Technology

They’re device-bound certificate based authentication with some shiny bits.

Or they’re portable-via-certain-services certificate based authentication with some shiny bits.

Either way they’re new and try explaining that the user needs a new one for every device (or needs a new app to carry them around in) and that if the device dies, or the app dies, they lose it all. I have quite a few people in my life who can’t wrap their heads around using a password manager.

Personally, I find them irritating. My chosen password manager on iPhone doesn’t support them, so I need to have the iOS password vault turned on (yes, this is a dark pattern Apple has created to try to increase adoption of their password vault) to use them. Adoption needs to be much higher, interoperability needs to be better, and they need to put back the hint for which vault to use (which was removed early on to keep Microsoft and google from forcing chrome/edge vaults, but has the actual effect that chrome/edge tend to win the race over other options and means that the passkey prompt might be for a different app than the one that you prefer, leading to further user confusion)