Any thoughts on the alleged longer power button? Wouldn't surprise me if it doubled as a home button.
There was some speculation that perhaps Apple would embed Touch ID into the power/lock button, but no rumors or leaks have suggested that will be the case. Doubling as a home button would be problematic — how would you lock the device, or differentiate between locking and returning to the home screen?
A single side button can be designed to perform many different tasks, including equally important tasks like a home and lock/sleep. Think of a camera’s shutter button. 2 levels of pressure. Press to focus, press all the way to shoot. Translated to an iPhone: press to go Home (click!), press further in to sleep/awake (deeper click).
The fact that the side button has been consistently rumoured to be more prominent, reflects the new importance of this button. This larger side button could also include Touch ID if Apple decides that its removal impacts too many people i.e. those who wear masks/helmets/face protection for work or leisure and can’t use Face ID. My bet is on Touch ID being gone entirely and replaced by Face ID despite the limitations I mentioned. Touch ID doesn’t work with gloves and people have lived with that limitation just fine.
On a side note, it always strikes me how some people here can’t think outside of the box. I don’t mean this as an insult. It’s just mind blowing to me. Just because something can’t be done with today’s paradigm, doesn’t mean that that paradigm can’t be changed to solve a new problem. Just because a button is known to have 2 states — pressed or not pressed — it doesn’t mean that a different type of button with multiple states can’t be designed.
Hold your phone while using the thumb for swiping. Can you reach the power button (even if longer) where it is currently positioned? No.
Put the single side button lower where a finger can comfortably use it as home...great right?
Now switch hands.
Thinking outside the box is great but human hands behave a certain way which is why some things end up the way they are.
The current home button has multi-states. Do a light double tap and you end up lowering the screen with Reachabiity. Double click the home button and you get the app selector. Do a long press and get Siri. Do a short press and you go home. Single light tap is unused because of too many false positives.
The current power button also has multiple states. Short press = screen off. Long press = shutdown screen.
I dunno...all the so-called "pro" users in this thread seems unaware that all the single gesture options are already being used by the iOS UI as are most of the home button interactions.
In the home screen UI:
Down swipe gets you search. Up swipe gets you the control buttons Left swipe is navigation or the notification screen Right swipe is navigation
Plus apps will have their own swipe behaviors...so you can't just say "Oh, we'll just use double up swipe to go home" because any game that uses swipe for game play control will constantly have that swipe behavior.
Oh, I use face ID to unlock my Surface Book. I MUCH prefer the Touch ID on my MBP.
Correction: you have never used Face ID (Apple’s version). None of us has.
There were other applications of finger print unlocking before Touch ID. They were unreliable, slow and required swiping your finger slowly over the sensor. Totally unusable. Along came Touch ID and made it fast, accurate and intuitive — you just put your finger on the button you were already using to wake up your iPhone.
Apple has earned a reputation for waiting until they’ve perfected a technology so that they can release it, not first but right. Face ID will be unobtrusive, seamless and accurate and it’ll make everybody forget Touch ID.
"A software home button could function the same as a physical one, but disappear when needed to offer extra screen real estate"
How do you make it come back?
That's problematic. You can do something like long press on the bottom of the screen but any app that already uses whatever is selected as an interaction will get screwed up...
Games are the most likely app type to induce false positives...and most annoying if the virtual home button appears and screws up gameplay.
... Consider the number of people who are not disabled who use AssistiveTouch (again, informally — as with Touch ID opt-outs — I see this quite frequently in the wild). Apparently the use of AssistiveTouch is especially common in eastern markets, where there are concerns about the home button breaking. It makes me wonder, would an iPhone that requires a new gesture to return to the home screen actually drive up use of AssistiveTouch among users who are not disabled? And what would that indicate to Apple about user habits and preferences?
I'm not saying that's necessarily the case, of course. But old habits die hard.
When my daughter's first iPhone (or was it the iPod touch?) ended up with a broken home button, she enabled AssistiveTouch. I didn't know about AssistiveTouch at the time and thought it was a clever use of that feature. I even tried it when my iPhone 4 button started getting unreliable, but I found the floating white dot always seemed to be in the way of something I wanted. Yet, several years and a few iPhones later, she still enables Assistive Touch as soon as she gets a new phone (currently an iPhone 7).
Yep, old habits die hard, even with the younger generation.
Any thoughts on the alleged longer power button? Wouldn't surprise me if it doubled as a home button.
There was some speculation that perhaps Apple would embed Touch ID into the power/lock button, but no rumors or leaks have suggested that will be the case. Doubling as a home button would be problematic — how would you lock the device, or differentiate between locking and returning to the home screen?
A single side button can be designed to perform many different tasks, including equally important tasks like a home and lock/sleep. Think of a camera’s shutter button. 2 levels of pressure. Press to focus, press all the way to shoot. Translated to an iPhone: press to go Home (click!), press further in to sleep/awake (deeper click).
The fact that the side button has been consistently rumoured to be more prominent, reflects the new importance of this button. This larger side button could also include Touch ID if Apple decides that its removal impacts too many people i.e. those who wear masks/helmets/face protection for work or leisure and can’t use Face ID. My bet is on Touch ID being gone entirely and replaced by Face ID despite the limitations I mentioned. Touch ID doesn’t work with gloves and people have lived with that limitation just fine.
On a side note, it always strikes me how some people here can’t think outside of the box. I don’t mean this as an insult. It’s just mind blowing to me. Just because something can’t be done with today’s paradigm, doesn’t mean that that paradigm can’t be changed to solve a new problem. Just because a button is known to have 2 states — pressed or not pressed — it doesn’t mean that a different type of button with multiple states can’t be designed.
Hold your phone while using the thumb for swiping. Can you reach the power button (even if longer) where it is currently positioned? No.
Put the single side button lower where a finger can comfortably use it as home...great right?
Now switch hands.
Thinking outside the box is great but human hands behave a certain way which is why some things end up the way they are.
The current home button has multi-states. Do a light double tap and you end up lowering the screen with Reachabiity. Double click the home button and you get the app selector. Do a long press and get Siri. Do a short press and you go home. Single light tap is unused because of too many false positives.
The current power button also has multiple states. Short press = screen off. Long press = shutdown screen.
I dunno...all the so-called "pro" users in this thread seems unaware that all the single gesture options are already being used by the iOS UI as are most of the home button interactions.
In the home screen UI:
Down swipe gets you search. Up swipe gets you the control buttons Left swipe is navigation or the notification screen Right swipe is navigation
Plus apps will have their own swipe behaviors...so you can't just say "Oh, we'll just use double up swipe to go home" because any game that uses swipe for game play control will constantly have that swipe behavior.
Oh, I use face ID to unlock my Surface Book. I MUCH prefer the Touch ID on my MBP.
Correction: you have never used Face ID (Apple’s version). None of us has.
There were other applications of finger print unlocking before Touch ID. They were unreliable, slow and required swiping your finger slowly over the sensor. Totally unusable. Along came Touch ID and made it fast, accurate and intuitive — you just put your finger on the button you were already using to wake up your iPhone.
Apple has earned a reputation for waiting until they’ve perfected a technology so that they can release it, not first but right. Face ID will be unobtrusive, seamless and accurate and it’ll make everybody forget Touch ID.
If FaceID constrains us to distance & angle of face relative to the sensors then that might end up being a little obtrusive for some use cases.
Any thoughts on the alleged longer power button? Wouldn't surprise me if it doubled as a home button.
There was some speculation that perhaps Apple would embed Touch ID into the power/lock button, but no rumors or leaks have suggested that will be the case. Doubling as a home button would be problematic — how would you lock the device, or differentiate between locking and returning to the home screen?
A single side button can be designed to perform many different tasks, including equally important tasks like a home and lock/sleep. Think of a camera’s shutter button. 2 levels of pressure. Press to focus, press all the way to shoot. Translated to an iPhone: press to go Home (click!), press further in to sleep/awake (deeper click).
The fact that the side button has been consistently rumoured to be more prominent, reflects the new importance of this button. This larger side button could also include Touch ID if Apple decides that its removal impacts too many people i.e. those who wear masks/helmets/face protection for work or leisure and can’t use Face ID. My bet is on Touch ID being gone entirely and replaced by Face ID despite the limitations I mentioned. Touch ID doesn’t work with gloves and people have lived with that limitation just fine.
On a side note, it always strikes me how some people here can’t think outside of the box. I don’t mean this as an insult. It’s just mind blowing to me. Just because something can’t be done with today’s paradigm, doesn’t mean that that paradigm can’t be changed to solve a new problem. Just because a button is known to have 2 states — pressed or not pressed — it doesn’t mean that a different type of button with multiple states can’t be designed.
Hold your phone while using the thumb for swiping. Can you reach the power button (even if longer) where it is currently positioned? No.
Put the single side button lower where a finger can comfortably use it as home...great right?
Now switch hands.
Thinking outside the box is great but human hands behave a certain way which is why some things end up the way they are.
The current home button has multi-states. Do a light double tap and you end up lowering the screen with Reachabiity. Double click the home button and you get the app selector. Do a long press and get Siri. Do a short press and you go home. Single light tap is unused because of too many false positives.
The current power button also has multiple states. Short press = screen off. Long press = shutdown screen.
I dunno...all the so-called "pro" users in this thread seems unaware that all the single gesture options are already being used by the iOS UI as are most of the home button interactions.
In the home screen UI:
Down swipe gets you search. Up swipe gets you the control buttons Left swipe is navigation or the notification screen Right swipe is navigation
Plus apps will have their own swipe behaviors...so you can't just say "Oh, we'll just use double up swipe to go home" because any game that uses swipe for game play control will constantly have that swipe behavior.
Oh, I use face ID to unlock my Surface Book. I MUCH prefer the Touch ID on my MBP.
Correction: you have never used Face ID (Apple’s version). None of us has.
There were other applications of finger print unlocking before Touch ID. They were unreliable, slow and required swiping your finger slowly over the sensor. Totally unusable. Along came Touch ID and made it fast, accurate and intuitive — you just put your finger on the button you were already using to wake up your iPhone.
Apple has earned a reputation for waiting until they’ve perfected a technology so that they can release it, not first but right. Face ID will be unobtrusive, seamless and accurate and it’ll make everybody forget Touch ID.
If FaceID constrains us to distance & angle of face relative to the sensors then that might end up being a little obtrusive for some use cases.
You’re describing the existing face scanning unlocking systems. Apple wouldn’t ship that. That’s the point. Apple waits until a technology is usable before putting it in their products.
If you want a hint at what tech Apple has been developing and perfecting before suddenly showing off something that is clearly in an advanced stage, look at ARkit. Apple caught Google and even Microsoft — who was betting big on AR — off guard. AR Kit is 2 or 3 years ahead of anything anybody is shipping today.
I mention AR kit because it’s able to recognize objects at angles. If you have iOS 11 beta, check out document scanning in Notes. You can precisely and accurately scan a document on close to a flat plain. Somewhere close to 180 degrees. It really is mind blowing. And I’m doing this on an iPhone 6 Plus, a 3 year old phone. Imagine what can be done with cutting edge 3D sensors and lasers, built specifically to detect and scan faces. And you don’t need anywhere close to 180 degrees to scan a face while an iPhone is sitting on the desk nearby.
With Face ID, if you can see your phone, your phone can see you. There won’t be any raising your phone to your face to unlock it. If you’re near your phone, it’s unlocked. That simple.
Now, imagine how something like that can be far superior to Touch ID. Scanning your fingerprint works by request or by deliberate action. Face ID can check on you whenever is necessary to secure your phone to make sure you’re the one using it, not someone who walked off with it after you unlocked it with Touch ID. Whenever you’re using your phone, it’s unlocked. Whenever someone else is using it, it’s locked.
Any thoughts on the alleged longer power button? Wouldn't surprise me if it doubled as a home button.
There was some speculation that perhaps Apple would embed Touch ID into the power/lock button, but no rumors or leaks have suggested that will be the case. Doubling as a home button would be problematic — how would you lock the device, or differentiate between locking and returning to the home screen?
A single side button can be designed to perform many different tasks, including equally important tasks like a home and lock/sleep. Think of a camera’s shutter button. 2 levels of pressure. Press to focus, press all the way to shoot. Translated to an iPhone: press to go Home (click!), press further in to sleep/awake (deeper click).
The fact that the side button has been consistently rumoured to be more prominent, reflects the new importance of this button. This larger side button could also include Touch ID if Apple decides that its removal impacts too many people i.e. those who wear masks/helmets/face protection for work or leisure and can’t use Face ID. My bet is on Touch ID being gone entirely and replaced by Face ID despite the limitations I mentioned. Touch ID doesn’t work with gloves and people have lived with that limitation just fine.
On a side note, it always strikes me how some people here can’t think outside of the box. I don’t mean this as an insult. It’s just mind blowing to me. Just because something can’t be done with today’s paradigm, doesn’t mean that that paradigm can’t be changed to solve a new problem. Just because a button is known to have 2 states — pressed or not pressed — it doesn’t mean that a different type of button with multiple states can’t be designed.
Hold your phone while using the thumb for swiping. Can you reach the power button (even if longer) where it is currently positioned? No.
Put the single side button lower where a finger can comfortably use it as home...great right?
Now switch hands.
Thinking outside the box is great but human hands behave a certain way which is why some things end up the way they are.
The current home button has multi-states. Do a light double tap and you end up lowering the screen with Reachabiity. Double click the home button and you get the app selector. Do a long press and get Siri. Do a short press and you go home. Single light tap is unused because of too many false positives.
The current power button also has multiple states. Short press = screen off. Long press = shutdown screen.
I dunno...all the so-called "pro" users in this thread seems unaware that all the single gesture options are already being used by the iOS UI as are most of the home button interactions.
In the home screen UI:
Down swipe gets you search. Up swipe gets you the control buttons Left swipe is navigation or the notification screen Right swipe is navigation
Plus apps will have their own swipe behaviors...so you can't just say "Oh, we'll just use double up swipe to go home" because any game that uses swipe for game play control will constantly have that swipe behavior.
Oh, I use face ID to unlock my Surface Book. I MUCH prefer the Touch ID on my MBP.
Correction: you have never used Face ID (Apple’s version). None of us has.
There were other applications of finger print unlocking before Touch ID. They were unreliable, slow and required swiping your finger slowly over the sensor. Totally unusable. Along came Touch ID and made it fast, accurate and intuitive — you just put your finger on the button you were already using to wake up your iPhone.
Apple has earned a reputation for waiting until they’ve perfected a technology so that they can release it, not first but right. Face ID will be unobtrusive, seamless and accurate and it’ll make everybody forget Touch ID.
Doesn't matter if face ID is 100% accurate if the MBP is docked in a position where it can't easily see my face...like my MBP is right now since I have a pair of monitors and it's sitting off to the side where it doesn't get anything but a partial profile at an odd angle but I can still easily reach over and use the touchid as I sit down at my desk.
Likewise, I often unlock my phone in my car using a finger where it cannot see me at all from its position. Hey Siri doesn't work when the phone is locked because if I say "Hey Siri, blah blah blah" it replies "You need to unlock your iPhone first".
So I don't care how "perfect" the FaceID implementation is because I can already tell from common unlocking use cases that my iPhone can't see my face. Put the front camera in selfie mode, lay it flat on a table. It can't see me at all. I unlock my phone in this position all the time (meetings, meals, whatever) where all I have and need is one (mostly clean) finger.
The difference between previous fingerprint unlocking and Touch ID was accuracy. I can assume perfect accuracy with FaceID and know from personal experience that it doesn't matter. The Surface can unlock pretty reliably if it can see my face. It's just annoying to have to move your head or your device so your face is in the camera FOV vs reaching over with a finger.
Informally, I see a lot of people in the wild with Touch ID phones who still enter their passcode to unlock, perhaps out of some sort of paranoia about having their fingerprint scanned. Having your face scanned will go over even worse, I'd imagine.
Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me.
It's not the potential for having my fingerprint scanned that bothers me. It's our increasingly intrusive government's belief that what's mine is theirs. They can legally force me, in some circumstances, to provide a fingerprint to unlock my phone. As it stands currently, there is no legal way for them to compel me to give up my password, as that's protected by the self-incrimination clause of the Fourth Amendment.
world class 3D imaging technology 2 years ahead of the closest runner up
How do you know this?
Just stop.
If this is the best you can do, you shouldn't be writing about Apple.
We can disagree, but if you want to insult me, you won't last much longer here on the forums.
No one is insulting you. But you are annoying me. By maintaining the idea that Face ID somehow has to be inferior to Touch ID, despite never seeing the product, because of (rather unimaginative) reservations of your part. You can be indifferent until you’ve seen the product, or you can give Apple the benefit of the doubt they’ve earned.
I dont think it’s appropriate to take the angle you’ve maintained, especially with a wide audience. That is all.
I strongly disagree. I think it's responsible journalism to be skeptical and explore potential problems with alternative implementations. I don't mean being a FUD factory, but providing a realistic and honest examination of how a new feature or function may play out, including outcomes that aren't part of the positive spin provided by marketing materials. I realize that exploring potential downsides may be unpopular, especially on a site frequented by fans, but I think Neil did a good job of pointing out how likely/unlikely certain manifestations are, and separating what could happen from what he thinks will happen.
I often see or read about what seems like a great idea until someone points out a side-effect I didn't anticipate that makes me say, "Hm, I didn't think of that." That allows me to make better decisions. I may come to the conclusion that the intended purpose of the feature outweighs the liability of the side-effect, or I may choose to buy something else. The point is that it's still up to me to choose how I apply that information. Examining all possible outcomes, both positive and negative, is helpful.
And everyone knows that most of this is conjecture at this point, and may all ultimately be moot.
world class 3D imaging technology 2 years ahead of the closest runner up
How do you know this?
Just stop.
If this is the best you can do, you shouldn't be writing about Apple.
We can disagree, but if you want to insult me, you won't last much longer here on the forums.
No one is insulting you. But you are annoying me. By maintaining the idea that Face ID somehow has to be inferior to Touch ID, despite never seeing the product, because of (rather unimaginative) reservations of your part. You can be indifferent until you’ve seen the product, or you can give Apple the benefit of the doubt they’ve earned.
I dont think it’s appropriate to take the angle you’ve maintained, especially with a wide audience. That is all.
I strongly disagree. I think it's responsible journalism to be skeptical and explore potential problems with alternative implementations. I don't mean being a FUD factory, but providing a realistic and honest examination of how a new feature or function may play out, including outcomes that aren't part of the positive spin provided by marketing materials. I realize that exploring potential downsides may be unpopular, especially on a site frequented by fans, but I think Neil did a good job of pointing out how likely/unlikely certain manifestations are, and separating what could happen from what he thinks will happen.
I often see or read about what seems like a great idea until someone points out a side-effect I didn't anticipate that makes me say, "Hm, I didn't think of that." That allows me to make better decisions. I may come to the conclusion that the intended purpose of the feature outweighs the liability of the side-effect, or I may choose to buy something else. The point is that it's still up to me to choose how I apply that information. Examining all possible outcomes, both positive and negative, is helpful.
And everyone knows that most of this is conjecture at this point, and may all ultimately be moot.
You really believe that?
Let me simplify things for you: IF Apple is replacing Touch ID with Face ID, then Face ID is as good or better than Touch ID in every way that matters. Period. Why? Fucking because, that's why! You think Apple is going to replace their utterly world-class Touch ID technology with something inferior on their flagship years-in-development iPhone? This is so far beyond common sense that it is irritating to see anyone pretending to not understand this simple concept.
I don't need to sit here and pretend to be skeptical with hypothetical problems and amateurish ideas of what 3D imaging/facial recognition is. Even calling it "facial recognition" is a misnomer and an attempt to demote it.
Any thoughts on the alleged longer power button? Wouldn't surprise me if it doubled as a home button.
There was some speculation that perhaps Apple would embed Touch ID into the power/lock button, but no rumors or leaks have suggested that will be the case. Doubling as a home button would be problematic — how would you lock the device, or differentiate between locking and returning to the home screen?
A single side button can be designed to perform many different tasks, including equally important tasks like a home and lock/sleep. Think of a camera’s shutter button. 2 levels of pressure. Press to focus, press all the way to shoot. Translated to an iPhone: press to go Home (click!), press further in to sleep/awake (deeper click).
The fact that the side button has been consistently rumoured to be more prominent, reflects the new importance of this button. This larger side button could also include Touch ID if Apple decides that its removal impacts too many people i.e. those who wear masks/helmets/face protection for work or leisure and can’t use Face ID. My bet is on Touch ID being gone entirely and replaced by Face ID despite the limitations I mentioned. Touch ID doesn’t work with gloves and people have lived with that limitation just fine.
On a side note, it always strikes me how some people here can’t think outside of the box. I don’t mean this as an insult. It’s just mind blowing to me. Just because something can’t be done with today’s paradigm, doesn’t mean that that paradigm can’t be changed to solve a new problem. Just because a button is known to have 2 states — pressed or not pressed — it doesn’t mean that a different type of button with multiple states can’t be designed.
Hold your phone while using the thumb for swiping. Can you reach the power button (even if longer) where it is currently positioned? No.
Put the single side button lower where a finger can comfortably use it as home...great right?
Now switch hands.
Thinking outside the box is great but human hands behave a certain way which is why some things end up the way they are.
The current home button has multi-states. Do a light double tap and you end up lowering the screen with Reachabiity. Double click the home button and you get the app selector. Do a long press and get Siri. Do a short press and you go home. Single light tap is unused because of too many false positives.
The current power button also has multiple states. Short press = screen off. Long press = shutdown screen.
I dunno...all the so-called "pro" users in this thread seems unaware that all the single gesture options are already being used by the iOS UI as are most of the home button interactions.
In the home screen UI:
Down swipe gets you search. Up swipe gets you the control buttons Left swipe is navigation or the notification screen Right swipe is navigation
Plus apps will have their own swipe behaviors...so you can't just say "Oh, we'll just use double up swipe to go home" because any game that uses swipe for game play control will constantly have that swipe behavior.
Oh, I use face ID to unlock my Surface Book. I MUCH prefer the Touch ID on my MBP.
Correction: you have never used Face ID (Apple’s version). None of us has.
There were other applications of finger print unlocking before Touch ID. They were unreliable, slow and required swiping your finger slowly over the sensor. Totally unusable. Along came Touch ID and made it fast, accurate and intuitive — you just put your finger on the button you were already using to wake up your iPhone.
Apple has earned a reputation for waiting until they’ve perfected a technology so that they can release it, not first but right. Face ID will be unobtrusive, seamless and accurate and it’ll make everybody forget Touch ID.
If FaceID constrains us to distance & angle of face relative to the sensors then that might end up being a little obtrusive for some use cases.
You’re describing the existing face scanning unlocking systems. Apple wouldn’t ship that. That’s the point. Apple waits until a technology is usable before putting it in their products.
This.
It is beyond annoying at this point to have to entertain this kind of blather in the comments.
world class 3D imaging technology 2 years ahead of the closest runner up
How do you know this?
Just stop.
If this is the best you can do, you shouldn't be writing about Apple.
We can disagree, but if you want to insult me, you won't last much longer here on the forums.
No one is insulting you. But you are annoying me. By maintaining the idea that Face ID somehow has to be inferior to Touch ID, despite never seeing the product, because of (rather unimaginative) reservations of your part. You can be indifferent until you’ve seen the product, or you can give Apple the benefit of the doubt they’ve earned.
I dont think it’s appropriate to take the angle you’ve maintained, especially with a wide audience. That is all.
Saying I "shouldn't be writing about Apple" is an insult, no matter how you try to spin it. Our house, our rules. You've been warned: Keep it civil and polite.
Well then I apologize because I did not mean to insult you. Only to call your attention to something that is, to me at least, incredibly obvious, and doesn't warrant such concern. And that would be this fact:
If Apple is replacing Touch ID with Face ID, then Face ID is as good or better, and there is really nothing to worry about. If it wasn't, then they wouldn't.
I mean what will it take to excuse Apple from being compared to the business practices of Samsung (who takes any/all early underdeveloped technology and crams it into shipping products long before it is even tested)?
I think the term "pro" for a phone is silly. It has a nice ring to it and kind of strokes your ego but pro is short for professional. So this term is very appropriate for computers, most home users no matter how advanced/comfortable with OSX don't need a Mac Pro. But a professional phone user...okay, right, I don't buy it. It is a "deluxe" or "ultra", but "pro" is either just a marketing name or not really the name. Reminds me of the people ten years ago on the forums who wanted to stay with Windows because they were "POWER USERS" what ever the eff that means, lol.
Even with Apple's computers the Pro designation is more of a marketing term for "deluxe". My iPad Pro is very cool but it's not just for professionals.
No mention of the value of TouchID to applePay though.
Because this isn't a thing. ApplePay has nothing to do with Touch ID. Apple's security mechanisms are why Apple Pay is acceptable to the industry. Touch ID is a convenience feature, that lets you skip entering a password. It has nothing to do with the overall security protocols in place. For this reason, Touch ID is interchangeable with any equally high quality convenience feature that Apple develops.
And within the last sentence lies the rub. The system developed needs to be equally convenient when used with ApplePay, and that may not turn out to be the case.
Do you use ApplePay at retail checkout counters? When you place the phone near the NFC system, the iPhone switches to ApplePay mode instantly, regardless of what app it was in or even if it was previously asleep. At that moment, the phone needs to confirm that YOU are the one holding it while it is still very near the NFC system so it can complete the confirmation of payment. The current mechanism, i.e. relying on TouchID, is perfectly convenient because your thumb is right there to do the trick.
Contrast that with any other system of ID confirmation, whether it be entering a PIN, scanning your face, or even scanning your retina (not that that is even in the cards right now, but just for the sake of argument). Given the position and angle that these readers are at relative to your face (often a couple of feet away and at an obtuse angle with respect to your face) I wonder how well the face scanning will work from that position. How broad of an angle in space will the 3D sensors cover (so your face is even in its view), how near does your face need to be (to give it enough "voxels on target"), and how well will it work if your face is not nearly perpendicular to the beam pattern (how complete is your stored 3-D "face model")? It's entirely possible that Apple will have to design in a few extra steps, such as either:
(1) after ApplePay is invoked, requiring you to tilt and/or lift your phone a bit to scan your face (or type in a PIN) and then place it back down again, which NFC systems may not even support, or...
(2) scan your face (or enter PIN) first mere seconds before placing the phone down on the NFC system. (Of course, this would require the iPhone to be awake and make you launch ApplePay prior to placing the phone.)
Note: a third option is that the user has to bend over to get his/her face near and directly over the phone while it is still near the reader. I think this will cause some consternation for many users. Maybe not for geeks such as me and many AI readers here, but I can imagine that a non-trivial fraction of users won't want to contort like this in public.
Just two seconds of thought on this and you realize that from a user experience perspective, the current TouchID implementation holds a lot of value for ApplePay. Any other "high quality convenience feature that Apple develops" to support this ID verification is going to have to be designed with these things in mind, and I (for one) am somewhat concerned that it won't be as good for this use case as TouchID is. Maybe this is a first-world problem, and maybe you will scoff at me for my concern over a few extra steps, but my observation is that Apple commonly designs for solving first-world problems. The original implementation of ApplePay with TouchID clearly indicates they worked hard to do just that. Here's hoping whatever they come up with regarding ApplePay and ID verification (non TouchID) is just as slick.
P.S. I have similar concerns with unlocking the phone any time it is laying on a level surface and my face is not directly above the phone. Yes, I sometimes do that to see what is onscreen (such as a score, stock price, or whatever page/app I left it on) without having to pick the device up.
Your entire post is based on the false assumption that Face ID won't work at the distance & angle of a retailer's POS terminal, despite rumors saying it will, in the fashion of the document scanning in iOS 11 which works at extreme angles. Which makes sense, considering POSTs are already facing you due to the presence of the keypad.
Any thoughts on the alleged longer power button? Wouldn't surprise me if it doubled as a home button.
There was some speculation that perhaps Apple would embed Touch ID into the power/lock button, but no rumors or leaks have suggested that will be the case. Doubling as a home button would be problematic — how would you lock the device, or differentiate between locking and returning to the home screen?
A single side button can be designed to perform many different tasks, including equally important tasks like a home and lock/sleep. Think of a camera’s shutter button. 2 levels of pressure. Press to focus, press all the way to shoot. Translated to an iPhone: press to go Home (click!), press further in to sleep/awake (deeper click).
The fact that the side button has been consistently rumoured to be more prominent, reflects the new importance of this button. This larger side button could also include Touch ID if Apple decides that its removal impacts too many people i.e. those who wear masks/helmets/face protection for work or leisure and can’t use Face ID. My bet is on Touch ID being gone entirely and replaced by Face ID despite the limitations I mentioned. Touch ID doesn’t work with gloves and people have lived with that limitation just fine.
On a side note, it always strikes me how some people here can’t think outside of the box. I don’t mean this as an insult. It’s just mind blowing to me. Just because something can’t be done with today’s paradigm, doesn’t mean that that paradigm can’t be changed to solve a new problem. Just because a button is known to have 2 states — pressed or not pressed — it doesn’t mean that a different type of button with multiple states can’t be designed.
Hold your phone while using the thumb for swiping. Can you reach the power button (even if longer) where it is currently positioned? No.
Put the single side button lower where a finger can comfortably use it as home...great right?
Now switch hands.
Thinking outside the box is great but human hands behave a certain way which is why some things end up the way they are.
The current home button has multi-states. Do a light double tap and you end up lowering the screen with Reachabiity. Double click the home button and you get the app selector. Do a long press and get Siri. Do a short press and you go home. Single light tap is unused because of too many false positives.
The current power button also has multiple states. Short press = screen off. Long press = shutdown screen.
I dunno...all the so-called "pro" users in this thread seems unaware that all the single gesture options are already being used by the iOS UI as are most of the home button interactions.
In the home screen UI:
Down swipe gets you search. Up swipe gets you the control buttons Left swipe is navigation or the notification screen Right swipe is navigation
Plus apps will have their own swipe behaviors...so you can't just say "Oh, we'll just use double up swipe to go home" because any game that uses swipe for game play control will constantly have that swipe behavior.
Oh, I use face ID to unlock my Surface Book. I MUCH prefer the Touch ID on my MBP.
Correction: you have never used Face ID (Apple’s version). None of us has.
There were other applications of finger print unlocking before Touch ID. They were unreliable, slow and required swiping your finger slowly over the sensor. Totally unusable. Along came Touch ID and made it fast, accurate and intuitive — you just put your finger on the button you were already using to wake up your iPhone.
Apple has earned a reputation for waiting until they’ve perfected a technology so that they can release it, not first but right. Face ID will be unobtrusive, seamless and accurate and it’ll make everybody forget Touch ID.
So I don't care how "perfect" the FaceID implementation is because I can already tell from common unlocking use cases that my iPhone can't see my face. Put the front camera in selfie mode, lay it flat on a table. It can't see me at all. I unlock my phone in this position all the time (meetings, meals, whatever) where all I have and need is one (mostly clean) finger.
You're making a false assumption -- that the Face ID sensors are identical your phone's selfie camera. Bad assumption.
world class 3D imaging technology 2 years ahead of the closest runner up
How do you know this?
Just stop.
If this is the best you can do, you shouldn't be writing about Apple.
We can disagree, but if you want to insult me, you won't last much longer here on the forums.
No one is insulting you. But you are annoying me. By maintaining the idea that Face ID somehow has to be inferior to Touch ID, despite never seeing the product, because of (rather unimaginative) reservations of your part. You can be indifferent until you’ve seen the product, or you can give Apple the benefit of the doubt they’ve earned.
I dont think it’s appropriate to take the angle you’ve maintained, especially with a wide audience. That is all.
I strongly disagree. I think it's responsible journalism to be skeptical and explore potential problems with alternative implementations. I don't mean being a FUD factory, but providing a realistic and honest examination of how a new feature or function may play out, including outcomes that aren't part of the positive spin provided by marketing materials. I realize that exploring potential downsides may be unpopular, especially on a site frequented by fans, but I think Neil did a good job of pointing out how likely/unlikely certain manifestations are, and separating what could happen from what he thinks will happen.
I often see or read about what seems like a great idea until someone points out a side-effect I didn't anticipate that makes me say, "Hm, I didn't think of that." That allows me to make better decisions. I may come to the conclusion that the intended purpose of the feature outweighs the liability of the side-effect, or I may choose to buy something else. The point is that it's still up to me to choose how I apply that information. Examining all possible outcomes, both positive and negative, is helpful.
And everyone knows that most of this is conjecture at this point, and may all ultimately be moot.
You really believe that?
Let me simplify things for you: IF Apple is replacing Touch ID with Face ID, then Face ID is as good or better than Touch ID in every way that matters. Period. Why? Fucking because, that's why! You think Apple is going to replace their utterly world-class Touch ID technology with something inferior on their flagship years-in-development iPhone? This is so far beyond common sense that it is irritating to see anyone pretending to not understand this simple concept.
I don't need to sit here and pretend to be skeptical with hypothetical problems and amateurish ideas of what 3D imaging/facial recognition is. Even calling it "facial recognition" is a misnomer and an attempt to demote it.
Yeah I dont really get this hand-wringing "concern" the same old players have about every new thing Apple does. It defies reason. I just have to remind myself these were the same people who dreamed up doomsday fringe cases for the upcoming Touch ID back in the day. Now they cling to it.
world class 3D imaging technology 2 years ahead of the closest runner up
How do you know this?
Just stop.
If this is the best you can do, you shouldn't be writing about Apple.
We can disagree, but if you want to insult me, you won't last much longer here on the forums.
No one is insulting you. But you are annoying me. By maintaining the idea that Face ID somehow has to be inferior to Touch ID, despite never seeing the product, because of (rather unimaginative) reservations of your part. You can be indifferent until you’ve seen the product, or you can give Apple the benefit of the doubt they’ve earned.
I dont think it’s appropriate to take the angle you’ve maintained, especially with a wide audience. That is all.
Saying I "shouldn't be writing about Apple" is an insult, no matter how you try to spin it. Our house, our rules. You've been warned: Keep it civil and polite.
Well then I apologize because I did not mean to insult you. Only to call your attention to something that is, to me at least, incredibly obvious, and doesn't warrant such concern. And that would be this fact:
If Apple is replacing Touch ID with Face ID, then Face ID is as good or better, and there is really nothing to worry about. If it wasn't, then they wouldn't.
I mean what will it take to excuse Apple from being compared to the business practices of Samsung (who takes any/all early underdeveloped technology and crams it into shipping products long before it is even tested)?
That's bullshit because it's assuming that a) Apple never makes mistakes and b) FaceId is really happening. It also ignores the use cases presented where no camera based unlock system can replace a fingerprint based system because the phone is in a pocket, on your arm (running arm band) or positioned where the camera can't see you.
At some point these use cases will fade because of wider adoption of the Apple Watch but that's not the case for 2018.
Voice print id plus facial recognition might sufficiently cover common use cases but while Apple has applied for a patent doing this it's hard to reliably do voice recognition securely. Google has trusted voice but meh, it's not really all that secure.
Comments
How do you make it come back?
Correction: you have never used Face ID (Apple’s version). None of us has.
There were other applications of finger print unlocking before Touch ID. They were unreliable, slow and required swiping your finger slowly over the sensor. Totally unusable. Along came Touch ID and made it fast, accurate and intuitive — you just put your finger on the button you were already using to wake up your iPhone.
Apple has earned a reputation for waiting until they’ve perfected a technology so that they can release it, not first but right. Face ID will be unobtrusive, seamless and accurate and it’ll make everybody forget Touch ID.
Games are the most likely app type to induce false positives...and most annoying if the virtual home button appears and screws up gameplay.
Yep, old habits die hard, even with the younger generation.
RESET OF THE WORLD???? yikes!
If you want a hint at what tech Apple has been developing and perfecting before suddenly showing off something that is clearly in an advanced stage, look at ARkit. Apple caught Google and even Microsoft — who was betting big on AR — off guard. AR Kit is 2 or 3 years ahead of anything anybody is shipping today.
I mention AR kit because it’s able to recognize objects at angles. If you have iOS 11 beta, check out document scanning in Notes. You can precisely and accurately scan a document on close to a flat plain. Somewhere close to 180 degrees. It really is mind blowing. And I’m doing this on an iPhone 6 Plus, a 3 year old phone. Imagine what can be done with cutting edge 3D sensors and lasers, built specifically to detect and scan faces. And you don’t need anywhere close to 180 degrees to scan a face while an iPhone is sitting on the desk nearby.
With Face ID, if you can see your phone, your phone can see you. There won’t be any raising your phone to your face to unlock it. If you’re near your phone, it’s unlocked. That simple.
Now, imagine how something like that can be far superior to Touch ID. Scanning your fingerprint works by request or by deliberate action. Face ID can check on you whenever is necessary to secure your phone to make sure you’re the one using it, not someone who walked off with it after you unlocked it with Touch ID. Whenever you’re using your phone, it’s unlocked. Whenever someone else is using it, it’s locked.
Likewise, I often unlock my phone in my car using a finger where it cannot see me at all from its position. Hey Siri doesn't work when the phone is locked because if I say "Hey Siri, blah blah blah" it replies "You need to unlock your iPhone first".
So I don't care how "perfect" the FaceID implementation is because I can already tell from common unlocking use cases that my iPhone can't see my face. Put the front camera in selfie mode, lay it flat on a table. It can't see me at all. I unlock my phone in this position all the time (meetings, meals, whatever) where all I have and need is one (mostly clean) finger.
The difference between previous fingerprint unlocking and Touch ID was accuracy. I can assume perfect accuracy with FaceID and know from personal experience that it doesn't matter. The Surface can unlock pretty reliably if it can see my face. It's just annoying to have to move your head or your device so your face is in the camera FOV vs reaching over with a finger.
False. I can unlock and use Siri with the phone where the camera no line of sight to me but I can reach it with my hand.
Also, I've used my phone when I can't see it at all. I've unlocked the phone in my pocket using Touch ID to use Siri.
If you don't disable Siri when the phone is locked with kids (or juvenile adults) around you get what you deserve.
One kid in my son's class got in trouble when his "friend" said "Hey Siri, text mom f*** you" to his locked but unguarded iPhone.
Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me.
It's not the potential for having my fingerprint scanned that bothers me. It's our increasingly intrusive government's belief that what's mine is theirs. They can legally force me, in some circumstances, to provide a fingerprint to unlock my phone. As it stands currently, there is no legal way for them to compel me to give up my password, as that's protected by the self-incrimination clause of the Fourth Amendment.
I strongly disagree. I think it's responsible journalism to be skeptical and explore potential problems with alternative implementations. I don't mean being a FUD factory, but providing a realistic and honest examination of how a new feature or function may play out, including outcomes that aren't part of the positive spin provided by marketing materials. I realize that exploring potential downsides may be unpopular, especially on a site frequented by fans, but I think Neil did a good job of pointing out how likely/unlikely certain manifestations are, and separating what could happen from what he thinks will happen.
I often see or read about what seems like a great idea until someone points out a side-effect I didn't anticipate that makes me say, "Hm, I didn't think of that." That allows me to make better decisions. I may come to the conclusion that the intended purpose of the feature outweighs the liability of the side-effect, or I may choose to buy something else. The point is that it's still up to me to choose how I apply that information. Examining all possible outcomes, both positive and negative, is helpful.
And everyone knows that most of this is conjecture at this point, and may all ultimately be moot.
Let me simplify things for you: IF Apple is replacing Touch ID with Face ID, then Face ID is as good or better than Touch ID in every way that matters. Period. Why? Fucking because, that's why! You think Apple is going to replace their utterly world-class Touch ID technology with something inferior on their flagship years-in-development iPhone? This is so far beyond common sense that it is irritating to see anyone pretending to not understand this simple concept.
I don't need to sit here and pretend to be skeptical with hypothetical problems and amateurish ideas of what 3D imaging/facial recognition is. Even calling it "facial recognition" is a misnomer and an attempt to demote it.
It is beyond annoying at this point to have to entertain this kind of blather in the comments.
If Apple is replacing Touch ID with Face ID, then Face ID is as good or better, and there is really nothing to worry about. If it wasn't, then they wouldn't.
I mean what will it take to excuse Apple from being compared to the business practices of Samsung (who takes any/all early underdeveloped technology and crams it into shipping products long before it is even tested)?
Your entire post is based on the false assumption that Face ID won't work at the distance & angle of a retailer's POS terminal, despite rumors saying it will, in the fashion of the document scanning in iOS 11 which works at extreme angles. Which makes sense, considering POSTs are already facing you due to the presence of the keypad.
Solvable problems.
At some point these use cases will fade because of wider adoption of the Apple Watch but that's not the case for 2018.
Voice print id plus facial recognition might sufficiently cover common use cases but while Apple has applied for a patent doing this it's hard to reliably do voice recognition securely. Google has trusted voice but meh, it's not really all that secure.