Face ID doesn’t work while wearing a respirator mask

Face ID doesn’t work while wearing a face
mask.
Eric
Risberg/AP

• 
  The death toll from wildfires in Northern California has
  reached 84. 
• As a result of the fires, air quality in the nearby
  
  San Francisco Bay Area has worsened, forcing many
  residents to don respirator masks.
• iPhone users in the Bay Area are pointing out the seemingly
  obvious: Face ID doesn’t work while wearing the face masks.

The
deadliest wildfire in California history has had unexpected
effects across the US — including smoke that’s blown so far that
it’s affected
sunsets in New York City. 

The air quality has become so bad in
the San Francisco Bay Area, which is about 180 miles
southwest of the fire’s epicenter, that respirator masks are the
new norm.

Hardware stores in the area are
running out of masks, while
Uber drivers are selling masks for $5 a pop as a side
gig. 

Some Bay Area folks who use an iPhone X, XS, or XR, or
the latest iPad Pro, have noticed that Face ID no longer
works when they’re wearing the masks, and they’re taking to
social media to talk about it. 

The software scans your face to
unlock your phone — so, naturally, obscuring part of your face
complicates its ability to function effectively.

It’s hardly the first time that Apple’s Face ID has annoyed
iPhone users —
some say the feature is too slow and burdensome. 

Getting locked out of Face ID is a minor inconvenience. To
date, 84
people have lost their lives in the Camp Fire, 870 remain
missing, and
Walmart parking lots are serving as evacuee camps for newly
homeless Camp Fire survivors.

Read more: ‘I
was sitting in my car just screaming, waiting to die’: A survivor
of California’s Camp Fire describes her harrowing escape

As flooding, wildfires, and
other natural disasters become
more commonplace around the world, even the smallest parts of
people’s daily lives will change in ways they never saw coming.
No part of the iPhone is going to work in Miami in the year 2100
— when the city is slated to be
totally underwater.