
Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac - jamesmoss
http://www.knocktounlock.com/
======
jcutrell
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.

~~~
derefr
> 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 would guess that the true point being made is that these people are _not_
"being who they are," because _someone else_ has caused them to "conform to
[their] taste/style."

Your reaction is actually pointing out _exactly the same thinking_ on their
part as you're using to criticize it: hackers don't like it when someone has
forced their idea of aesthetics on them--because hackers are, fundamentally,
aesthetes--so we get vicariously offended when they see a trend of some group
"forcing" their idea of aesthetics on some other group.

This applies even if that "force" is just the majority declaring some
particular style to be "objectively fashionable." Hackers don't like the idea
that things _can_ be "in vogue", because it coerces their ability to self-
style down set paths they might not want to have gone down. Even if they would
have liked a particular style, having it be popular means it's no longer their
_creative idea_ to choose it--so it doesn't demonstrate their creativity, and
that's all they cared about doing in the first place.

~~~
jcutrell
That makes sense.

However, there's one problem.

> these people are not "being who they are," because someone else has caused
> them to "conform to [their] taste/style."

This is assumption based on cultural hints. There have been quite a few times
on HN where hackers have proven to indeed not be aesthetes, because hacking
marketing requires aesthetic. This goes down to whether or not you appreciate
aesthetics of your own appearance, as well.

I don't see anyone making the claim that this is "objectively fashionable".
What I see is a bunch of people who rage against a marketing decision because
it bastardizes their seemingly misguided need for aesthetic "purity" (whatever
that means).

The criticism I'm offering isn't to stop liking your aesthetic preferences. If
you don't like beards, don't grow one.

But someone posts a link on HN, and people bitch and moan because the primary
subject of marketing is sporting a beard. It really misses the point of HN
discussion. Again, I understand if the conversation is centered around the
marketing (or other) implications of the decisions made by those who created
the product and the site. But the conversation doesn't revolve around that at
all. Instead, it's a bunch of "get off my lawn" and raging against trends
without any particularly discernible purpose.

~~~
Segmentation
> _But someone posts a link on HN, and people bitch and moan because the
> primary subject of marketing is sporting a beard._

I see two posts making fun of beards. Two.

Why are you even making this discussion? Meta discussion is frowned upon on
HN. If you feel someone's discussion is off-topic, down-vote them and move on.

The irony is your meta discussion is now the top-voted post, instead of
discussion on the actual product.

~~~
jcutrell
Totally agree with the idea that meta discussion should be limited. And, to be
fair, it's not my fault my comment is the top voted post. I think the
discussion about the fake/real login screen should be upped more than this
one, certainly. But, I will say that I don't agree that this thread is
invaluable or should be frowned upon for this discussion.

I think the product is quite nicely done. I bought it. And I believe the
discussion revolves around not only the product, but the presentation and the
reception of that presentation. So the "meta" value here isn't limited to the
beard conversation. It's a larger discussion about the HN community, which
isn't quite "frowned upon." It's important that we all contribute to
moderation and encourage better thought.

I posted early in response to a initial negative discussion (which indeed is a
pervasive issue on HN) about the pretension of the video, the aesthetics, etc.
It's not just a response about beards - it's a response regarding the product
and a more valuable way of understanding marketing, which I think will
contribute to the discussion of the OP in the future.

And thus, I think it is quite relevant to this particular thread. But I will
rest my case here.

------
karzeem
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.

~~~
Segmentation
Ugh.

Just people you disagree with someone doesn't make them negative.

It's critique. HN is a place of dissenting opinions.

It's ok to have an opinion different than yours.

~~~
sbuk
The "Ugh", that's what the GP is talking about. A number of the posts come
across as spiteful, which is not objective and as such, has no place here. In
fact objective criticism is something that developers aren't good at at all,
but such an important _engineering_ skill. Speak to designers and learn how to
do it. You'll be a better engineer as a result.

 _Edited for clarity._

------
CGamesPlay
\+ 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.

~~~
mikeash
I disagree on the zip. dmg used to be the preferred format for reasons I never
entirely fully understood, but that ship has sailed, and I think for the
better. Zip is much more convenient. You can, of course, sign the app within
the zip.

~~~
CGamesPlay
You can sign the app within the zip, true. The advantage of using a dmg is to
control the presentation, which seems like a strong desire for this particular
product. Downloading a file named "latest.zip" that had an unsigned binary in
it was by far the worst part of the excellently designed experience of
installing the software.

Apparently the iTunes link thing is a bug
[https://twitter.com/jschloss/status/397783949746769921](https://twitter.com/jschloss/status/397783949746769921)

~~~
pornel
Please, _don 't_ use DMG. Just .app in a plain .zip please.

The nifty "presentation" adds a several needless steps and pitfalls to running
an application:

• Mounting and verification of DMG is slow (Zip CRC and Developer ID
signatures give you verification too).

• "Nothing happens" after clicking DMG — user has to find DMG mount on a
cluttered desktop.

• Clicking app icon in the DMG window is tempting, but generally it's a no-no
(some apps don't mind, but some ask to be moved to Applications, and some
throw "error -13 read only volume" kind of errors).

• User is expected to copy the app to Applications folder, with instructions
given in form of non-localizable non-accessible text-in-image, and it's
trickier when sidebar with shortcut to Applications folder is hidden (and
remember "Applications" folder name is localized and sounds nothing like it in
many languages).

• User has to unmount and delete the DMG, but that gives non-obvious behavior
when the app is running off the DMG.

• It gets super confusing when user has pinned app in the Dock while it was
running off the DMG

~~~
aroch
> • Mounting and verification of DMG is slow (Zip CRC and Developer ID
> signatures give you verification too).

It takes a few seconds, hardly that much slower than opening a zip

>• "Nothing happens" after clicking DMG — user has to find DMG mount on a
cluttered desktop

1) Unless you've really fobbed up your view settings, mounted drives show up,
in alpha order, in the farthest right row.

2) DMG's have a bless value that makes them spawn a finder window on mount,
the below command is run when my xcode spits out a new release build

    
    
        'bless --folder /Volumes/$Application --openfolder /Volumes/$Application'
    

>• Clicking app icon in the DMG window is tempting, but generally it's a no-no
(some apps don't mind, but some ask to be moved to Applications, and some
throw "error -13 read only volume" kind of errors).

Really a non-issue and only apps built on an old SDK should have this behavoir
any more (more recent SDKs will let them shove things in /tmp while run from a
mounted dmg)

>• User is expected to copy the app to Applications folder, with instructions
given in form of non-localizable non-accessible text-in-image, and it's
trickier when sidebar with shortcut to Applications folder is hidden (and
remember "Applications" folder name is localized and sounds nothing like it in
many languages).

The user also has to drag the zipped app to applications. You can also solve
this "problem" by including a finder shortcut to the Applications folder in
the the DMG. Finder automatically localizes the Application's folder alias
because it's a special URI

>• User has to unmount and delete the DMG, but that gives non-obvious behavior
when the app is running off the DMG.

User has to delete the .zip and sometimes a, now empty, folder.

>• It gets super confusing when user has pinned app in the Dock while it was
running off the DMG

No it doesn't, the DMG is automatically mounted and the app run if they do
this

~~~
moonie1
> No it doesn't, the DMG is automatically mounted and the app run if they do
> this

It really does, especially if you're one of the 99.999% of users who deletes
their dmg's after installing. Then you just see an app icon with a big (?) in
the middle of it.

~~~
aroch
You're not "installing" if you just run it from the DMG, so your point is moot

------
louwrentius
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.

------
codezero
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.

~~~
colmvp
I think you underestimate how much delight it gives people. Search on Twitter
and behold how many people are blown away by this 'magic.'

Not to mention I wouldn't be surprised if they extended their app to work with
other devices.

~~~
mistercow
I suspect that this kind of delight, even though it becomes routine, actually
enhances user experience in the long run.

For example, I have compiz set to use the "Burn" effect when closing windows.
This is delightful and unobtrusive, and completely pointless. But man is it a
stress reliever when I decide to close all of my windows in frustration.

~~~
codezero
This is a good observation. You're probably right. Routine and habit and the
actual experience of those routines and habits do have intrinsic value in the
way you go about executing them :)

------
gfunk911
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.

~~~
kronholm
I do see your point, but wouldn't dropping your car keys also allow someone to
steal your car?

~~~
monkeynotes
But having a car stolen is way less of a problem than all your personal data
being stolen. If my car is stolen because someone stole my bag with the keys
in it then all I lose is my insured car.

If my laptop is stolen with the 'keys' to the laptop also in the bag, my life
could become very difficult very quickly taking me years to recover from.

I think the point is you don't want to have the same paradigm as car + keys
when it comes to your private information.

~~~
hartator
Do you use full disk encryption? A lot people don't and it's easy to get your
data when you got logged in as another user.

~~~
monkeynotes
I use FileVault built into OSX.

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

~~~
joshstrange
It doesn't actually unlock your machine. If you lock your computer it will not
work. What it does is put up a page that looks nearly identical to the login
page with small changes. It's a cool app (I tried it) but I'm disappointed
that I can't find a way to toggle the lock via Alfred/Keyboard shortcut.

I can get in the habit of hitting a key combination/alfred command when I get
up but having to click the icon in the menu bar will get annoying.

~~~
highace
Now that's a massive dealbreaker. That should be made more obvious.

~~~
lstamour
Indeed. I'm thinking this is less and less secure with every word I hear about
it. Here I was imagining it used overlay effects from a system process and
some kind of Kerberos certificates or other mechanism to convince the computer
to login for real. A fake password screen... sigh. Sounds like the next virus.

~~~
aroman
My thoughts exactly. Frankly I assumed the very reason this was on the front
page was because they weren't just doing a fullscreen app.

This is a gimmick, as far as I'm concerned.

------
oilytheotter
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.

~~~
joshstrange
This reminds me of a comment I made a week or two ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540827)
I made a similar comment about hiding the price on your launch page and got a
response from the creator who was very helpful.

------
dannowatts
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.

~~~
potatolicious
The tech industry "meritocracy" at work.

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

~~~
branksy
Does it scroll? It doesn't do _anything_ for me (Opera), so I guess
everything's broken.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Introducing a javascript requirement to _scroll the page_?! That's just plain
rude.

------
stcredzero
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.

~~~
eddieroger
How you reconcile which app gets which gesture then? Would two unlocks trigger
both a machine unlock, a text to my mom, and to start playing my podcasts? Not
to mention that it's like pulling teeth to get Apple to allow things to happen
in the background.

I was intrigued at how they did this from a locked phone, and it turns out
they don't. You have to have the app launched before knocking, meaning at it's
core, this is just a shake listener with a count and some Bluetooth code. Not
that it's not worth $4 (yeah, app isn't free), but it's not getting my $4 yet,
since typing my password is still easier and plenty secure.

~~~
stcredzero
_> How you reconcile which app gets which gesture then?_

The user decides. All of the callbacks get registered with a name and
description, but the user picks which one is active.

------
hornbaker
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)

~~~
acdha
They broke the mime types for the video files - the Firefox console shows how
it's rejecting each <source> option.

------
pritambaral
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!

------
rwl4
Brilliant video! The app looks really interesting but like others I'm a little
concerned about the security of something like this...

------
ajanuary
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.

------
songzme
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.

~~~
cmiller1
I had the exact opposite experience! Knocking and knocking and knocking, not
working... pick it up off the table, works in my hand.

------
beloch
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.

~~~
frankus
The big breakthrough here is that Bluetooth LE uses a totally negligible
amount of power (such that many devices can run for years on a CR2032 button
cell).

Also, you don't need to take your phone out of your pocket to tap it (it
doesn't have to touch the computer, just any moderately firm object, such as a
knuckle through a pants pocket).

------
marizmelo
\+ 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

------
Tarang
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.

------
oakwhiz
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.

~~~
lstamour
The trick is in opening the app and knocking. The knock releases the
advertisement. Similarly, in other use cases, geofencing from the phone means
the phone has to think it's nearby to release the signal. Not saying it can't
happen, but that's a lot of work. Easier to just hack the device, prompt the
user with a fake pin-pad or login screen, or do social engineering and/or gain
physical access.

By the way, this attack is much more successful in reverse, for listening to
and replaying keycard transactions. I was shocked to discover how little
materials would be needed to make a decent amplified antenna.

------
moonie1
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.

------
vinautomatic
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.

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

ls -lrt ~/Downloads

~~~
vinautomatic
So you want me to terminal to find something the latest i've downloaded in my
folder? should just be named correctly, professionally.

~~~
woutervdb
Personally, I think you should already have your downloads sorted by date, not
alphabetically. No matter what the file is called, you can always just assume
it's the first/last file in your downloads. I agree the filename should be
changed though: latest.zip seems like something you send your friends to give
a proof of concept.

~~~
Karunamon
The first thing I always do on a new mac is change the downloads folder on the
dock to sort by date added. It makes further customization and downloads
_much_ easier.

------
dntrkv
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.

------
octernion
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.

------
mgrouchy
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).

------
darkbot
A brilliant idea, beautifully executed.

------
king_magic
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.

~~~
Hilyin
Does the knock app have to be open to unlock your computer?

~~~
king_magic
Nope - a push notification appears on your lock screen - just tap your phone
at that point, and voila, you're unlocked. It's pretty slick.

------
1st1
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.

------
thrillgore
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.

------
landakram
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.

~~~
vegashacker
You can get your money refunded by contacting Apple.
[http://www.labnol.org/software/itunes-app-store-
refunds/](http://www.labnol.org/software/itunes-app-store-refunds/)

------
aabalkan
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.

------
huhtenberg
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?

~~~
sitharus
Yes, as of iOS 7 any app can run in the background.

------
toypaj
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

~~~
songzme
Same with mine. I have a macbook pro retina

------
skattyadz
This is annoyingly similar to our Thrust to Unlock...
[https://vimeo.com/78670679](https://vimeo.com/78670679)

------
jlgreco
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.

------
batemanesque
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...

------
cloudwalking
How does this not drain the iPhone battery?

~~~
lstamour
Bluetooth Low Energy. Unlike old bluetooth, this new service shuts down all
the time to save power. In fact, apple recommends geofencing any bluetooth
beacons you know will stay put, so it only starts scanning for nearby devices
over bluetooth once you're within a certain radius. In this case, the app only
looks for devices when you launch the app, though if you were willing to put
up with a delay, you could do so on-knock. Haven't looked at the app yet. One
more alternative: it could send the message and have your mac constantly
looking for messages when locked. Third alternative, it pairs in the
background and only once iOS notices the new device does it start actively
opening communication channels. Apparently connect times are a few ms?
[http://www.connectblue.com/technologies/bluetooth-low-
energy...](http://www.connectblue.com/technologies/bluetooth-low-energy-
technology/)

~~~
cloudwalking
But the app has to be running in memory AND watching the accelerator AT ALL
TIMES. How does that not drain the phone battery?

------
zacharyozer
Does it log you out when you walk away?

~~~
highace
I think that would be the real winner - locks when you walk away, unlocks when
you return. So simple I'm surprised it doesn't already exist.

~~~
gonzo
Or that Apple hasn't built it into iOS and OS X by now.

~~~
lstamour
This. At this rate, Microsoft will do it first to sell more phones.

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

------
batemanesque
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

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

no android app?

~~~
ptomato
Android only has system level BLE as of 4.3 if I'm not mistaken, which has <3%
adoption currently per Google.

~~~
ctz
Also, BLE support on most 4.3 devices is _just broken_. Fitbit's experience:
[https://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/987861-andr...](https://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/987861-android-
device-compatibility)

------
Karunamon
Very cool, would kill for an Android equivalent.

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

------
mustapha
Touch-ID to unlock would be fun.

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

~~~
Void_
Uhh, because other ads are completely honest and show perfectly real
situations?

------
sjtgraham
holy shit. this is awesome.

------
pearjuice
>rolled up skinny jeans

>hipster beard

>authentic, vintage old storage space

>edgy minimalism

I am not buying it.

~~~
coherentpony
This is exactly DH0 [1]. I will therefore take the high ground and respond
with DH1, "Of course you would say that, you're an anonymous internet troll.
Crawl back into your cave."

[1]:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

------
pistle
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.

~~~
temuze
Come on, HN. Talk about the product, not about the dude's beard. What is this,
middle school?

