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Unlocking your Mac with Apple Watch

James Falconer

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Nov 1, 2012
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Wanted to share some thoughts and get some feedback from the community on this.

After I picked up my Series 2, one of the first things I did was setup the ability to unlock my Macs with it. While it works as intended, I have noticed that probably 50% of the time it'd be quicker for me to simply punch in my password to unlock.

Has anyone else experienced this? Anyone know what the cause might be? Sometimes it's super snappy and fast, other times I sit there and think, 'sheesh, could have been in by now!'. :)

Let me know!
 

robertk328

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Jun 7, 2010
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Hey James -

on mine it takes a second to unlock (like literally a second), but definitely better than punching it in. I can pick up my MBP while I'm sitting down, open the lid, and set it on my lap and the machine is unlocked.

At my desktop, I can tap the spacebar to wake it, and it will start unlocking automatically.

In both cases it saves mistyping my password because I use a mixed bag of letters and other characters like any password :)
 

rws381

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Mine only seems to struggle on the first unlock of the day. Every time after that work fine the majority of the time.
 

tcuprof

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James, you should ask Rene about this. I recall him discussing this in an iMore (or Apple Talk) podcast. If I recall correctly, he felt the Apple Watch unlock was a bit slow at times and that touch id on the new Macbook Pro was faster.
 

tcuprof

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My memory was perhaps inexact, so here's a follow up --

During my afternoon run, I was listening to Episode 534 of the iMore Show podcast. Rene said that with his new Macbook Pro, when he opened the case of the Macbook his Apple Watch often had the Mac unlocked before he could even use the Touch ID. On occasion however, there was enough of a delay that it was faster to use the Touch ID.
 

James Falconer

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James, you should ask Rene about this. I recall him discussing this in an iMore (or Apple Talk) podcast. If I recall correctly, he felt the Apple Watch unlock was a bit slow at times and that touch id on the new Macbook Pro was faster.

I'll give him a dingle.
 

James Falconer

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Still kind of hit and miss on my side. Sometimes very slow, other times, fast-ish. Not blazing fast though (can't step up to my iMac or MBP and have it unlocked when I'm ready to go).
 

imwjl

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Apr 26, 2011
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This feature works well on my little 12" Retina and earlier 15" Retina.

To be honest I like the feature enough that it's a reason to keep the Apple Watch I've had for 4 days now. I'm an IT admin and have passwords considered strong or complex so I would consider it nice even if it were not so fast.

Of course then we have the irony that watch unlock can't be as complex as my passwords.
 

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