MacBooks may finally catch up to Windows laptops in this one important way

MacBooks have been on a roll lately, and in a lot of ways, they’ve made it difficult for Windows laptops to keep up. Dollar for dollar, they tend to be faster, longer-lasting, and more feature-rich machines. There’s been one blatant feature missing from Macs, though: Face ID. Despite plenty of rumors over the years, Apple has continued to leave Face ID off the MacBook. We’ve been asking for it for years now, but Apple can be stubborn with stuff like this.

By contrast, the vast majority of new Windows laptops have Windows Hello, a facial authentication system for secure, hands-free logins. It works like a charm, using an IR camera to make logins faster and safer. For years now, some high-end laptops have had presence detection to save battery life and make signing in even easier. But with Macs, we’ve been stuck using the Touch ID fingerprint reader or a password. Until fairly recently, this was a pitiful situation on Mac desktops in particular, before Touch ID keyboards came out in 2021 with the refreshed iMac. Having to rely on an old-school password was a shame, especially for a computer that costs this much.

There were rumors that Face ID might finally launch on Macs with that new iMac, but that never panned out. According to a new patent, though, Apple may be finally planning to bring Face ID to MacBooks. As seen by Patently Apple, a new patent filed by Apple demonstrates a system for bringing Face ID to MacBooks, iMacs, and Mac desktops. On MacBooks and iMacs, the sensors required for Face ID would be built right into the notch next to the webcam and other sensors. On Mac desktops such as the Mac Pro, Mac Studio, or Mac mini, the patent shows use of an external webcam that can accomplish the same goal. The patent even shows Face ID being used for things like logging into email. Because of how long it’s taken to bring Face ID to Macs, it’ll be great to see if Apple has some additional use cases in mind for the feature rather than just logging in or approving payments. In Apple-speak, this is the TrueCamera system that’s used in its mobile devices, which also powers some AR experiences like Animoji. If Apple wants to expand its ecosystem of AR- and metaverse-related technology to match its push with the Vision Pro, having Face ID on Macs is a no-brainer.

Unfortunately, we don’t know much right now in terms of timing. This isn’t the first time a patent related to Face ID on Macs has been reported on. The first patent was noticed in 2020. Patents also can’t be trusted as concrete plans for the future. Plenty of patents never turn into products or features, especially with Apple. However, Apple leaker Mark Gurman did note in 2021 that Face ID would finally come to the Mac in the next two years or so. We know this has been in the works — we just don’t know exactly when Apple will pull the trigger. The next obvious launch would be on M3 MacBooks, which are due out either in late 2023 or in 2024. We’ll have to wait and see if Apple finally makes Face ID on Macs a reality, but the rumors are certainly seeming more hopeful.

When Apple introduced its new design language for the MacBook Pro with a notch at the top, I was flabbergasted. I was watching the event on a Dell XPS 15’s OLED screen and kept wondering why Apple couldn’t cram a webcam in the thin bezels, just the way Dell handled it.   A few months later, I upgraded to the M2 MacBook Air. And there it was. Doing nothing, except looking like a dark oddity. Apple drilled a hole in the iPhone’s screen and then built a whole functional system around it called the Dynamic Island. 

Over the course of the past few months, I’ve tried a handful of Windows on Arm machines. The biggest takeaway is that if you buy a slim and light Windows laptop in 2025, you don’t need to hunt for a seat near a wall outlet. The battery life figures I’ve got from Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered laptops have been pretty amazing.  For the first time, I feel Windows laptops have reached a point where they can reach the high benchmark set by the MacBook Air. My most recent tryst was with the Asus Zenbook A14, and the Dell XPS 13 before that. I loved the thin and lightweight form factors, and the progress Windows on Arm has made with the app compatibility situation. 

I am a huge fan of slim and light laptops. That preference is borne more out of my professional lifestyle than a necessity for absolute silicon firebreathers. I believe a laptop should be, well, light on your lap, or hands, unless you need all that firepower in a mobile form factor. That’s the reason gaming laptops exist, or those thick workstations such as the HP ZBook with an Nvidia RTX A500 series graphics card. For the rest, a thin laptop can do the job just fine, with its quirky set of compromises. Finding the right slim laptop, however, is the tricky part.