Does anyone else notice that this guy's refresh/release schedule is weighted very heavily in the 3rd & 4th quarters? I recall Apple staggering their product releases for a more even level of sales throughout the year.
Why does Apple bashing and trolling make people feel so good?
Why does Apple bashing and trolling make people feel so good?
My speculation (because that's all this is at this point, even if you're an "analyst") is that we won't see a fingerprint sensor until the iPhone 6. It's too soon, Apple just bought Authentec in the fall. The iPhone 5S design is likely nearly finalized.
Adding it to the 6 instead allows them to go through a bunch of prototypes and really figure out the best way to do it. Plus the case redesign would help them make room if necessary. Have you seen how thin the iPhone 5 home button is? I'm not convinced they could add a fingerprint sensor without a major redesign of the inside layout of the phone.
It also gives Apple more time to refine passbook.
That of course leaves the question, what will be the new feature of the 5S?
Screen integration would mean completely replacing the hardware used now. This isn't something that I would suspect to happen anytime in the near future. Now that being said, they could make use of the on-board camera for identity verification... perhaps in conjunction with the finger print reader.
even though it's off topic (Passbook bitching that is)...Another great feature I'd love to see come to Passbook are loyalty cards. I have a billion of those that get lost in my wallet or i just don't have at the time i'm in a store that I'd love for Apple to take initiative with.
There is some integration with this already. Walgreens for example has their loyalty card on Passbook. I'll agree the rollout hasn't been as fast as I would like, but I still like the potetional of passbook
First off, does whoever made this picture realize that the phone on the right isn't a Windows phone, but actually an HTC Android phone? Second, there's already been several phones out there (including Android phones) to make use of fingerprint scanners...
Screen integration would mean completely replacing the hardware used now. This isn't something that I would suspect to happen anytime in the near future. Now that being said, they could make use of the on-board camera for identity verification... perhaps in conjunction with the finger print reader.
I'm not sure if it will happen but in fact, the fingerprint tech they just bought was for exactly this, integrating the scanning tech right into a regular screen. Since they've been rather intimately involved in the design of their screens lately, even to the point of investing in factories and so forth, it's at least a possibility. It wouldn't take years or anything either. Presuming the fact that it works, it would just be adding the sensor layer to the next round of screens produced.
Also, you should know that using a camera to identify the users face is basically a joke. It doesn't actually work.
It's a boondoggle and not really anything to do with "security" per se at all.
“There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival.” Bob Lefsetz
“There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival.” Bob Lefsetz
For reasons to many to mention that have been discussed over and over again ... the Home button is not going anywhere. It's a central part of the entire design, everyone likes it, and removing it would serve no purpose.
Also ... edge to edge screens? What have you been smoking?
“There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival.” Bob Lefsetz
“There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival.” Bob Lefsetz
That would be the perfect use of Passbook, especially in its current form. The only problem is retailers have been extremely lukewarm about Passbook adoption.
Walgreens is the only one that currently has their rewards store card available on passbook. If most national retailers would hop on the bandwagon and have their store cards (in particular grocery stores) that would make Passbook so much more useful.
the fact that i have to download and utilize the Walgreens app on my phone, then transfer the data from the Walgreens app to the Passbook app. This is why it fails, too many apps and too many taps to get the job done.
How should it happen. You sign up in store for a loyalty card (Petsmart, Walgreens, Best Buy, Subway, etc.) using your email address.
They send you an email with the loyalty card, tap "add to passbook"...done.
Next time you're at that store, bring up passbook and you have a digital wallet showing your points history and rewards, any additional coupons that can be scanned at the register. Done!
I don't think either of those things are possible unless 1. Apple has invented some new advanced battery technology, and/or 2. Apple will roll out IGZO-based LCD and/or OLED panels this year. The reason why the iPad 3rd / 4th gen are thicker than the iPad 2 is because all those pixels require more power. More power requires either a better and/or a larger battery. Apple didn't have better battery technology, so they made the battery bigger.
But IGZO conductors are vastly more efficient than the current amorphous silicon technology. 40 times better conductivity plus better transparency means far more power-efficiency, since the thousands of "invisible wires" to all those pixels will require far less power. It will be interesting to see if Apple and Sharp are ready to ship IGZO-based OLED screens in volume, or if they'll simply upgrade the traditional LCD + backlight technology with IGZO (for now).
Sent from my iPhone Simulator
Sent from my iPhone Simulator
the fact that i have to download and utilize the Walgreens app on my phone, then transfer the data from the Walgreens app to the Passbook app. This is why it fails, too many apps and too many taps to get the job done.
How should it happen. You sign up in store for a loyalty card (Petsmart, Walgreens, Best Buy, Subway, etc.) using your email address.
They send you an email with the loyalty card, tap "add to passbook"...done.
Next time you're at that store, bring up passbook and you have a digital wallet showing your points history and rewards, any additional coupons that can be scanned at the register. Done!
The AMC app works exactly like that. You should try it. It's free.
Come to think of it, Starbucks and Fandango do too. Right there in Passbook.
In fact, Apple's iOS 6 page has all the details that you've apparently missed:
Here ya go. Enlighten yourself: http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/#passbook
Sent from my iPhone Simulator
Sent from my iPhone Simulator
The username/password system is totally insecure, cumbersome, and a complete failure.
Everything you say now is moot.
Firstly it's as secure as you want it to be. If you go for 1234 then clearly you are gonna have issues.
Secondly, no matter what alternative security you put on there, you will have to keep the standard login in case the tech doesn't work.
Imagine you have an accident and your hands are covered in blood. Phone won't unlock, you are in trouble.
Just think if Android owners could only log into their phone with their amazing face recognition unlocking, there would be about 100 million people who would have an unusable phone. How I laughed at the Android owners I know, trying to impress by demonstrating FR unlocking 7 or 8 times with a fail each time.
Sometimes it's easier to log in normally. it's only 4 digits to unlock your phone.
Numbered above to reply:
1) It may be cool tech, but scary/creepy.
I cannot believe there isn't one single response so far that even considers the fact that having your fingerprints in a mobile device is extremely creepy from a privacy standpoint. Fingerprints are used to track criminals, not "regular" folks, egads.
2) This is the only thing I've seen in all 61 posts so far that even hints at the biggest problem. For that, you get props.
Everyone, listen: you, as a user, have virtually zero control or even knowledge of what data goes out to application providers on your mobile device. With ANY app, period. Certain bits of data have some minor protections built into the OS, but in general, you should consider almost anything you put into your mobile device to be available to at the very least the authors of the app. Once your data has reached their servers, you might as well consider it public information. It may not happen this week or even this year, but data that sits on servers connected to the internet is almost always eventually either sold, misused or pilfered.
I do not want my fingerprints (or faceprint, for that matter) to be tracked and sold by ANYONE, and I can't understand why no one is paying attention to this.
3) This makes some sense. The problem is in keeping that data local to the device. I just don't know how it's possible to be assured of that over time.
4) I don't agree. It would then be a single point of failure for virtually anything and everything you do on your mobile device. Never a good idea from a security standpoint. But it seems these days people in their never ending quest to save 3 seconds, ignore security (and privacy) issues. Very sad.
I hope this isn't true. It would make far more sense to integrate it into the screen.
Especially since they just spent millions buying a company with world-leading technology that does exactly that.
why not make the home button the same as the screen, much like the glass trackpad? Actually, if they made the home button as a mini trackpad, that would allow swipe gestures also.
Lest anyone think biometrics are "safe". Read this article at news.com.au:
Theft of Fingerprints Easier than Cutting Off a Finger, Security Experts Warn
Of course there's always the cut off your finger method as well.
People need to stop and think about this:
- when your password is compromised, you can make a new one in 5 minutes.
- what do you do when your fingerprint is compromised?
There's no alternative except returning to passwords, because you can't change your body. At that point you are back to using passwords AND your fingerprint has been compromised, so you are unequivocally worse off than before.
It doesn't surprise me that many people aren't thinking about this, it does surprise me that it seems almost no one is.
...could be difficult for competing Android and Windows Phone devices to copy...
This is a gratuitously insulting statement. Samsung is one of the most innovative companies on the planet, they have a tried and true strategy already in place. They simply copy it now and work out the detail later in the courtroom.
Lest anyone think biometrics are "safe". Read this article at news.com.au:
Theft of Fingerprints Easier than Cutting Off a Finger, Security Experts Warn
Of course there's always the cut off your finger method as well.
People need to stop and think about this:
- when your password is compromised, you can make a new one in 5 minutes.
- what do you do when your fingerprint is compromised?
There's no alternative except returning to passwords, because you can't change your body. At that point you are back to using passwords AND your fingerprint has been compromised, so you are unequivocally worse off than before.
It doesn't surprise me that many people aren't thinking about this, it does surprise me that it seems almost no one is.
Well that was not encouraging lol
I gather Apple could use this as a soft passcode approach, whereby a password would be required to access sensitive data on the phone or to unlock it. However, if the data is kept only on the phone, then the phone would have to be hacked to gain the biometric data, and having a hacked phone circumvents the need to gain the biometric data to hack the phone. Although if getting to your biometric data is the objective and the phone is easier to hack than a back, then that is a problem also.
I guess to be sure, we need finger, voice, retina, and a password. Or no phone at all :P
...could be difficult for competing Android and Windows Phone devices to copy...
This is a gratuitously insulting statement. Samsung is one of the most innovative companies on the planet, they have a tried and true strategy already in place. They simply copy it now and work out the detail later in the courtroom.
I agree. That has worked well thus far, why change it? :P
Oh, and much cheaper than all that pesky R&D stuff.
Numbered above to reply:
1) It may be cool tech, but scary/creepy.
I cannot believe there isn't one single response so far that even considers the fact that having your fingerprints in a mobile device is extremely creepy from a privacy standpoint. Fingerprints are used to track criminals, not "regular" folks, egads.
2) This is the only thing I've seen in all 61 posts so far that even hints at the biggest problem. For that, you get props.
Everyone, listen: you, as a user, have virtually zero control or even knowledge of what data goes out to application providers on your mobile device. With ANY app, period. Certain bits of data have some minor protections built into the OS, but in general, you should consider almost anything you put into your mobile device to be available to at the very least the authors of the app. Once your data has reached their servers, you might as well consider it public information. It may not happen this week or even this year, but data that sits on servers connected to the internet is almost always eventually either sold, misused or pilfered.
I do not want my fingerprints (or faceprint, for that matter) to be tracked and sold by ANYONE, and I can't understand why no one is paying attention to this.
3) This makes some sense. The problem is in keeping that data local to the device. I just don't know how it's possible to be assured of that over time.
4) I don't agree. It would then be a single point of failure for virtually anything and everything you do on your mobile device. Never a good idea from a security standpoint. But it seems these days people in their never ending quest to save 3 seconds, ignore security (and privacy) issues. Very sad.
Fingerprint/Faceprint systems do not store images of your finger/face. They store a small set of "vectors" extracted from the image by the recognition algorithms, which are then encrypted. Even if you decrypted the vectors, you would not be able to recreate the original finger/face image. In addition, the "feature space" of a finger/faceprint is much larger than that of a typical password (which might be only six characters long, consisting of only letters and numbers for a "space" of 26 to the 6th power. These vectors are akin to the hashes that password based systems store. Compromising such a system does not reveal passwords, just the hashes for them. If the hash key is large enough, it is computationally impractical to work out the original password, unless it's in any of the widely available online dictionaries. The vastly larger feature space of a set of finger/face vectors makes brute force decryption impractical. As your fingerprint vectors would never leave the phone, there would be no chance of building dictionaries of them on the web.
The benefit of Authentec's sensing technology is that it requires a physical finger. It is not an optical sensor, so a photograph of a fingertip cannot fool it.
When you present your finger/face to a recognition system, it extracts the vectors from the image it takes of your finger/face and computes a degree of fit with those vector sets it knows. If the system accepts a large number of authorized users (for example a building security system), it must find the best fit from amongst a large collection of vector sets, which often produces recognition errors. If the system is simply checking for the presence of one or two owners, recognition accuracy can be quite high.
To use a fingerprint sensor as the key to opening a Keychain like password system makes sense to me. The vagaries of various website and app password systems can be handled by the internal plumbing of Keychain. Rather than annoying me with constant prompts to enter my user/admin password, a quick press of the home button (or some region of the screen) seems both easier and less prone to hacking. You can't look over my shoulder to learn the physical characteristics of my fingertip. You can see what I type.
why not make the home button the same as the screen, much like the glass trackpad? Actually, if they made the home button as a mini trackpad, that would allow swipe gestures also.
Well it wouldn't be a button if it was part of the screen. One of it's uses is that it allows blind people to use the phone. It has to be a physical button for that to work.
“There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival.” Bob Lefsetz
“There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival.” Bob Lefsetz
For reasons to many to mention that have been discussed over and over again ... the Home button is not going anywhere. It's a central part of the entire design, everyone likes it, and removing it would serve no purpose.
Also ... edge to edge screens? What have you been smoking?
The home button is an archaism. The era of edge-to-edge button-less design is coming and nothing can stop it.
Numbered above to reply:
1) It may be cool tech, but scary/creepy.
I cannot believe there isn't one single response so far that even considers the fact that having your fingerprints in a mobile device is extremely creepy from a privacy standpoint. Fingerprints are used to track criminals, not "regular" folks, egads.
2) This is the only thing I've seen in all 61 posts so far that even hints at the biggest problem. For that, you get props.
Everyone, listen: you, as a user, have virtually zero control or even knowledge of what data goes out to application providers on your mobile device. With ANY app, period. Certain bits of data have some minor protections built into the OS, but in general, you should consider almost anything you put into your mobile device to be available to at the very least the authors of the app. Once your data has reached their servers, you might as well consider it public information. It may not happen this week or even this year, but data that sits on servers connected to the internet is almost always eventually either sold, misused or pilfered.
I do not want my fingerprints (or faceprint, for that matter) to be tracked and sold by ANYONE, and I can't understand why no one is paying attention to this.
3) This makes some sense. The problem is in keeping that data local to the device. I just don't know how it's possible to be assured of that over time.
4) I don't agree. It would then be a single point of failure for virtually anything and everything you do on your mobile device. Never a good idea from a security standpoint. But it seems these days people in their never ending quest to save 3 seconds, ignore security (and privacy) issues. Very sad.
No personal insult intended here but this is all paranoid nonsense IMO. Why exactly would this be "creepy"?
I remember this was a common point of view in the 1970's but I think we've kind of moved on from there. I also think your assessment of what information can be extracted from the phone by app developers to be over-the-top and likely based more on fear than facts.
My only concern with this tech is the fact that the ones I've tried always want you to use the fingerprint on your index finger, and I don't happen to have one. So that's always kind of frustrating. I trust Apple will give us the option of which finger to use however, as they usually think of things like that. 
“There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival.” Bob Lefsetz
“There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival.” Bob Lefsetz
The home button is an archaism. The era of edge-to-edge button-less design is coming and nothing can stop it.
Only if you believe everything you read on the web verbatim. Which it seems you do. 
Wait a minute ... you just read what I wrote on the web and you *didn't* believe it.
Hmmm .... It must be that you just believe everything you read that has cool renders and video attached.
Yeah, that's it.
“There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival.” Bob Lefsetz
“There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival.” Bob Lefsetz
Well, there is no way to store your passwords on the phone. Unless you are foolish enough to put them in a text file.
So it's not like possession of the phone equals possession of access to your bank.
I like your analysis of the home button as fingerprint scanner issue though. I think you are 100% correct on that.
“There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival.” Bob Lefsetz
“There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival.” Bob Lefsetz
This reminds me of the fingertip pattern unlocking that was popular on touch PDAs for a short while around the turn of the century.
A whole mini-industry and lots of scientific research sprang up over what patterns were most secure, etc.
Then, of course, people belatedly noticed that their fingers left a grease trail that showed what the unlock pattern was. D'oh!! Since a stylus was usually used for every other interaction, the unlock pattern was clear as a bell.
After that, pattern unlocking disappeared as a security option for a long time. Even Apple didn't use it for security, but instead just used it for simple unlock.
--
Re: fingerprints. Cheap visual sensors can be fooled. Better ones look for live person hints, like perhaps body heat. Some have very fine capacitive sensors that actually map out the live person's fingerprint ridges. In other words, a picture or even a cut-off finger won't work.
In any case, as others have pointed out, they shouldn't worry about a bio-metric theft or sales situation. This kind of info is usually kept only inside that particular device. If you use a different device, you'll need to enter your fingerprint again.
Complete nonsense.
Common sense will.
