Could Apple Watch Replace The Password?
Having to remember multiple passwords for various accounts and change them on a regular basis is taxing. Logging into an old account is often more dreaded than putting on those pants from 3 years/sizes ago. The potential value proposition of doing away with passwords is a strong one that could get me to say “Yes” to the Apple Watch once and for all.
If Apple Watch were actually able to scan unique, personally-identifiable heartbeat signatures (it can only identify a heartbeat’s presence right now), this could certainly make strong headway in becoming the industry standard for online authentication. Of course, once the sensor on the wearable’s underside is able to do that, it should also be able to live up to Apple’s primary goal of becoming a game-changing, trillion-dollar medical device, which might make such retail/service authentication a distant afterthought.
While I do think Apple Watch will eventually get there, I also think that if passwords were really on the way out, Touch ID — which is already available to hundreds of millions of users worldwide — would have already led the industry well down that road. It hasn’t. The main hurdle seems to be that, outside of Apple’s immediate ecosystem (albeit this has been extended somewhat across other sales platforms by Apple Pay), old-school password-based user logins will probably prevail. The proprietary nature of Apple’s offerings will always guarantee comparatively slow adoption and general philosophical resistance by large swaths of the retail marketplace. There will always be significant holdouts.
If Egan is holding out for Apple Watch to be a widely-adopted, password-bypassing self-authenticator before buying, I think he’ll be waiting for quite a while. But that’s okay. By 2020, Apple should be able to clearly see and catch up with demand.