New patent reveals how Face ID could work on Macs

Users want Face ID for their Apple computers, but the company is still working on it.

Apple Face ID was first launched in 2017 with the iPhone X. A year later, the company started working on implementing it onto its Macs.

Multiple patents have been issued on the matter, one of which was issued in 2020 for a “Light recognition module for determining a user of a computing device."

Three years later, the company filed a patent that illustrated Face ID authentification for its Mac desktop computers, with the feature also used to access a user’s emails.

This year, Mark Gurman, a reporter from Bloomberg, noticed a detail in Apple Store app graphics that showed the Face ID logo on a MacBook. He believed it might suggest that Apple’s laptops will soon come with Face ID.

However, it was soon discovered that it was just a design mistake, which Apple later corrected by swapping the Face ID icon with the Apple logo.

The Apple Store app’s new graphic on the main page puts a Face ID logo on a MacBook. Not sure the creator of the graphic would know if the new models will have Face ID or not, to be clear. pic.twitter.com/KApoTjQ8s3

undefined Mark Gurman (@markgurman) September 13, 2024

Apple announced its latest Macs at the end of October this year, which did not include Face ID.

Nevertheless, the company has recently been granted one more patent related to this authentication type.

In the document titled “Fitness system,” the face recognition feature is also adapted as a “body-assessment classifier,” which is a “fitness system, and in particular, assessing body composition based on visual information.”

The patent explains that it’s difficult to measure a person’s fitness progress since the before-and-after pictures don’t include detailed information about their physique and measurements. The document then explains how this could change with the “body-assessment classifier.”

An electronic device takes a picture of a user from different angles. Then, the images are sent to the “body-assessment classifier” program, which turns the information, such as physical traits, like size, shape, or proportions, into data.

This data then provides a user with an analysis of their physical appearance. This is when a user can enter their goals or the measurements they want to achieve for specific body parts.

The device then generates a new image, or “target visual representation,” which shows how the person would look when they reach the goal. The device uses data from current measurements and the expected goal to get this information.

The device can then show progress using these two measurements, indicating which body part has already reached the desired target and which hasn’t.

As with many patents, it’s uncertain whether the company will follow through with it.