You can get the same from other companies at similar price. Just with a traditional fingerprint scanner rather than touch id (Same thing really), or a face unlock (which at least works when you have wet hands)
Depends on the definition of wet. I can't use touchid for a bit after washing my hands. It doesn't matter how much I dry then. This makes using fingerprint unlock on any device really hard while cooking.
It may be the same thing from an end-user experience PoV, but it doesn't seem like any of the PC laptop manufacturers can offer equivalent security guarantees.
My experience with traditional fingerprint scanners on laptops is that they're extremely picky and won't work if you are a bit sweaty or the air is dry or the day of the week starts with a T or something. Having it fail to read your finger several times on a login pushes me back to regular passwords.
The enrollment process takes forever for each finger too.
That is in many ways not true. I'm a happy user of a fingerprint scanner on Linux (for login and sudo). It actually took about the same time to enroll as touch id. How the scanner deals with moisture depends on the model so it's not all the same. Lenovo x1 for example it's in my experience just as bad as touchid on that scale.
If you have the magic to make the BCM5880 work on Linux I'd love to hear it, because that chip is behind every fingerprint sensor I've tried to set up thus far.