industries might buck that trend, but those really are the outliers.
 
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So many apps on the watch have been scrapped and it really annoys me, eBay had an app that worked fine a long time ago, my bank had one that worked perfectly for a long time that I could even use without my iPhone or card to generate an emergency ATM code and withdraw cash if I really had to.

Seriously, can't be that hard to maintain a basic watch app can it?. To all developers out there, stop scraping the bloody watch apps!
 
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Treq said:
I guess it depends on the work. In the film business you would be hard pressed to find a windows pc anywhere except as a prop on a show with a MS sponsorship. I’m sure there a few people who use them occasionally, but I rarely seem them. I, for one, never use any MS software outside of a gaming PC I built a few years ago just for games… and I’m considering converting it to Linux.
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Vast majority of workplaces are MS only. Actively so. It actually provides a pretty seamless corporate management framework. In fact I reckon a lot of IT divisions would ditch iPhones and iPads if they thought they could get away with it. If all you have if an Ms certificate, well…..
 
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CaryMacGuy said:
I am just not going to update MS Authenticator...problem solved! I use the Apple Watch integration multiple times each day. I am not ready to give that up because it is so convenient.
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I don’t think that will work. I believe that Microsoft is making it mandatory for tenants/services to use number matching as MFA method. This should happen late February.

So soon we will unfortunately have to say bye bye to the authenticator app on our wrists. As admin of MS systems I absolutely hate this change.
 
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Treq said:
I guess it depends on the work. In the film business you would be hard pressed to find a windows pc anywhere except as a prop on a show with a MS sponsorship. I’m sure there a few people who use them occasionally, but I rarely seem them. I, for one, never use any MS software outside of a gaming PC I built a few years ago just for games… and I’m considering converting it to Linux.
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I work in a creative field that runs almost entirely on Macs too, but surely you have to know that entirely Mac-based industries are in the minority.

In fact, even in a fully Mac-based office, we still had a VFX guy running a custom-built Windows machine because there was no equivalently powerful Mac.
 
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Robert.Walter said:
LoL who needs MS Authenticator when a competitive authenticator is already built into iOS? (I suppose folks still stuck on PCs.) *

But ultimately I wonder if authenticators in general will be depreciated as the move to passwordless login increases.

*Edit. I forgot the /s.
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I have a gaming PC and Game Pass
Ultimate.
So I'm "stuck with PC” and I don't want to change🙂
I thought the app on AW come in handy (pun intended😁)

But I also have the MS Authenticator app on my iPhone, so it's really no big deal😊
 
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tarimko said:
IIRC the issue is that the Watch interface can't display the pictures from Authenticator to show geolocation of the auth attempt and that's about to be a requirement for Authenticator MFA prompts. If Apple added a UI option to show those geolocation maps they would probably make the Watch app available again.
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the apple watch is quite capable of showing pictures and running apple maps its on microsoft not apple
 
Robert.Walter said:
LoL who needs MS Authenticator when a competitive authenticator is already built into iOS? (I suppose folks still stuck on PCs.) *

But ultimately I wonder if authenticators in general will be depreciated as the move to passwordless login increases.

*Edit. I forgot the /s.
Click to expand...
M365 accounts use the MS Auth app as one of the supported 2FA methods
 
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If apps are disappearing as fast as they are Apple may as well lock the bloody watch down and scrap the store, because what's the point of it if sod all devs want to use it.

I use quite a few watch apps which I would hate to see gone especially 2FA apps or password manager ones because on the watch I can access them faster than my phone.

The watches are faster than ever unlike the first generation so no longer waiting 20 secs to open and get data, watch can do things completely independently of the iPhone which is a recent change and yet devs are all dropping their apps which would actually now be working better than ever.
 
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