Fingerprints facts

Touchidfun wrote:

Anyway, I don't see the difference between keeping Mac asleep or shutting down. Keeping Mac sleep kind of shuts it down until restart.

Restarting from sleep is faster than restarting from hibernation is faster than rebooting.

macOS traditionally writes a save image to disk for use when restarting from “hibernation“, and also saves to RAM for faster restart from “sleep”. The RAM restart is preferred, as it’s fastest. If the contents of RAM memory are lost due to power depletion, then restarting from “sleep” is unavailable and the saved image from main storage is used for the restart from “hibernation”. If there’s no saved image in main storage, or if there’s previously been a shutdown performed, then a full boot is performed when the Mac is next started.

None of this sleep and hibernation and reboot processing is particularly related to Touch ID authentication, nor to Face ID authentication should the True Depth camera hardware or analogous become available on some future macOS configuration.

A full system reboot does require password input before Touch ID is enabled.

This processing as Touch ID and Face ID are shortcuts for passwords, not replacements, and the password is required for decryption. iPhone and iPad use a similar approach.

More details:

Use Touch ID on your Mac - Apple Support

Way more details:

https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1902/en_US/apple-platform-security-guide.pdf

Use Touch ID on your Mac - Apple Support

Are you talking about the FileVault password when booting, or the first login, then Apple wants to make sure it is the user's desire to unlock the device, and not someone pushing their finger onto the fingerprint reader.

Of course if just waking the Mac up from sleep, the fingerprint reader works for that.

...and not someone pushing their finger onto the fingerprint reader.

I was not clear. the 'someone' would be a person or persons forcing your finger onto the finger print reader. This could be thugs, or it could be law enforcement.

In the U.S. judges have allowed forcing the opening of a locked device via your finger print.

There are some courts that have said entering your password is protected by the 5th amendment against forced testimony. I'm not sure if it has been completed resolved or not, or if it is still a mixed bag depending on the court.

So I'm saying if you intentionally shutdown your Mac, you may have some U.S. protection against being forced to unlock your Mac.

Whether that is Apple's intention or not, I do not know.