According to a rumor, one of the alleged features of Apple’s OS X 10.12 is the ability to unlock your Mac computer using your iPhone’s Touch ID. It remains to be seen whether or not that feature is the real deal, but regardless of its legitimacy, Microsoft appears to have beaten Apple to the punch.
During an announcement made at Computex, Microsoft announced that soon Windows 10 users will be able to unlock their PCs using wearables. The company demonstrated how this would work using either devices like the Microsoft Band (naturally) and the Nymi Band. This will be part of the Windows Hello Companion Device Framework.
This will allow third-parties to create wearables that could potentially support the unlocking of Windows 10 PCs, which means that you shouldn’t expect your current wearables to support the feature, at least not until an update that will enable it to do so. Microsoft did not mention when exactly this will be supported, but with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update coming soon, we wouldn’t be surprised if support were to be enabled then.
In the meantime users will still have to rely on traditional password entries or even scan one’s iris as security options for Windows 10.
Filed in . Read more about Computex, Computex 2016, Microsoft, Security, Wearable Tech and Windows 10.