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Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac

knocktounlock.com

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Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac

#71

Post by jcutrell »

smokinjoe wrote: post #65
pearjuice wrote: post #36

>rolled up skinny jeans >hipster beard >authentic, vintage old storage space >edgy minimalism I am not buying it.

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

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.

Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac

#72

Post by CGamesPlay »

mikeash wrote: post #69
CGamesPlay wrote: post #55

+ 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…

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.

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

Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac

#73

Post by 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.

Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac

#74

Post by hartator »

monkeynotes wrote: post #42
kronholm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 + ke…

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.

Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac

#77

Post by mustapha »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #55

+ 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…

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

Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac

#79

Post by 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.

Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac

#80

Post by 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.

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