OPINION: While Apple moving into home security sounds like a risky venture, if you trust Face ID to keep your accounts secure, you should probably trust it as the de facto key to your house.
What’s more valuable? The contents of your home or the contents of your phone? It’s a serious question.
Apple users have trusted Face ID as a replacement for inputting a password for years now and just think about what that means? Your bank accounts, your investments, your mortgage account, your email, your social media accounts, your most private photographs and videos, journals containing your innermost thoughts, your health data.
And we do so without thinking.
Now think about the contents of your home that’d be at risk. High-end technology and jewellery, furniture, irreplaceable photos and mementos that probably don’t have great monetary value to potential thieves.
I was thinking about it, and given the season, would I be more devastated (in the literal sense of the word) about Harry and Marv of the Wet Bandits to breaking into my phone and exploiting it to the fullest? Or doing the same to my apartment?
Obviously the emotional trauma of a home break in would be worse, but in terms of the financial and real life cost, my phone might be the greater casualty.
In terms of the damage a phone break in could do to relationships and career prospects if your words used in texts, emails and more, were taken out of their original context. The damage is exponentially greater in the digital world than it would be to a physical property. You’re still able to speak pretty freely in your own home. One has to be more careful in the digital world.
So, with all that in mind, I’m totally fine with the idea of a Face ID-enabled video doorbell that’s on the way in years to come, according to new reporting this weekend. In his weekly Power On Newsletter, Mark Gurman says Apple is working on a rival to the Amazon-owned Ring video doorbells.
Gurman says, that as well as the home security camera Apple is rumoured to be working on, “a smart doorbell with advanced facial recognition that wirelessly connects to a deadbolt lock,” is also in the works.
The plan, Gurman writes is for a device that would automatically unlock the door when it recognises an owner or resident, in much the same way an iPhone will let you in. That’s a feature the likes of Amazon’s Ring and Google’s Nest cannot currently offer and Apple reckons it has other edges in this field beyond hardware, according to the report.
Gurman writes: “Apple believes it has an edge in this area because of its long-stated commitment to privacy. The thinking is that consumers will trust it more than rivals with in-home security footage. The service also could help Apple sell subscriptions to iCloud, where customers would store the video.”
There are risks involved with this, perhaps. Face ID has been a very secure platform on the iPhone, so it’s not a given that would translate to a new platform. Should Face ID fail and or someone find a way around the security and it leads to home break ins, then that’d be a public relations nightmare.
The device is still in the early stages, according to Gurman, who advises readers not to expect it any time soon. He says it’ll be 2026 at the earliest. So, while Apple could probably produce this hardware with a quickness, it’s likely to take a typically cautious approach.
Apple is not impervious to balls-ups. The recent difficulties with Apple Intelligence news summaries and the outrage among the journalism community, is indicative of Apple not always getting things right.
However, when it comes down to it, if you trust Apple to keep your phone locked, you should probably be ok with it only unlocking the door when it sees a familiar face you’ve given permission to enter.
