Re: [webauthn] Removing “lightning” from AuthenticatorTransport (#1294)

Wow. Great discussion. So, from the person who _requested_ that Lightning got added in the first place as a transport, some more context.

Of course, Maciej and Jiewen are 100% correct. If any old USB FIDO token could be plugged in to a USB->Lightning converter (given that [such a thing exists ](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD821AM/A/lightning-to-usb-camera-adapter)) there would not be the need for the "Lightning" transport. This was _simply_ to be used as a way to signal that the "CTAP_over_MFi" transport was available for this particular credential before we had clear indication from Apple that they would be supporting HID outright.

My mini-rant for the day was going to be about how useful it is for companies to communicate their intent early: it can save the community a lot of time. But, alas, I'll save that for another day.

For now, it seems like we're halfway through this thing already, so here's my recommendation: If vendors ship a device that does special "CTAP tunneling over MFi", go ahead and set the Lightning transport. I don't really expect many devices going forward to do this, because there wouldn't be much point: any USB HID device should work directly with iOS.

User-agents who don't understand (or implement) this tunneling, just ignore the bit. Maybe in the future we can completely remove it from the spec, but I don't know that _right now_ is that time since vendors literally started shipping these things (on our recommendation) weeks ago.

Then, the million dollar question to Maciej and Jiewen: When will we actually start seeing this support show up in iOS?

Thanks!
Christiaan

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Received on Thursday, 12 September 2019 16:36:52 UTC