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Comment by nikolay | Hacker News Reader

Really? You kill a product right after Apple released something similar on iPhone and glories it?

Did you read the article at all? It says the Kinect sensor lives on in multiple products, including HoloLens and Windows Hello, which is pretty similar to FaceID.

I'm not interested in HoloLens and Windows Hello does not work the same way.

What Apple product/tech are you thinking of? The two off the top of my head are FaceID and ARKit, and both seem quite a stretch to me. I feel like I’m missing something obvious.

Years ago Apple bought the company, PrimeSense, that developed the technology for the first generation Kinect (the one based on IR structured light). From the description Apple gave of FaceID during the keynote I'm pretty certain that FaceID is pretty much Kinect in an iPhone.

Of course the application of it is totally different.

I can see that part, which is why I mentioned FaceID. I just have a hard time seeing it as comparable with respect to the range of the Kinect both in distance and application, as you point out. That’s what motivated my original comment.

Are you aware of anything to the contrary? Definitely interested in learning more if so, given the Kinect is going away. I can also see Apple potentially doing more with this in the future, though they’re not there yet.

It seems more like Microsoft hasn’t been interested in promoting the Kinect (it’s been out for years) or applying the tech elsewhere, and they’re just shutting it down, the timing being coincidental.

The iPhoneX has essentially a mini Kinect sensor set built into the infamous "black notch" at the top which powers FaceID

Emphasis on the mini: that applies to the kind of range it gets too thanks to limited power levels.

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