from Hacker News

Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac

by jamesmoss on 11/5/13, 5:36 PM with 163 comments

• by jcutrell on 11/5/13, 6:57 PM

  Dear HN.

  Please stop making a big deal about how you don't like hipster beards.

  It really makes HN look like pretentious douchebags instead of intelligent thinkers.

  It makes HN people look like the have no understanding of marketing.

  If you're going to criticize the marketing, do it from a metrics perspective, rather than being exactly what you're claiming to hate by telling people to stop being hipsters - arrogant.

  Let people be who they are. Measure them by their output and their product, and the effectiveness of their decisions. Not on whether or not they conform to your taste/style.

  I get it - if you have design critiques, it makes sense to share those. If you have marketing critiques, it makes sense to share those (like: "If you market this to hipsters, you will not get the hipster-hating crowd to buy"). If you have a personal soap box of despise for another person's tastes, please do not bring it here.

• by karzeem on 11/5/13, 6:35 PM

  The negativity in this thread is a perfect exemplar of the say-anything-critical-to-look-smart, "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.", poisonous middlebrow dismissal that pg complains about.

  This is an amazingly light convenience, with really solid, streamlined execution. People, it's ok to think something is good.

• by CGamesPlay on 11/5/13, 6:33 PM

  + Excellent website

  + Really well thought-out interactions (noticing when I download, auto installing to /Applications)

  + Plain-English ToS under creative commons.

  - An unsigned latest.zip for downloading, at least use a dmg so you can sign and have more control over the presentation

  - Extremely difficult to find Knock on the app store. The app could open a web page or itunes, right now I'm left searching and wading through knock-knock joke apps.

  - Making me run software before telling me the price of the software

  All in all, you're doing great with presentation, but it has a few minuses. I can't use the software because I don't have an iPhone now, so this is where my review ends.

• by louwrentius on 11/5/13, 6:49 PM

  I've just bought the app just to try it out. It works as advertised. But I was even more interested in security.

  When you install the Mac application, it will ask for your computer's password. This password is then stored, as I understand, on your phone.

  //////

  Quote:

  When Knock connects to your Mac, it sends your password over that signal using both Bluetooth's built-in encryption and our own proprietary, 1024-bit RSA encryption.

  //////

  I think for many users, this is secure enough. This will probably not do if you are more interesting than an average joe.

  What I don't like is that 'proprietary' remark. It almost sounds like they wrote their own crypto implementation of RSA 1024. Again: probably safe enough for home use.

  I searched on knock unlock in the IOS app store and found it immediately.

  It seems that the Knock application also records usage.

  Furthermore, I seem to have troubles with sleep, if the computer does not wake from sleep with this app, I'm not sure if I think it's useful.

• by codezero on 11/5/13, 5:59 PM

  This is pretty clever, but is this much better than the existing Bluetooth proximity unlock utilities?

  The iPhone app that this pairs with costs $3.99 by the way.

  If you use Mac OS, Proximity is similar to BlueProximity, there are probably other solutions that don't require an iOS app and accomplish the same thing without the magical novelty, all the same, I think it's neat and if the app weren't $4 I would try it out.

• by gfunk911 on 11/5/13, 5:46 PM

  This seems insecure. If I leave my phone by my computer, or if my bag gets stolen with my phone and computer in it, I'm in trouble.

  That said, it's pretty cool, and I like the website design.

• by joshdance on 11/5/13, 5:51 PM

  This seems like magic. What method does it use to unlock your Mac with no password?

• by oilytheotter on 11/5/13, 6:08 PM

  This looks really cool, but it's pretty annoying that you allowed me to download and install on my Mac without telling me the iPhone app costs $3.99. In fact, I can't find anything on the website that says this thing does or does not cost money. Maybe you are hoping that people will assume it's free, download from the website, and then buy it on the app store because they already got that far. If so, it seems a bit dishonest.

• by dannowatts on 11/5/13, 6:57 PM

  i may be completely biased because i have long hair & a (sweet) beard, but …

  i'm finding it odd that there are people who feel like commenting on the appearance of the gentleman (actor/friend/founder/dude) in the video in a negative way. who cares how a guy in a video is dressed to demonstrate a product? and then even if you don't associate with the type of grooming or style of dress, that's totally cool, but to start throwing around gross oversimplifications like 'hipster'?

  stop being so fucking superficial.

• by lifeformed on 11/5/13, 6:21 PM

  If your page scrolls, you should have a scroll bar.

• by stcredzero on 11/5/13, 7:22 PM

  Here's a controversial position: This is not going to be popular amongst iOS devs (I am an iOS dev) but the best thing for iOS as a platform is for Apple to appropriate this.

  With the M7 coprocessor, iOS would be able to register a callback for a given "gesture," like two knocks. Then the phone could implement such functionality while staying in standby! Combined with a facility for securely determining proximity, you could use such a facility to securely unlock everything.

• by hornbaker on 11/5/13, 6:18 PM

  Neat product. FYI, on your home page, I get the background image, then "Watch This" > (I click) > "Watch This" goes away, but nothing happens. And content below the fold is not visible or hinted at. (Mac OS X 10.7.5, FF 25)

• by pritambaral on 11/5/13, 5:52 PM

  Reminds me of BlueProximity. Unrelated: Too bad my neither my 3 year old laptop nor my one year old Chinese phone support bluetooth 4.0, I'll just have to waste a lot of battery if I use BlueProximity. Wait a sec, I can have a bluetooth toggle widget on my screen, how about that!

• by rwl4 on 11/5/13, 5:52 PM

  Brilliant video! The app looks really interesting but like others I'm a little concerned about the security of something like this...

• by ajanuary on 11/5/13, 5:57 PM

  If iphone is a part of your product it might be a good idea to make your website work well on mobile safari on iphone.

• by songzme on 11/5/13, 7:30 PM

  I have been knocking my iPhone 5s for the past 10 minutes, but nothing is happening. On my mac, it seems that everything has been setup correctly, I can see my iphone name in the unlink button, so everything must be set up correctly. On my iPhone 5s, I see my personal icon for my macbook Pro retina 13'' and a big picture of a macbook pro. I have been knocking everywhere in my iPhone: the picture of macbook pro, my macbook pro personal icon, the white spaces around the app, my home screen, notification center, my locked phone, and nothing seems to happen.

  I understand that you are trying to make this as simple as possible, but things you assume to be obvious might not be obvious for others. For example, where do I knock? Does the phone have to be awake? Does the app have to be open? etc.

  Also, your app seems to be failing silently. I have been knocking all over the place and it would help tremendously if there was an alert telling me what had gone wrong. That way, I can email support and pinpoint exactly what is wrong. As of now, I have no idea why your app is not working.

  edit

  Finally figured out what I was doing wrong. Put your phone flat on the table. Then tap twice on your phone and you should see rings show up on your macbook pro. Your phone can even be locked.

  Do not hold the phone in your hands while you tap it. I was holding the phone in my hands before, which causes the taps to fail to register.

• by beloch on 11/5/13, 11:11 PM

  Back when KDE got the ability to wake on bluetooth, I set my phone up to unlock my computer whenever I was in the room. This eliminated logging on, but at the price of requiring my phone to have bluetooth running all day. This was back when batteries were not so large as they are now and bluetooth was a bit of a battery hog. Of course, this was the dumb-phone era too, and I was accustomed to charging my phone twice a week! Charging it every day was too much of a hassle so I soon went back to logging on with the keyboard. I charge my phone every day anyways now, so it would be zero trouble to use wake-on-bluetooth again, but the novelty isn't there and logging in via keyboard is easy so I haven't bothered.

  This tap-your-phone stuff is similar, except less convenient. You actually have to take your phone out of your pocket and then tap on it, as opposed to just walking up to your computer and having it unlock automatically. In fact, this is probably slower than logging in via keyboard, depending on how fast a draw you are.

• by marizmelo on 11/5/13, 7:13 PM

  + great website

  + great UX

  - knock just works if I touch my computer once (I would just type my password instead of knock my phone)

  - knock does not lock my computer if I knock to get a water or something at work for example (version 2 maybe?)

  - the download file could have the app name on it (I do not care about being a zip)

  - Expensive for this kind of feature (0.99 would be more appropriate)

  - Some information about how my password is being stored would be nice

• by Tarang on 11/5/13, 6:34 PM

  I like this! Btw some of us have slow internet connections. The video was buffering and stuff I couldn't watch it without manually loading it up separately.

  I can't get it to work? Are there minimum requirements for the mac end? I'm using the last 17" mac they made.

• by oakwhiz on 11/5/13, 6:26 PM

  More apps and devices seem to be using wireless proximity as some kind of authenticator, along with the assumption that a specific received signal strength confirms the user's intent to perform some action. However, such systems seem to be quite prone to a simple attack consisting of a battery-powered bidirectional amplifier connected a pair of highly directional antennas. Simply point one antenna toward the user's phone and the other antenna toward the user's computer, and you can fool the computer into thinking the user's phone is closer than it really is.

• by moonie1 on 11/5/13, 10:58 PM

  Yeah, don't use this. You lose key encryption (done at lock screen by osx) and DMA prevention, which were rather nice security features that the default OSX sleep mode provides.

• by vinautomatic on 11/5/13, 7:02 PM

  Love the site and design.

  BUT something already does this, for free, it's called keycard.

  As someone else pointed out, very hard to find on app store, then also, it suddenly costs $3.99 in app store. YOU HID THAT PART NICELY.

  One other thing, why name your zip file "latest.zip" - took me a good minute to find it in download folder.

  Apple should already have this crap built in with new ios/mavericks though :( Also, does it work on my mac 2010? Doesn't look like it. >.<

  Since iOS 7 - nothing works for this type of setup, Knock, or Keycard.

• by dntrkv on 11/5/13, 6:18 PM

  I don't really care for the product, but that is a great video. Love the music selection, the editing, wording, concept, everything really. Great execution.

• by octernion on 11/5/13, 5:59 PM

  Just tried it out - works as advertised!

  Doesn't work if you have it in screensaver mode and locked - you need to have the login screen up. Still very neat.

• by mgrouchy on 11/5/13, 7:52 PM

  This is pretty cool and its nice that you can knock your phone to unlock while in your pocket but it means if I leave my phone at my desk to charge anyone can unlock my computer, which is a no-go.

  I wish someone would just hurry up and implement unlocking of your mac via touchid(I have no idea if its technically possible to use touchid for other apps then apples).

• by darkbot on 11/5/13, 10:23 PM

  A brilliant idea, beautifully executed.

• by king_magic on 11/5/13, 6:10 PM

  I find this... useful. But I'm not sure why. I spent the $3.99, and it sort of feels like a novelty app... but I can see myself actually using it for it's intended purpose, so.. is it really a novelty at that point?

  I don't know, but I like how well it works.

• by 1st1 on 11/5/13, 7:37 PM

  1. How to uninstall it now?

  2. It seems the app changed something in the system settings, so that now, when I lock the screen, it goes off. Before, it started to show the screen saver. How to undo this?

  3. You should have provided answers to my questions in your FAQ section, really.

• by thrillgore on 11/5/13, 8:16 PM

  It's a good example of practical skeueomorphism but I don't want simplicity to get to my desktop. I want it to be as complex as possible so I know that its ME and ME ALONE accessing my desktop.

• by landakram on 11/5/13, 6:23 PM

  I dropped the $3.99 on the iOS app only to find that the Mac app wasn't compatible with my computer.

  Looks cool, but I was pretty disappointed that I paid money and it didn't work with no warning.

• by aabalkan on 11/5/13, 6:39 PM

  I'm getting this JS error: Uncaught You must specify your applicationId using Parse.initialize

  while submitting my email. If owners of project are here, I'm using Chrome on Windows.

• by huhtenberg on 11/5/13, 8:38 PM

  Have Apple loosen their restrictions on background services? This is neither VoIP, music or navigation. Any ideas how they slipped this through the approval process?

• by toypaj on 11/5/13, 6:23 PM

  Have purchased but cannot do anything, iPhone is waiting for Macbook and Macbook is waiting for iPhone, cycling bluetooth doesn't help (iPhone 5 and Macbook Air 2012)

  hmmm

• by skattyadz on 11/5/13, 11:07 PM

  This is annoyingly similar to our Thrust to Unlock... https://vimeo.com/78670679

• by jlgreco on 11/5/13, 9:07 PM

  I wonder how well this works if your phone is on an unyielding surface, like a tabletop, instead of against your thigh or in your hand.

• by batemanesque on 11/5/13, 10:11 PM

  doesn't work for me - I've installed & opened Knock on both Mavericks & iOS7 & Bluetooth (which, to be fair, is through a Belkin USB stick) & the PC doesn't recognize the iPhone, simply telling me to install it from the App Store. I love th concept so would be grateful for a fix...

• by cloudwalking on 11/5/13, 6:11 PM

  How does this not drain the iPhone battery?

• by zacharyozer on 11/5/13, 6:04 PM

  Does it log you out when you walk away?

• by fnbr on 11/6/13, 11:13 PM

  Is it that it doesn't work with pre-2012 MBPs, or that it hasn't been tested on them?

• by batemanesque on 11/5/13, 10:12 PM

  one question - does this use the real Mac login screen or some less-secure alternative? a lot of similar apps I've seen used the latter which is a dealbreaker from a security POV, & it would be great if Knock differs in this respect

• by pplante on 11/5/13, 5:47 PM

  this page breaks my browsers back button on osx.8 chrome 30.0.1599.101.

  no android app?

• by Karunamon on 11/5/13, 9:45 PM

  Very cool, would kill for an Android equivalent.

• by gfodor on 11/5/13, 7:37 PM

  is it possible to use this as a 2-factor solution? that seems like it would be a nice step forward.

• by mustapha on 11/5/13, 6:54 PM

  Touch-ID to unlock would be fun.

• by Cenk on 11/5/13, 6:25 PM

  That video is so fucking pretentious I could puke into my mouth out of disgust.

• by sjtgraham on 11/5/13, 6:57 PM

  holy shit. this is awesome.

• by pearjuice on 11/5/13, 6:20 PM

  >rolled up skinny jeans

  >hipster beard

  >authentic, vintage old storage space

  >edgy minimalism

  I am not buying it.

• by pistle on 11/5/13, 6:12 PM

  Shave. All of you with beards. Shave. For the love of all things holy, after the BoSox - it's jumped the shark... shave.

  As for the app, etc. I'd like to see this grow into some multi-part thing that could optionally include voice, fingerprint, code, etc.