As an adult, and with the hindsight of seeing how Valve has (generally) supported their games over the years, I can appreciate gaben's reasoning for cancelling it... though as someone gaming on the Mac, we were all kind of used to being second class citizens and bodging together mod support and whatever, so I still think they should've let it come out.

> “Given the realities of the Mac gaming market, our Mac customers were… always going to be second-class customers where we couldn’t invest to the same degree in the Mac version as we did elsewhere,” commented Newell. “I don’t want to be in that business. I would much rather we just eat the money we’ve spent so far than take money from Mac customers and shortchange them.”

(In thinking about it, it’s possible that the motherboards I bought did have non-wireless alternatives that weren’t stocked at my local Micro Center - lot of digging required to figure that out, though :) )

I haven’t ever looked at the APIs for passkeys; is there any semblance of those types of keys being an option, or did opening the door to syncing basically let anything happen with the APIs and lose those guarantees?

> If I accidentally set up a passkey on my phone (let’s say I use Safari one day instead of my go-to, Brave), can I still log in without that passkey on other devices?

Assuming you have LastPass set up to be an iOS password manager, and it fully supports iOS' passkey implementation: when you create a passkey in Safari, it will ask you if you want to store it in LastPass or in the iOS Passwords app (previously known as iCloud Keychain). If you say LastPass, then it's up to them, but I assume it'll sync to all your devices - it's how 1Password works. If you were to accidentally say Apple Passwords, it'll sync to all your Apple devices automatically, and you can either use Apple's password browser extension on Windows, or you can use the "another device flow" I'm about to detail.

> Is there a way to ensure that passkey can be used on other devices?

As mentioned above, passkeys are intended to sync via your password manager of choice as the primary use case. If for any reason you don't have that passkey synced to that device, _and that passkey is on a mobile device with a camera_, most browsers will give you the option to scan a QR code with your phone. This kicks off a flow that will authenticate you via your phone's biometrics or passkey, then use Bluetooth to first ensure device proximity and then handle the authentication exchange. In the case of iOS, this includes any passkey-supporting password manager, so the passkey itself can be in 1Password; it doesn't have to be in the iOS password system for this to work.

When I first read the above, my hackles were raised given how well Bluetooth operates at times; but every time I've used it so far, it's been fast and flawless. Still, I can see a lot of scenarios where this might not work - e.g., the first one I thought of was a public computer at a library where Bluetooth might be locked down; corporate computers or remote servers could also be troublesome. As far as I know, passkeys don't yet have answers to those scenarios; other than to just use your password + 2FA as you would without a passkey.

As far as I know, both of the above apply to every passkey-consuming site.

> Can I add another passkey on another device? How many passkeys can I set up for a particular site/app?

This touches on your last paragraph, where it indeed could change based on the website. In my experience, every website where passkeys are fully supported - e.g., not ones that are using passkeys as a substitute for FIDO/U2F keys - has let me add multiple passkeys and have not _appeared_ to have a limit. I typically will create a passkey in both 1Password and Apple Passwords just to have a backup, and I can't recall any cases where that's been a problem. Still, I can't say for sure that isn't a problem on any website.

I went all in on trying passkeys when they started to be an option, and I don't have any notable regrets. For me, passkeys have generally worked well when the site is designed to use them well; and at no point have they been a _major_ hindrance. That isn't to say there are _no_ annoyances, though:

- Most websites that support passkeys tend to use them as a replacement for both the password _and_ 2FA, which makes them more convenient. However, a few - Amazon being the most notable I can recall - only use them as a second factor, which just makes them feel a little useless.

- A passkey can _also_ be used as the proof of identity, meaning you can log in in one fell swoop and don't need to enter a username or email address, which is IMO the best showcase for passkeys. Like above, this makes websites that ask you to enter an email address before letting you use a passkey also feel annoying.

- Most web browsers I've used support the QR + Bluetooth flow I mentioned above (otherwise known as Hybrid Transport or caBLE) without issue; Linux has been the odd duck out. Firefox doesn't seem to support it at all on Linux, and Chrome-based browsers do but sometimes are missing what they need and in that case don't show it as an option. Since I sync just about every passkey with 1Password this typically isn't a problem; the exception is the passkey for Apple Accounts, which Apple creates automatically, and (AFAIK) doesn't allow you to enroll your own. Apple Accounts are the only service I've found that does this, though.

- Some websites seem to only offer passkeys as an option if you're on a mobile device, or at least did so at the time of enrolling. eBay and PayPal I think are the two that jump out at me as having done this. Why they did it this way instead of simply detecting if the browser supported passkeys, I have no idea.

All of the above issues have gone down over time, so it's generally been a net decrease in friction over time. And, at least as far as I can recall, passwords themselves continue to be an option in every instance I've enrolled a passkey. So if you like your passwords, generally speaking, you can keep them :P

It's not fruitful every time, but the number of times you skip asking those questions and chase something around, only to realize that, actually, it _was_ the ridiculous/simple thing... well, it feels a lot better to realize it earlier :)

(personal footnote: do be mindful of the context you're asking in! I feel like in general those sorts of questions are _fairly_ well tolerated by technical people. Sometimes you feel a bit stupid asking the question, but many of the systems I've worked on are large and complicated enough that it's not that weird - and if there's downtime and a healthy team, people genuinely want to hunt every possibility down. People not used to that, though, will sometimes bristle a bit, thinking you're implying that they're stupid and don't understand the basics. There can be ways to be more tactful, but at the very least, it's worth being aware of that reaction so you can follow up with a "just making sure I understand!" or something like that.)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48719430

Points: 27

# Comments: 17

One of the dynamics is that a character's parents, both of whom protested in Hong Kong during the Umbrella Movement, left for Canada in the wake of the crackdowns wanting to start a family. At a moment when both of the parents are tired and feeling regret, one of them asks why they left, why they bothered to protest, and if those actions had any meaning if the PRC wound up winning control anyway. The other says this:

> ...if we stayed silent? Didn't stand up for ourselves? They would say this is how it always was. They would say this is what the people wanted. But no. They can't say that. Because it has gone down in history that we resisted fiercely. That we fought for a different future until we couldn't.

I admit: ultimately, that statement doesn't mean anything quantifiable - in fact, it kind of states the exact opposite, which is not the most convincing on a site like this. Still, I think there is truth in it: even if the protests don't have a quantifiable number associated with them, people see them, and know that they happened.

Ultimately that may or may not matter; it may just be a sentiment lost in the wind, or papered over by the victors. But it's still _something_.

https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360060591413-Spa...

https://senders.yahooinc.com/smtp-error-codes/

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/email-errors

Even AIR apps - think Electron, an application shell for Flash apps - were on the edge of usable on desktop Macs of the era.

Once native APIs were available, that was true, but before it was even clear that the iPhone would have an app store, they very much did let it flourish.

[0]: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/03/03/scott-forstall-pandora-...

[1]: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/04/06/apple-creating-all-the-ap...