New App Lets You Unlock Your Mac By Knocking On Your iPhone [Amazing]

Can your mobile phone become a replacement for manually typing in a password? That’s the promise of a new application called Knock, launching today, which uses an iPhone paired with a Mac desktop or laptop computer to log you in to your locked machine. The system takes advantage of the newer low-energy Bluetooth technology to enable the connection between the two devices, allowing you to just knock (you know, knock, like on a door) on your iPhone to login. But the company has ambitions to expand beyond unlocking computers, and envisions bringing Knock to browsers to log into websites, and eventually letting you “knock” to open anything, including even your home’s front door, perhaps.
The company was founded by William Henderson, who previously worked on the Wallet team at Square, and Jon Schlossberg, who led user experience at Bonobos. The two teamed up earlier this year after being introduced by a mutual friend. They soon had their first Knock prototype built after just a few weeks.
Henderson says that working at Square inspired him to think about how the user experience can be applied to other areas where it’s been systematically neglected, such as security, similar to how Square proved you could have a great user experience around a financial product. He had also worked with Bluetooth LE while at Square, which gave him the idea to apply the technology to passwords and logins.
“When I met Jon, we were talking about this problem with passwords, and it was obvious to me that Bluetooth LE could help with that,” says Henderson.

The original prototype they built worked using proximity, but the team found that users didn’t like that their Mac unlocked just because they were near it. They wanted to signal in some way that they meant for the unlock to happen. “It was cool,” Henderson says of this first idea. “But people got freaked out by it. They didn’t know it was going to happen, and they weren’t expressing their intention in any way.” He equated the problem to the way people still hit the “lock” button on their car keys even though their car will automatically lock for them – they still need to feel like they’re taking an action.

Now in its 1.0 release, Knock users signal their intention by gently knocking on their phone’s screen. This works even when the phone is in your pocket, which seems almost too easy.

Download Knock: http://www.knocktounlock.com/
SOURCE: TechCrunch