Oh, the surprises keep coming with Apple, don’t they? I was quite content with the overwhelming number of updates the WWDC 2020 brought for us Apple fans. Admit it; it was a lot to take in. So I thought to myself, “I don’t think I can take any more surprises for a long, long time. But Apple seems to be in a generous mood, so here we are with another big surprise. I have two words for you: MacBook Face ID (okay, that’s three, but whatever!).
Apparently, some folks over at 9to5Mac found references to a TrueDepth camera when they were sifting through the code of the macOS Big Sur developer beta. This means that there’s a very real possibility of our Macs featuring Face ID in the future!
As you may know, TrueDepth camera is what makes Face ID work on our iPhones and iPads, but all MacBooks currently do not have it installed. Why not? You might ask. One reason is because the Neural Engine, which is fundamental to the way Face ID works on our iPhones and iPads, has never been included in any Mac so far.
However, that is set to change with Apple’s transition from Intel processors to Apple Silicon chips on the Mac this year. Apple even confirmed that its Silicon chips would allow the Mac to run with the same Neural Engine as in the iPhone and iPad.
So if Apple introduces these MacBooks with Face ID in the future, it could possibly be used for various other reasons aside from just unlocking our devices. For instance, it could be used with Augmented Reality apps that map our face (maybe Zoom masks will be the new trend instead of Zoom backgrounds). You might even be able to log into websites without a password if you’re using the next version of Safari (which will ship with iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur).
But for now, many things are still not clear. We don’t know which Macs may be in line to get the Face ID, when they might get it, or if we’ll even get the Face ID for MacBooks at all. All we can do is wait with bated breaths and see if Apple eventually brings the technology to its MacBooks. Fun, huh?
