Based on an Apple patent revealed by the US Patent and Trademark Office, it looks like Apple intends to finally bring Face ID biometric authentication to Macs.
William Gallagher for AppleInsider:
“Light Recognition Module for Determining a User of a Computing Device,” US Patent No. 20200097747, is chiefly concerned with adding Face ID to MacBooks, although instead of those terms, it consistently refers to a light recognition module and a laptop…
The patent then goes into great detail about the specifics of how a light dot projector is used, and how the results are interpreted. But the short version is that this Face ID on MacBooks… Apple proposes that the Face ID module will be in a partition, which could be “disposed adjacent to the display layer,” or above it. “In some examples, the partition is a notch, a circle, an ellipse, a polygonal shape, a series of polygonal shapes, a curvilinear shape, or the like.”
…While the patent text is overwhelmingly concerned with a laptop, one single drawing in it shows the Face ID notch being used in an iMac-style chassis.
MacDailyNews Take: If/when Face ID comes to Macs, there won’t be a “notch,” as there is no need to impede the display integrity since there much more space available than in iPhone. See the notchless, FACE-capable iPad Pro for example.
Looks like Apple’s answer to the Windows Hello Face ID system. They might use a biometric identification system https://recfaces.com/ in their end products. I think it would be a good move for Apple.