Apple joins the FIDO Alliance, an open industry association which promotes the U2F authentication standard and helps reduce the over-reliance on passwords
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors :
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple joining the FIDO Alliance closes a five-year gap: Google, Samsung, and 16 others earned FIDO certification back in 2015, while Apple stayed outside the standards body even as it built its own biometric authentication stack. Membership puts Apple inside the group drafting the U2F-based credentials meant to replace passwords.
The move reads as groundwork rather than a product announcement — it precedes Apple's 2021 passkeys demo built on Face ID and Touch ID and the [[a:978573|2022 joint commitment by Apple, Google, and Microsoft to ship FIDO passwordless tech across their platforms]], making this the entry point of that arc.
First-order effects
- Apple gains a seat in the body setting the U2F/passwordless specifications, letting it shape standards its own Face ID and Touch ID hardware would later implement rather than retrofit to them.
Second-order effects
- With Google, Microsoft, and Samsung already certified or committed, Apple's membership removes the last major platform holdout, pushing website and app developers toward supporting FIDO credentials as a default rather than an option.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, authentication authority shifts from per-site passwords to platform vendors' biometric-bound credential managers — the cross-device 'FIDO credential' model Wired described — concentrating trust in Apple, Google, and Microsoft as de facto identity providers.
The trend: Web authentication is consolidating around FIDO standards championed by the major platform vendors, moving from passwords to device-bound biometric credentials.