Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac

http://www.knocktounlock.com/

by jamesmoss • 13 years ago

160 162 13 years ago

gfunk911• 13 years ago

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.

guptaneil• 13 years ago

You could use iCloud to remotely wipe your phone if that happens.

alimbada3• 13 years ago

How do you do that before the thief is able to get into your Mac and steal all your data when you've just lost all your devices?

dmak• 13 years ago

Install prey project. I create a guest account on my Mac so if I lose it, people will actually try to use it and connect it to WiFi.

alimbada3• 13 years ago

They won't need the guest account with this product.

iamben3• 13 years ago

If you're using Filevault for full disk encryption you can't have Prey installed and use it on an open guest account. You can have a guest account and use the iCloud 'Find My Mac' though.

But that's exactly what I did on my last Mac (which wasn't using Filevault).

kronholm• 13 years ago

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

gcb0• 13 years ago

the change of you having your car keys and your car in your backpack at the same time is much, much lower.

monkeynotes2• 13 years ago

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.

frankus2• 13 years ago

That's a totally valid point. My guess it that they assumed most users would keep their phone in a pocket (since it's easier to tap than if it's buried in a bag).

In any case it's a big upgrade from people who leave their computer unlocked all day. I'd love to see them add automatic proximity-based locking.

pplante2• 13 years ago

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

no android app?

ptomato2• 13 years ago

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

pplante2• 13 years ago

i know, it sucks being a member of that <3%.

ctz• 13 years ago

Also, BLE support on most 4.3 devices is just broken. Fitbit's experience: https://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/987861-andr...

joshdance• 13 years ago

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

joshstrange11• 13 years ago

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.

highace2• 13 years ago

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

ptomato2• 13 years ago

activating screensaver via alfred will do it, as will a hot corner set to start screensaver.

mronge• 13 years ago

That is NOT true. It does in fact use the real login window

wikyd4• 13 years ago

I don't think that's true at all. I just locked my laptop using ctrl + shift + power and was unable to unlock it using the app.

moonie14• 13 years ago

That sounds right. OSX definitely encrypts your keys in memory while sleeping, to further prevent DMA attacks. So this would be tough to do without a kernel extension.

Another major caveat: locking your screen this way is a security risk if you are running FileVault. When OSX puts the computer to sleep and FileVault is enabled, DMA is automatically disabled until the screen is unlocked. If you use this app to lock your screen you will be removing the DMA prevention.

I would also be willing to bet there are other security concerns, as the iphone has taught us - lock screens can be hard :) be careful guys!

cmiller12• 13 years ago

I noticed it hijacks the wake up when I put my computer to sleep, which is available with a key command (either command-option-power or command-option-eject depending on your keyboard) and using the energy saver system preference panel you can configure it to automatically lock after x amount of time.

lstamour5• 13 years ago

That's the real question. If you've auto-login turned on, then your password is stored in a very insecure way. Anyone could remove the drive and get access: http://encase-forensic-blog.guidancesoftware.com/2013/07/exa...

If you turn on drive encryption and then add a "bios" password in the firmware to prevent recovery, that's about as protected as things get on Mac.

Which means until your hard drive is decrypted it's still protected and this app won't work.

In my case, this app won't work even when the computer goes to sleep. Why? I've set mine to re-encrypt on sleep, so it prompts me for the password -- to unencrypt -- every time.

I'm not adding this until Apple can use this as a second factor for the encryption -- or as a way to select a profile and load user data from the phone.

pritambaral2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

ajanuary• 13 years ago

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.

codezero2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

sitharus2• 13 years ago

Funnily enough MacOS itself used to have bluetooth proximity unlock built in, in 2005.

It also could receive and send SMS on the machine and pause/resume music on phone call.

octernion• 13 years ago

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.

zacharyozer• 13 years ago

Does it log you out when you walk away?

highace2• 13 years ago

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.

joshstrange11• 13 years ago

It does but most of the implementations I have tried (Including multiple PAID ones in the app store) don't work well at all. I would settle for locking when I walk away then tap to unlock when I get back.

gonzo• 13 years ago

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

pritambaral2• 13 years ago

BlueProximity does. It's a Linux tool, Mac OS X support is pending.

oilytheotter• 13 years ago

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.

joshstrange11• 13 years ago

This reminds me of a comment I made a week or two ago: 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.

king_magic2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

king_magic2• 13 years ago

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.

cloudwalking4• 13 years ago

How does this not drain the iPhone battery?

marcelftw• 13 years ago

The iPhone 5S M7 coprocessor can be used all the time in background without draining the battery.

[quote]

The new M7 coprocessor is like a sidekick to the A7 chip. It’s designed specifically to measure motion data from the accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass — a task that would normally fall to the A7 chip. But M7 is much more efficient at it. Now fitness apps that track physical activity can access that data from the M7 coprocessor without constantly engaging the A7 chip. So they require less battery power.

M7 knows when you’re walking, running, or even driving. For example, Maps switches from driving to walking turn-by-turn navigation if, say, you park and continue on foot. And if your phone hasn’t moved for a while, like when you’re asleep, M7 reduces network pinging to spare your battery. [/quote]

cloudwalking4• 13 years ago

But this app works with iPhone 4S and 5 too. Those devices don't have an M7.

lstamour5• 13 years ago

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...

cloudwalking4• 13 years ago

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

runjake• 13 years ago

How does this not drain the iPhone battery?

This is answered right on the linked webpage: Bluetooth Low Energy.

cloudwalking4• 13 years ago

But the app has to be running in memory AND watching the accelerator AT ALL TIMES.

pistle• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

hornbaker• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

dntrkv• 13 years ago

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.

pearjuice2• 13 years ago

rolled up skinny jeans
hipster beard
authentic, vintage old storage space
edgy minimalism

I am not buying it.

smokinjoe• 13 years ago

What do any of those have to do with the actual product?

jcutrell4• 13 years ago

Literally nothing. Which is sad.

The point of these things was most likely a marketing strategy, and one that will likely be effective. I bought it. Not because of the jeans. Not because of the vintage storage space. Because it's a good product.

I wouldn't have bought it if there wasn't a decent presentation of the functionality. And that is there.

coherentpony• 13 years ago

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

dannowatts2• 13 years ago

thank goodness you don't have to!

sheesh… it's just a cool, simple video introducing a product. way to tear it apart.

ctdonath• 13 years ago

practical minimalism
slightly goofy credibility-straining setup
tension-relieving drop-dead-simple interface

I'd have bought it already if not for my MacBookPro not supporting "low power bluetooth".

The sales pitch admittedly has nothing to do with the technology - yet that's practically the point! There's no specs to sell, no user interface to demo beyond a "knock knock" so simple you don't even have to take the phone out of your pocket. There's almost nothing to sell, yet what there is has value ($4, ok); how do you sell that? A just-a-guy in casual attire in a simple & slightly non-sequitur space works just fine. Simple product, presumably easy development, first-mover advantage (this thing will have a thousand duplicates overnight), near-zero ad production cost.

As for complaints about security: this is like the iOS fingerprint reader...it's not for serious security against serious attackers, it's about just locking your front door while making it easy for you to get in.

lifeformed• 13 years ago

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

serf• 13 years ago

I legitimately missed the rest of the page and dismissed it as totally broken until I read this comment. Hopefully that emphasizes how right lifeformed is.

branksy• 13 years ago

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

oneeyedpigeon• 13 years ago

Introducing a javascript requirement to scroll the page?! That's just plain rude.

jjcm• 13 years ago

"If your page scrolls, you should have some indication that your page scrolls."

That's my approach. I don't think scrollbars are entirely necessary (and in a slide-to-slide webpage like this, having a scrollbar wouldn't really work since it'd break the UI), but having some indicator that you can scroll is necessary. It doesn't necessarily have to be a scrollbar though. Having content peeking out from beneath the fold is often enough to let the user know, "Hey! There's stuff down here! Scroll and check it out!"

pedalpete• 13 years ago

Scroll bars can look ugly, but at the least they should have a graphical representation that the page is scrollable. I also completely missed the rest of the website.

toypaj• 13 years ago

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

songzme2• 13 years ago

Same with mine. I have a macbook pro retina

landakram• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

You can get your money refunded by contacting Apple. http://www.labnol.org/software/itunes-app-store-refunds/

alex_doom• 13 years ago

It's pretty clear in the App Store screen shots. I'm disappointed my 2011 MacBook can't use it :/

holyjaw• 13 years ago

You can request a refund through Knock. I saw a link on their twitter IIRC. @knocktounlock

Cenk• 13 years ago

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

Void_• 13 years ago

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

oakwhiz• 13 years ago

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.

lstamour5• 13 years ago

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.

CGamesPlay2• 13 years ago

+ 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.

mikeash4• 13 years ago

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.

CGamesPlay2• 13 years ago

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

mbreese2• 13 years ago

And I disagree on the disagreement. :) If I download a dmg file, I assume the author knows how to write software for a Mac. If I download a zip, I assume they don't.

At least they need to change the name from "latest.zip" to "Knock for Mac.zip" or something like that.

Even better would be having it in the Mac App Store. Since you need to download the iPhone version from the App Store anyway, it would be better to keep things unified.

mustapha2• 13 years ago

The website is so well done. I love the UX.

alexgaribay• 13 years ago

That was my first thought as well. Everything was awesome.

Tarang• 13 years ago

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.

karzeem• 13 years ago

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.

codex• 13 years ago

I like your point and it is a valid critique of HN commenting. Many dismissals are perfunctory and incorrect.

All the same, though, it is expected that almost all new startups will fail and most products will not be "the best" or even original. That's the nature of competition; only the top products get any traction at all. Given that, I would expect critiques of most new ventures.

Segmentation2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

jamesbritt• 13 years ago

It's a tough call sometimes. Or it feels like it. I didn't care for the site. Took too long to show what it was about so I closed the tab. Just a bit too cute for my taste.

I was going to post a comment about it, mainly as a data point, in case such things matter to the site owner. OTOH I have on iPhone and I don't have a Mac I use often enough to care about this sort of product anyway; it's in perpetual sleep mode 99% of the time. I'm not the target audience.

Does mentioning my dislike for the site make me negative? Is it to the long-term good that people feel reluctant to offer criticism?

I do get the point about "Knock stuff to show your IQ"; it's unpleasant and an easy habit to fall into. I've been with groups of geeks where it's impossible to discuss almost any piece of software because it turns into a dick measuring contest. (So to speak.)

Still, sometimes some things really are flawed and those flaws are worth pointing out.

I suppose that every criticism should be accompanied by some suggestion on how to fix or improve things, but that's not always possible.

I don't have any really good suggestions on how to temper negativity other than to encourage people to pause and consider why they are posting something, and for others to try to ignore the posts that irk them.

aabalkan• 13 years ago

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.

louwrentius• 13 years ago

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.

mustapha2• 13 years ago

Touch-ID to unlock would be fun.

dannowatts2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

The tech industry "meritocracy" at work.

jcutrell4• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

jcutrell4• 13 years ago

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.

antiterra• 13 years ago

so we get vicariously offended when they see a trend of some group "forcing" their idea of aesthetics on some other group.

I like ties, and I enjoy wearing them. Are you vicariously offended that I might jeopardize my chance to get a developer job at Google or an SV startup if I wore a tie to the interview?

pearjuice2• 13 years ago

You seem to be upset.

http://www.gifti.me/i/ABT8Ex.gif

sjtgraham• 13 years ago

holy shit. this is awesome.

vinautomatic2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

ls -lrt ~/Downloads

vinautomatic2• 13 years ago

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

kaolinite• 13 years ago

Keycard is really unstable and more often than not doesn't work. This works every time - very impressed. The setup was very slick too.

Also, complaining about $4? Really?

marizmelo• 13 years ago

+ 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

stcredzero2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

stcredzero2• 13 years ago

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.

songzme2• 13 years ago

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.

cmiller12• 13 years ago

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

gfodor• 13 years ago

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

1st1• 13 years ago

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.

mgrouchy• 13 years ago

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).

thrillgore• 13 years ago

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.

huhtenberg• 13 years ago

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?

sitharus2• 13 years ago

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

joshstrange11• 13 years ago

See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6676816

jlgreco• 13 years ago

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.

Karunamon3• 13 years ago

Very cool, would kill for an Android equivalent.

batemanesque2• 13 years ago

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...

batemanesque2• 13 years ago

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

darkbot• 13 years ago

A brilliant idea, beautifully executed.

moonie14• 13 years ago

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.

skattyadz• 13 years ago

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

beloch• 13 years ago

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.

frankus2• 13 years ago

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).

fnbr• 13 years ago

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

Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac

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