I find Apple so incredibly impressive. They target a few key features with every release, absolutely nail those features, and sell the new products perfectly. Their product line-ups and messages are constantly evolving, but slowly, determinedly. And so they achieve things no other company seems capable of - like an unlocking mechanism that is going to be market-defining. Why? Because when the other companies become jealous and try and come up with their own versions, they'll rush and release something half-baked, and out of the confusion only Apple's solution will speak to consumers. Apple is so far ahead of the competition it's ridiculous - maybe Google can compete in the medium-term, I'm not sure. Apple's confidence and poise is awe-inspiring.
Its their discipline that impresses me: How much they are willing to play the long game, and take short term hits to do it.
While getting hammered by Wall Street and the press for not innovating, they stick to their guns and keep evolving in incremental steps, and laying the ground for the innovation they want to do in the future.
For example, current iPhone battery life isn't the greatest compared to some of the larger phones out there that are packing much more battery.
But they keep making small efficiency improvements, over and over, so that if (when?) release a device with a larger battery, it will be like the MacBook Air situation, where the MBA gets staggering battery life on the next hardware iteration compared to competitors that have just adequate battery life, basically being carried by the hardware.
I imagine the larger display is a similar situation, they're not happy with some compromise they'd have to make to produce a display of the larger size, whereas competitors are happy to pump something out that is better by some metric (PPI, size), but has adverse effects (battery life, color oversaturation, artifacting).
I think Google has the ability to continue competing with them if they remain focused.
I have my doubts about any of the other Android manufacturers, though Xiaomi could be interesting in the future, due to their focus on services.
> I imagine the larger display is a similar situation, they're not happy with some compromise they'd have to make to produce a display of the larger size, whereas competitors are happy to pump something out that is better by some metric (PPI, size), but has adverse effects (battery life, color oversaturation, artifacting).
The iPad 3 is a counter-example; retina display almost for the sake of it, and the hardware suffered. The fact that Apple pushed out the iPad 4 so quickly thereafter can, IMO, be chalked up to the fact that the iPad 3 was either a stopgap device or immediately regretted internally and caused the schedule of the iPad 4 to be bumped up.
How is iPad a counter-example?
I have been using it since it came out: Retina display is awesome; the battery life is longer than my iPad 2's battery life; 3G support is super; iPad 3 works with no problems!
And did I mention that I don't have to use new charging cables? My family uses MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPod, iPad2, and iPad3 and I am happy I have to use the same cables for each.
I'll take iPad3 over iPad4 any day (at least for the next few years)
No. I'm sure you didn't use iPad 3 and got that impression from reading tech media always chasing spec sheets. I own iPad 3 and there's nothing wrong with it.
I personally own an iPad 3 and have used it next to an iPad 2 and iPad 4 running the same applications. If you use a non-trivial application it's pretty clear that the iPad 3 is visibly slower than an iPad 2.
On it's own, it's certainly fine. However it's clear that there were trade-offs when moving from the iPad 2 to the iPad 3.
I use iPad 3 to watch videos, surf and read books and PDFs in iBooks and never had the impression that I have to wait on the CPU for something. What are your "non-trivial applications"? If they are games, I admit I haven't even tried any.
The one I've personally benchmarked is an unreleased application by a group of people I know, however it's very far along and (IMO) could be released today. The iPad 3 performs more poorly compared to the other platforms across several metrics.
Do say if the app is sloppy programmed or really needs the faster CPU to do the work. We're programmers here, well, most of us. Anyway note that up to recently you needed two graphic cards and in the desktop and the two monitor cables just to be able to connect the screen with the resolution of the iPad 3. http://youtu.be/KpUNA2nutbk
I bought my iPad 3 for reading, coding, and drawing (Procreate and Paper). It's perfect for it and I am yet to see how the hardware has suffered for the retina display.
For graphically intensive 3D games it may have suffered compared to the iPad2 but it is still a great piece of hardware and worthy update from the iPad2.
Yes, discipline is a great word for it. Against a sea of nay-sayers and critics they keep their composure and stay focused on the long-term. The result is that their competitors blow their opportunities by rushing, and squander any stature. Apple remains in total control of the industry.
This is a nice phone, but I'm sorry - if you think Apple "remains in total control of the industry" with sub 20% marketshare and shrinking you are delusional.
Whatever you may think of the theorerical advantages that Apple has, its not working for them outside of the US.
Do you measure BMW, Rolex and Gucci, by market share? Or profit share? There are more meaningful measures than market share and picking a measure the company isn't particularly interested or aiming for in is a strange choice.
If Apple has 20% market share but 50+% profit share, then what does that mean?
BMW is definitely in control of the luxury car industry, which is quite huge worldwide in terms of revenue and more importantly, profit. It depends on how narrowly you define "industry."
You Apple fanboys are constantly moving the goalposts. First it was who sells more devices, then it was who had more revenue. Now you've lost the "who has more profits" argument as well. What's it going to be next? Who uses more aluminum in their devices?
I never understood why people are so proud of a company having significantly higher margins than their competitors. Unless I owned _stock_ in a company (and then refused to buy their products), I'd rather buy my stuff with as razor-thin of a margin as possible.
But thanks for the link, I'll be using these statistics in future debates against the iCult.
Margins are an indication of how good the product is. Either you compete on quality, or you compete on price, basically. Also, value != price alone, or even the margin the company is making on the product (they could just be more efficient and better at execution than their competitors).
Margins are an indication of how much you're getting screwed by your supplier.
Now don't get me wrong, a number of Apple-users are rational beings. They actually argue to me that they get huge value from iDevices, and I'm fine with that. If its your cup of tea, yes, go on and get it. (And I won't call these guys part of the iCult. Rational Apple-users are indeed... rational).
However, people like you argue that high margins are a good thing. NO THEY'RE NOT. Margins are:
* Cost of the device MINUS cost that Apple spent to create the device
The larger the margin, the more Apple is screwing you out of your money. Period. No rational consumer should EVER be happy about being conned out of tons and tons of money.
And to see these idiotic members of the iCult, so proud... so happy to waste money, and BRAG about the margins that Apple is stealing from them... it really is enough to make me lose faith in the free market.
I'm not so infatuated with Apple products as I'm disgusted with the quality of the competition. When Android phones and tablets actually become usable and won't break after a few months, I might consider saving money on them.
The iCult doesn't exist, you are just trying to justify your own buying decisions. But go ahead and keep thinking otherwise, I really don't care.
Oh look, an actual _argument_. As I stated before, if you actually don't like Android or any of the other competition, I'm perfectly fine with that.
But as long as you "brag" about Apple's profits, you are masochistically accepting punishment from a company that you hold dear. You are bragging about how much Apple manages to take your money away from you...
And that just isn't right.
So IMO, keep the arguments against Android, argue about why other systems are bad. But whatever you do, do NOT pretend like Apple's huge profits are a good thing for you as a consumer.
BMW's higher profit margins than Hyundai is not good or bad for consumers; are BMW owners getting the same car for the money they pay? Can Hyundai compete with BMW in the lux market? I don't think BMW owners feel f*cked over by BMW because BMW makes more money per car than Hyundai does.
As long as we aren't forced to buy Apple products, i.e. we have a free market, Apple's huge profits don't matter to consumers. Perhaps Apple has a monopoly on smartphones that don't suck balls, but until the DOJ sees it necessary to break them up for it, I reserve judgement.
BTW, I happily use a Nokia 920, not an iPhone, but I'm tired of these Apple cultists economics-ignorant conspiracy theories. The cult argument is usually used by people who just can't understand free markets.
You know what? Maybe I'll start shopping at HSN instead of Amazon, because as we all know, HSN's higher margins obviously means that they're a superior store than Amazon's crappy margins. </sarcasm>
Red herring. If HSN and Amazon are selling the same crap, prices correlate more directly to value. Otherwise, if an apple costs 50 cents and an orange costs 25 cents, which one do you want?
In case you don't know, Strategy Analytics are the ones who define "units sold" as "units shipped". I'd imagine they are capable of taking similar shortcuts with profit share estimates.
I doubt that the scanner will be on the front, because it will take valuable screen space (there are no hardware buttons on android)
I also doubt the apart from a bunch of phones there will be many using this technology. It didn't catch with the motorola phone because the sensor was prone to errors.
iphone battery size isn't much compared to android phones, but they are constantly on top of the web browsing battery life tests in spite of this. disappointing that the 5s was a small step backward here.
Not responding to the fawning per se, but specifically the "unlocking mechanism that is going to be market-defining": face unlock seems undeniably cooler still, works reasonably well, has been shipping on all Android phones for nearly two years now, yet certainly hasn't "defined" any markets.
How exactly is putting a little scanner inside a button going to be meaningfully better? Like face unlock, it's at best a cute trick. Apple's past genius has been about finding new fundamental ways to use technology. Slightly easier protection against spousal snooping doesn't qualify, sorry.
Having used face unlock, it's really gimmicky. I turned that off right away. It could be a good idea in the future but, like with Samsung's hands-free gestures, right now I'd have to spend too much time aligning my face and waiting and hoping that it was going to work.
Touch ID takes what you would have done anyways (thumb on home button to wake and then type in PIN) and makes it even faster. Now you still put your thumb on and eliminate the typing pin part.
I haven't used Touch ID yet but I wake my phone a lot during the day, so this seems like a nice (but not absolutely necessary) feature for me. Something small that makes the experience that much better.
I use face unlock on my Nexus 7. Not gimmicky at all for a device I pick up maybe 3 times a week, in good light.
For a phone, it's a poor fit. Variance in light levels is too high.
Fingerprint login is something I've had on my laptop for what seems like a decade. It's a gimmick there. But I anticipate that fingerprint unlock could be about as good as face unlock. It has the advantage of working in the dark.
I have face unlock turned on, and so apparently, no, the natural way of picking it up doesn't perfectly center my mug.
Net effect is having waited however long to try to center and recognize my face, I end up having to realize it didn't work, so an exception case action is needed, and type in a pin and enter.
It's all about execution. When Android manufacturers make these "innovations," by and large they're sloppily implemented and poorly communicated. They're generally part of dozens of features that companies like Samsung try to boast about - so the net result is that consumers don't know what to pay attention to, they aren't inspired to feel lust for the product or any of its particular features, and so the product becomes just one more indistinct phone on the scrapheap.
Whereas Apple focuses on a few core features to improve on and communicate with each phone, and they're overwhelmingly cautious - like only integrating Touch ID with a few spots of the phone at first. But they nail the initial execution, and the communication. So their phones are still the absolute centre of the market. And no other company can inspire product lust to the degree they can.
I never used an iPhone 5s but I would agree with the importance of execution. Lenovo has been shipping ThinkPads with fingerprint scanners for like what? Almost a decade? (ThinkPad T43 had fingerprint scanner, it was released in 2005) Those scanners never defined anything. I thought it'd be handy to save all the passwords at one place and then just scan your way through all the websites. Turns out it didn't work. Successful scan rate was too low, having to swipe one's finger again and again made me feel like an idiot. Then there's software. That bulky ugly software that reeks of corporate. Although I kept buying ThinkPads, I stuck to my vanilla Windows Vista/7 and never installed those "utility tools".
I think your observation aligns with startup culture in general - an idea (fingerprint scanner) can be valuable, but the execution is what matters. Execution means in this case, identifying the probable use cases, picking one or two flagship ones, really refining those (i.e., ensuring the hardware & software are good enough to make it all work as smoothly as possible).
I think Apple is in a unique place because they are beholden to no upstream provider (either hardware or software), retailer (they own their own stores) or component manufacturer (in the case of x64 chips, they flirt with AMD enough to keep Intel in check - for ARM solutions they run the show). They have volumes that can command suppliers' compliance.
Lenovo is hobbled by Windows, and the margins in that space are small enough that it's honestly not worth their time to simply "make it work right" w/r/t their drivers, which is why my Thinkpad fingerprint scanner never got used after about day 3.
I think this is slightly apologetic thinking. Apple didn't start off with a complete ecosystem of obeisant suppliers, in-house hardware, software, and retail stores - they built up their empire piece by piece, starting I suppose from the late-90s. And we still don't know their master-plan. The space has been open for any other company to decide to compete on that level. Lenovo could have decided to do that. Any other company could have decided to rise up and play the long road too. It was not impossible to think like this in 2005.
Instead Apple's competition has fallen over themselves to try and chase every short-term opportunity, leading to constant reinvention, total lack of focus, and squandered potential. Frankly, it's embarrassing - you would think that enough people outside of Apple recognise the scale of the challenge Apple poses and decide to respond. Instead these companies come off looking like cheap idiots.
I don't disagree with your facts. I am merely saying there is a structural reason for this - Windows and Android manufacturers will never command the same power as Apple (who as you say, got it the hard way by taking over ground before it became valuable - i.e., skating to where the puck will be). They will never have it because Intel, Microsoft and Google will fight tooth and nail to prevent it.
Lenovo bought IBM's business because IBM (who essentially made Microsoft who they were) decided it's a loser's game to depend on Microsoft. They are structurally incapable of meeting Apple's capabilities. If they do something novel, it will be reverse-engineered by Dell or HP and become commoditized (I would support that clandestine type of sharing if I were Microsoft).
About the only exception might be Samsung because of their dominant position supplying memory/disk/processors for Apple and other smartphone manufacturers. Apple is worried about Samsung, but Google should be as well.
Do you work for Apple, or are you an iOS only developer, or something? Throughout this thread, your gushing praise of everything Apple and disparaging remarks about literally everything every other company does is so over the top, even by HN standards, its hard to figure out where you are coming from.
By "Apple's competition", I assume he is referring to Android. Considering that Android has 80+% of the market, and Samsung is the worlds largest seller of smart phones, its difficult to justify saying that they have "squandered their potential".
He has been spouting rubbish like this all over the thread.
If he was just saying that Apple make great hardware, I dont think anyone would be disagreeing with him.
Everything you said is true but it was such a different era and market, sensitive security features for special needs. ThinkPads were designed for entreprise(+military) where everything is bulky and complex, in that regard having to install IBM battalion of tools was just the norm (and mandatory most of the time, they did provide value). The target crowd was also different, users would be trained at work, so it wasn't 'required' to be intuitive and invisible, a mainstream defining constraint, like a home button swipe. Here you have a few billion people probably using it every two days for every little id/money related task that don't wanna think about it (otherwise they'll toss it out).
"Target crowd" is a bit misleading. True, as long as fingerprint sensors were a bit difficult to use, only the ones with a specific need for them took the time and effort to use them. But the same was also the case with previous smartphones, and lots of other technology.
If some company hade made a really good and well integrated fingerprint sensor, it might well have seen more widespread use.
I kinda agree, but still, back then much fewer people needed security compared to nowadays where you have your life in your pocket. It's plausible Packard Bell did provide a very subtle Touch ID button on a cheap laptop and it flopped because nobody cared.
Well, people have their entire lives in their computers as well. You also see the same with touchpads. It's only after Apple pushed multitouch that touchpads have gradually started improving on PCs (many early gestures actually made PC touchpads _worse_ to the point where I had to turn them off).
OT: I have a HP laptop with fingerprint reader, and it works perfectly with Lastpass and Windows login. I almost never type my passwords now. HP had shipped some software, but I honestly never used it. It works just fine with in-built Windows 7 support.
You mean like how they executed with Siri. Siri was also supposed to define a market and take over the world. In the new iPhone there is no mention of Siri at all.
Siri hasn't gone anywhere and it's still being improved.
There's no mention of it anywhere? So what, there's many other previous headline features they're not highlighting.
I'm not implying that Apple can't make mistakes - it's clear they can with Maps and Siri - but a) it would be extremely uncharitable to judge them on version 1.0 of Maps and Siri, both ridiculously complex features, and most importantly b) their overall product strategy is still the best in the business. Doesn't matter how much people kick and scream about the newest Apple mistake - does anyone even remember Antennagate? Tech people cling to these memories, but normal people forgive and forget.
You have a good and reasonable argument, but I'd like to offer a couple of counterpoints.
1. In other contexts, the sheer perfection of their 1.0 products are exactly what Apple is judged so successful by. As with the commentary on the fingerprint scanner: the praise is that while other manufacturers deliver buggy, incomplete features, Apple gets things right on the first try.
2. While it's true that everyone makes mistakes, Siri and Maps were arguably the highest profile features on the 4S and the 5, respectively.
I don't think Siri falied, but disapointed. Apple hyped it up so much you would believe it could do anything, and work flawlessly. Instead it works halfway reasonably in a few soecific situations.
I can't recall the last time I used Siri on my iPhone, or anyone else I know, for that matter; however, I've used Google Now on an almost daily basis on my Nexus 7. Execution is key.
I think when parent(s) were remarking on execution mattering they were implying: 'Execution is key ... to the success of the feature (and consequently) the brand'. My experience is very few people know what Google Now is. Your preference of it does not demonstrate an example of that sort of success-due-to-execution that other posters are suggesting Apple's products exemplify.
Have there been recent instances of Apple cutting features from a device on a new release?
I hope touch id proves to be successful, but I'm really interested to see what happens if it's not. How do you save face and stop investing in a technology, while also weaving a story that convinces customers they don't need it anymore?
> But they nail the initial execution, and the communication. So their phones are still the absolute centre of the market. And no other company can inspire product lust to the degree they can.
While they may have implemented Touch ID really well, it's still just yet another way of unlocking the device. Strategically it has little benefit to Apple.
How much would you pay for Touch ID? It offers little security benefit, only allowing you to log in a tiny bit faster. I can log in with my passcode fairly quickly and often without even looking at the screen. Maybe $5? $10 at a stretch. Definitely not worth getting locked into Apple's platform for another generation.
Edit: It will be extremely telling of the politics of touch ID internally within apple when we see the uptake of this stuff on non-iPhone hardware. Does the entire company believe in this technology? Will we see it on the iPad, iPad Mini? On Macbooks? Once we see deeper integration of touch ID across the rest of Apple's hardware devices and software services would a moat start being formed, but it would require a stern guiding hand within Apple to make it happen.
> While they may have implemented Touch ID really well, it's still just yet another way of unlocking the device. Strategically it has little benefit to Apple.
Uh, how many times a day do you perform some type of authentication of your identity? I have a feeling this will be one of those foot-in-mouth statements.
Haha, I certainly hope so - that's what I meant by my edit above. If Apple pushes this technology across the entire company then only at that time does it become a compelling part of the Apple ecology. If too many services/devices "chicken out" and avoid integrating with Touch ID then Apple will continue to be forced to carry legacy authentication mechanisms, lowest-common-denominator style.
If this tech remains an iPhone (or even just iDevice) only tech, it's a (albeit impressive) party trick. Nothing provided by touch ID can't be eventually replicated by a competitor, patents notwithstanding.
No other OEM is positioned like Apple is to pull this off, but it won't be easy to elevate touch id to how we today perceive something like retina.
It seems that the technology is intrinsically linked to the A7 processor. I hate linking to a Quora article, but this one actually highlights why the A7 is such a leap.
Apple bought a company that made fingerprint scanners (like the one in the Motorola Atrix HD) and put the secure info in the secure area of the ARM chip, which ARM designed for putting secure info in.
Except make that sound like the moon landing, SpaceX, Tesla and the Oceans 11 heist all rolled into one.
Are we still allowed to call Apple a cult? Or are they a full blown religion now?
In other words, you think it's fun to make up a sentence, out of whole cloth, about how Apple is supposedly "making something sound like the moon landing", etc., and then post a troll attack based on what you made up. In addition, all your facts, every single fact in your post, is wrong:
-No, the Touch ID scanner is not like the one in the Motorola Atrix, at all. Totally different and superior technology. The Motorola uses the standard, inferior, straight-line fingerprint sensor that you have to swipe your finger across. These are easily fooled by many methods, including a lifted print or a mold of the user's finger.
-No, it's not an ARM chip; Apple designed the chip. Not ARM. Apple also designed the secure area of the chip; not ARM. It does use ARM CPU cores, yes. Which is different.
Are we allowed to call you a troll yet? Or just content-free and annoying?
Apple hasn't "made it sound" like anything except a fingerprint sensor with good convenience and very good security. Which is what it apparently is. So pipe down, mister.
I was referring to the 1744 word Quora answer that was linked in the post I replied to. Not to Apple's official PR, just one member of their volunteer PR army.
That link also claims that Apple uses a "version of TrustZone" from ARM, which seems highly likely. We'll not hear about it from Apple just like Nuance aren't allowed to talk about the fact that they make the voice for Siri, and just like Samsung screen prints little Apple logos on the chips it makes for them.
But since you're so sure it's not, what's your source?
That I like reading about technology and business, not feel-good fairy stories that people make up about technology and business and (un-?) intentionally obscure the usually more interesting truth?
>While they may have implemented Touch ID really well, it's still just yet another way of unlocking the device. Strategically it has little benefit to Apple.
No, it's not.
It has two properties that are very important:
1) It's very secure (not like Face unlock, which could be fooled by a photograph or fail to work depening on poor lighting etc).
2) It's very natural (you already press the home button to open the phone anyway, you don't need good light, you don't need to hold it so that the camera centers your face etc). So people will use it, unlike Face unlock which is usually discarded.
Why are both of those things important? Because it means it can be used a authentication mechanism for buying stuff. In fact, Apple has already integrated it with iTunes IIRC.
BOOM, you don't even have to add your Apple ID password anymore!
Add Bluetooth 4, Passbook, camera for scanning codes and stuff, and half a billion iTunes accounts, and you have an "mobile payments" winner.
Strategically it has a huge benefit to Apple. Touch ID provides a secure way to authenticate your iTunes account, which millions have linked to their credit cards.
If Apple ever starts offering payment services through iTunes (using NFC or some other technology), authenticated payments can be done in an instant instead of "just wait a bit while I enter my password".
By strategically I mean that while it may offer great benefits to both customers and apple, the technology in and of itself offers only a small barrier to moving to another platform. That barrier will rise with the adoption of touch id across Apple devices and services.
If you're an iPhone user and I took away your iPhone and replaced it with an Android phone, would the first thing you complain about be touch id?
Build quality, accessories, apps (maybe?) are all things that Apple has going for it with the iPhone that at the moment are more strategically important than touch id.
It's like free samples at Costco. They're awesome, you miss them when you shop at a different grocery store, but at the end of the day there are other reasons why you shop at Costco and if you decided you needed to go to a different grocery store, those free samples aren't going to sway you to come back.
If I was used to paying for goods with my iPhone using touch ID and I had to start entering a passphrase instead with another phone to make payments, it might very well be one of the biggest complaints I had.
It's a consumer product, so it's more about the feeling that only your fingerprint can unlock your phone. If it takes off, and people like it, you're going to see it everywhere. The politicking is just slippery slope stuff, who knows what's going to happen.
"Does the entire company believe in this technology?"
Huh? Apple isn't a bunch of fiefdoms with competing and disparate product silos. Apple as a whole is completely behind this technology, and the fact that you don't understand that renders your opinion fairly moot.
> Not responding to the fawning per se, but specifically the "unlocking mechanism that is going to be market-defining": face unlock seems undeniably cooler still, works reasonably well, has been shipping on all Android phones for nearly two years now, yet certainly hasn't "defined" any markets.
See, that's exactly what the OP means. I tried to use face unlock on my Nexus 7 - it's just noot good enough. Too slow, too unreliable, especially in bad light conditions. I obviously haven't had the change to play with the iPhone 5s yet, but I'm quite confident that after getting used to keeping the thumb on the home button after turning it on, you won't event notice the fingerprint scanner.
I remember when two of my friends got Android phones that were face unlockable. First thing we did was hold up an iPhone with a picture of their face to it and it worked to unlock the phone! We tried this a bunch of times and it worked every time. I don't know if the technology still sucks like it did about a year ago but I have a feeling that Touch ID will not be foiled as easily.
Face unlock is a gimmicky BS feature. It used to be fooled even by an image, and it can fail easily in low light or such.
But the most important thing is that it's a BS procedure, to have to look into the camera and get it to capture your face. Not the natural way to hold the phone when casually unlocking it (I, for example, as lots of people, do it casually at an angle to my face).
Putting your finger on the home button, on the other hand, is something you have to do anyway to open it, and you can even do it while the phone's getting out of your pocket.
Don't Android manufactures/users defending this see these OBVIOUS flaws?
They updated it to check for a blink, but even the android phones that had a fingerprint scanner a few years ago, and made by the same company Apple later bought, isn't getting any respect so clearly any non-Apple approved security engineering decisions are declasse.
More trolling from you, just like elsewhere in this thread. As you are no doubt well-aware, Apple's fingerprint scanner is not at all the same technology as the Android phones of the last few years, which all, without exception, use the type of sensor you must swipe your finger across. These are less reliable, less fast in recognition, and less secure.
Not necessarily. Technology can go from 'gimmick' to 'wow' in a few years. For example, faster CPUs or improved software may have decreased both the false positive and true negative probabilities.
I don't know whether that applies here, though. I have no experience with either the 'old' and the 'current' technology, and this review does not give much info, either.
Or, you know, the Android guys put it out early, when it wasn't early, usable, or fast enough yet, just to seem "innovative", and Apple put it when it's confident that it (as much as possible) "it just works".
You know, there were lots of mp3 players before the iPod too. If you wanted a bulky, crappily assembled gadget with a frustrating UI (and FM radio!).
Check out this video of a biometrics professor fooling high-end fingerprint scanners with a gelatin finger printed from a digital image of a fingerprint: http://youtu.be/K1Sx_BmfZ8I
Now consider that an attacker with physical access to your phone can either lift your fingerprint from the screen (you have been touching the screen, haven't you?), or can retrieve the software image of your fingerprint by plugging your iphone into their computer.
After reading about how Touch ID actually works, and how it reads the characteristics of the electrical field created between the sensor and the valleys of your finger's living skin tissue, I think it will take something more sophisticated than this professor's gelatin mold. Also, there is no software image of your fingerprint stored on the iPhone, it's a hashed signature of various data points from the electrical field, not a 2D or 3D representation of your fingerprint. Of course I'm not a biometric security expert, just someone who's been reading about Touch ID, so maybe I'm wrong.
To be fair, the technology doesn't have to be completely safe, it just has to be good enough. It probably is good enough, for those who don't even use a code.
Face Unlock doesn't work very well, is less secure and much more difficult. This is hardly a "cute trick". We are going to see the rapid expansion of fingerprints in place of passwords and it is going to be pretty neat.
The problem with fingerprints is you can only change your password 10 times and faking them at readers has been easy since at least 2001(Including the ones doing heat detection and ridge depth checking).
I sincerely hope not since, as a recent HN submission pointed out, you [EDIT] possibly [/EDIT] lose all 5th amendment protections in the US when your device is no longer protected by "something you know"
Good question, not a clue but anecdotally I have never seen a finger-print scanner enabled computer that didn't use it as part of a two-factor auth as well as password in a corporate environment.
The cynical part of me thinks that the proliferation of mobile devices + the close proximity of these new devices to danger (danger being people who would quite like you to give them access at every opportunity it seems. e.g. employees of an increasingly privacy-hostile government, such as the police) in the hands of users who don't know the implications is the biggest change/problem.
It's a camera taking a picture, of course it can be defeated. It's a good thing the fingerprint scanner isn't... wait. These things are toys. If you expect meaningful security from any of them, you've been fooled by marketing.
The fingerprint sensor is not an optical device. It's a capacitive device, so it will take a bit more to fool than a photo. See page 8 of the review:
Touch ID is a capacitive fingerprint sensor embedded behind a sapphire crystal cover. The sensor works by forming a capacitor with your finger/thumb. The sensor applies a voltage to one plate of a capacitor, using your finger as the other plate. The resulting electric field between your dermis (layer right below your outward facing skin) and the Touch ID sensor maps out the ridges and valleys of your fingerprint.
The fingerprint scanner uses RF to look at the layer of cells below the outermost layer of dead cells, so it's doing far more than taking a photo. (That's been covered in recent days on HN)
That's exactly the point. It doesn't matter whether it's really hi-tech or unique or not. It's Apple's ability to present these things in a way which just makes you salivate that matters. This is a point which seems so hard for tech people to understand... it doesn't matter if you think people should see through Apple's claims, the spoils go to Apple because they know, as seemingly no other company on earth does, how to entrance people. A few key features, lavish, presentation, a feeling of luxury... that's what builds anticipation and excitement. Apple's closest equivalent are food companies, who have mastered the dramatic, salivatory description of products.
>> How exactly is putting a little scanner inside a button going to be meaningfully better?
Quoting from the article:
"Apple's Touch ID was the biggest surprise for me. I found it very well executed and a nice part of the overall experience. When between the 5s and the 5/5c, I immediately miss Touch ID."
Coming from someone as respectable as Anand, I would call that reasonable grounds to call TouchID "meaningfully better".
Maybe you can point to something similar for face unlock?
How do you use face unlock while glancing at your phone from the corner of your eye?
I think it's these sorts of practical considerations that really make Apple products special. I feel like there is someone at Apple thinking through what happens when a dad carrying a baby gets a phone call. I don't feel like that's the case with say Samsung.
Not to bag on the iPhone's fingerprint detection in general - it looks to be impressive to me, in fact - but one thing it probably won't do very effectively is protect you from your spouse, or anyone else who has access to your hands while you sleep. The same risk will be present during overnight stays in police cells, probably.
"Slightly easier protection against spousal snooping doesn't qualify"
It is about far more than that: it is about a new payment system, both more secure and more convenient. If that doesn't seem ambitious enough for you, I don't know what would.
You wouldn't trust face recognition to allow payments on stores or the Internet. Touch ID is designed so you can trust it, down to the separate secure storage for your fingerprint data.
It starts with being able to use your fingerprint to authorise payments at the App and iTunes Stores, and escalates from there.
How does this "protections against spousal snooping" joke of an argument not apply 100% equally to your "undeniably cooler" face unlock? Both have PIN fallbacks anyways.
You're not seeing the big picture. Touch ID isn't just another gimmicky feature, it's something Apple spend a lot of money on. They acquired the company that made the technology, and improved it in a way only Apple could.
Today it's a method to unlock your device, but there is no way that this is all Apple wants it to do. The possibilities are endless. Imagine not having to put your password into another website, instead you just touch the home button. Making a purchase on iTunes? Use the scanner instead of the password, etc.
But that's not all. This could easily be used in a retail environment, where a prompt on your screen shows up and says "Buy foobar for $5.99?". Touch ID does the rest.
I think you've got some selective bias here (you couldn't tell by your writing :)), I see two things happening here.
Keep in mind, I think TouchID is a great feature, but...
1)Minor improvements get fawned over and made to seem like such a life-changing massive improvement and Apple fans gloat about how Apple is the best because of x, often when other manufacturers have had the same feature/capabilities for a long time. Doesn't matter, now Apple has it, it just sucked before.
2)Apple actually seems to regularly release just about as many new features/capabilities as the next guy, but then focuses in on the things that it's fan base promotes and is excited about, and that becomes a feedback loop regarding the 'few key features'. There was a tag-cloud image from the keynote that listed all the new stuff, and most of it you'll never hear about again. It isn't the focus on key features in every release, it's you, deciding what features are key and then telling your friends all about them, and then Apple also amplifying your message. If people latched onto iBeacons, we'd be reading about that non-stop now. The difference (and where you're correct) is that Apple focuses on these features vs. Samsung with the S4 commercial that tries to show you everything and you end up not remembering any of them. Contrast that with the MotoX ads (very well done), which are still a bit scatter-shod, but much more focused.
Question for you though, what's with the comment about "Google competing in the medium-term"?? I think you're more confident about Apple then they are ;)
> Doesn't matter, now Apple has it, it just sucked before.
Because this is very often exactly the case.
Apple get things wrong (especially when it comes to network services). But when they get things right — really right — you realise that no one else had done it properly before.
> Apple actually seems to regularly release just about as many new features/capabilities as the next guy, but then focuses in on the things that it's fan base promotes and is excited about
This is not true. Apple focuses on the features that it feels defines their products — not what their "fan base promotes." Apple didn't focus on Touch ID because everyone was clamouring for a fingerprint scanner; they focused on it because they felt it was a truly good solution to the problem of unlocking your phone (something many people didn't even consider to be a "problem").
The tag-cloud image is from WWDC. They always do this to show the new APIs and features that developers will be excited to use.
Apple focused on three features with the 5s. They did not choose to focus on these because of what people were talking.
I am not sure why you state:
> It isn't the focus on key features in every release, it's you, deciding what features are key and then telling your friends all about them, and then Apple also amplifying your message
This does not happen at all. Apple does not "amplify" what people are talking about.
other manufacturers have had the same feature/capabilities for a long time
No they haven't, nobody had such a fingerprint reader in the phone, all others (specifically I know of only one at the moment, do write if you know more) are "slide you finger, not too fast, not too slow, don't press the side, oops not good enough, slide it again." Having used such readers, I know they are really annoying. Not the one on iPhone 5S. You press the finger not having to care about the angle and that's it. Compared to the slide ones that reject your whole slide because it was a little to the left or to the right and where only one slide direction is allowed and it takes exact time, iPhone's is pure magic.
"Having something" is not "we can write it on the spec sheet even if it's unusable."
Motorola Atrix shipped with fingerprint scanning back in 2011. The reason any other device doesn't have that feature ? Apple bought the company that made the scanners and stopped all further support. This even killed support for new android versions on the Atrix. They then took 2 years to implement it on one of their devices.
Also having not used the iphone 5s, you can not blindly say the solution will be market defining or very secure. Any technology like this will consistently work. Your phone will most likely ship with a backup security system that will be used when the phone can't match the finger prints. What would that mean ? Any random person can exceed the number of tries with finger print unlock and then go to the back up system that is no more secure than existing solutions.
> Apple is so far ahead of the competition it's ridiculous - maybe Google can compete in the medium-term, I'm not sure
This line just reeks of Apple fan boyism. There is literally nothing on the ios now that is ahead of android. Infact for the last couple of releases ios has been catching up with android (notifications, quick settings etc). It still does not have intents, widgets, default apps that can be replaced. But yes, live inside your own bubble and drool at everything apple.
The fingerprint scanner on the Atrix was of the primitive kind, where you have to swipe your thumb and hope it scanned. Half the time it didn't. The reason it took Apple 2 years to implement it was because they waited for a better solution to come up. Their implementation is less of a hassle than previous fingerprint scanners were for consumer devices. This is where Apple shines: execution.
Let's not get carried away. Apple makes the best hardware. They always have, and probably always will. But there's a lot more to a phone than the hardware. Lots of people genuinely prefer the way Android does things and I don't think Apple will ever figure out how to do cloud services properly.
Would be great if there is insider info on the process Apple made their decisions on what features to put into new product. It definitely not just marketing driven, but a mix that includes the technical and supply chain. Material for a book.
From what I heard the fingerprint reader is partially enterprise driven. Apple are doing everything to ensure maximum security on devices so they can replace BlackBerry and have a strong USP against Android in enterprise sales.
