Apple’s Struggle to Get the iPhone X to Market on Time

I believe that was an attempt at sarcasm ;)

Were they given the statement or is Bloomberg quoting what was given to other publications? In either case, if they got Bloomberg to slag themselves I tip my hat to Apple PR.

1 in a million for a RANDOM face.

Apple admitted during the announcement event that is was quite a bit lessor odds for a biological relative, especially a twin.

But you gain the convenience of unlocking your phone while wearing gloves, having dirty/wet hands, for people with callouses/scarring/other finger issues that have prevented Touch ID from ever functioning reliably (or at all), using a heavier duty cases, etc. Certainly there are tradeoffs here, but arguments to the effect that Touch ID is already the be-all end-all of biometric authentication have a strong odor of argument-from-familiarity. I remember many debates when Touch ID was first introduced that were topologically similar to debates now happening around Face ID. It's not as if Touch ID doesn't have friction points, we've just gotten used to working around them and/or living with them. But that doesn't mean authentication tech is "done".

The ideal of course would simply be to have both (preferably with some user control about using one or the other or both). While some of the functional use space they cover overlaps (as would other methods like retina scanning), it's definitely true that they have use cases which are independent. There isn't any inherent need for it to be a zero-sum game.

However, Apple is already apparently having significant trouble getting the X produced, apparently getting both into it was an impossible reach for this year, and at the end of the day "real artists ship". Touch ID was not refined when it first shipped, it got more accurate and much, much faster over time, it was merely "good enough to get the ball rolling", but at some point that stage of things is needed. It's a tradeoff that's a challenge to get right and people can argue about where the balance is in any given instance, but I think Apple has been pretty consistent about being willing to bite the bullet and get the cycle of refinement going at a stage just before full refinement, and I'm not sure they're wrong, or that the level of refinement they've managed to reach with other products would be possible as quickly without getting it out there and in real world use.

I’m pretty sure you can tune a parameter to trade off false negatives and false positives. If it has too many false negatives, you adjust it so that it doesn’t. Apple’s false positive rates surely come with an implied “at some acceptably small false negative rate.”

> But it will be the false negatives that will by far be the most annoying and noticeable.

How do you know that's what it means? You have literally no idea if this report is even true, or what the implications of it would be if it were true.

People are drawing a lot of conclusions from an unsubstantiated report on a brand new unreleased feature for a phone that nobody has yet and has never used in the wild.

Touch ID for my right hand usually stops working in a few weeks, and I have to delete and add those fingers/thumb back in. (Probably related to diabetes)

My Google Pixel XL (it's a testing device) has the same issue it seems.

I'm hoping Face ID will be more reliable.

They’ll pull fingerprints off your phone to defeat Touch ID. Unless the photo attack is substantially better (and given the 3D scanning tech used by Face ID, I doubt it), Face ID is still a win.

Edit: why “again”? What was the last time?

People probably don’t post a lot of 3D infrared scans of their face online, which is what FaceId uses.

(They also don’t leave them all over on the things they touch, like they do with finger prints.)

Also, I don’t know of your “lying with statistics” claim is fair. Of course, statistics are a great way to lie since you can have a mathematical certainly that what you are claiming is numerically accurate while at the same time give a false impression through selecting the numbers to present.

However, in this case, the implication is that FaceID is more precise and secure than Touch ID, which is probably true if it works the way they claim. (Well, we don’t really know that yet, but we don’t know the opposite yet, either.)

I had the same thought. It’s likely that the 1 million number is after the change. Either way, the larger point remains.

I don’t get how it’s marketing BS, when they described it just like you say.

The iPhone X won't look at 2D flat bitmaps of someone's face. It will be looking at a moving 3D map of someone's face.

Except that Face ID does not work on photos at all. It's a 3d technology and requires the phone's 3d sensors (more than one) for recognising the face.

If their number is correct, there are only about 7,000 lookalikes on the planet for any given user. Tracking one down and convincing them to participate in your nefarious scheme seems non-trivial. And remember that you must accomplish this within a fairly short time period (48 hours?) and two failures will lock you out for good.

If you’re the target of an attack by a sophisticated organization like an intelligence agency or a large industrial espionage operation, they might be able to pull this off. Common criminals will just break the phone up for parts. And either way, it’s better than fingerprints.

I've got a bet with a buddy that a properly trained FaceID doesn't get cracked or fooled inside a year or does inside 6 months.

We'll see soon enough, it's a tempting target.

Both of them are basically "logins". They are not secure and they can't be changed ever. Neither can't be a sole security instrument.

From what I remember, the overall smartphone sales in China is stagnating and Apple's marketshare is shrinking.

It's blazing fast in comparison to a 6 Plus running iOS 10. Doesn't exactly answer your question, but perhaps it's a bit of evidence.

I've used iPhones since the 3gs, and the iPhone 8 allows me to be more productive than any modern phone (had the Samsung S4, s5 and an early Google nexus device) I've owned since the blackberry.

I'm sure iOS 12 will slow it down, but for now I feel like my productivity is finally getting back to Blackberry days. My nostalgia for the instant response of those devices has grown over the past few years as phone os's and apps have become increasingly bloated. I really think there'd be a market for an email / messaging only device intended to be carried along side a phone if it did that one thing very well.

Still doesn’t matter. There is only one way to get those other features and that’s accept FaceID.

It’s no different from the ‘I want a Pixel 2 XL but I want a headphone jack’ problem. The company is only offering you one choice. Go without the headphone jack (or with FaceID) or don’t get the phone and hope for next year.

I use my phone a lot when it’s lying on a desk, can’t unlock it when the fingerprint sensor is on the back.

Besides, the convenience of TouchID is largely due to it being integrated in the home button, you’d lose that too.

I have a Nexus 5x and it has a fingerprint sensor on the back and can confirm, works great. Anything else for me is YAGNI

* it is a natural location for your finger when holding the phone*

Really? When I'm holding my phone (right hand), my fingers wrap around the left edge and my thumb rests along the right edge. Moving my thumb to the TouchId is easy. Moving my index finder to the center of the back panel is awkward.

I heard iPhones have a front facing camera ;)

So, not because it's a 1000$ piece of plastic for sending emojis and playing candy crush saga? My my, always when I think I'm doing good in life, I get reminded how westerners always have more money to burn.

FYI, current iPhones already light up the display when you hold them in a position where you can see your reflection.

The iPhone 7/8 already turn the screen on when you hold them up, so not sure how it's any worse to unlock.

She could get the black one and use the glass back.

You have to swipe up on the screen to get out of the lock screen when unlocked...so I doubt it'd stop that use case.

She can cover the notch with her thumb.

TouchID won't be back until it is built into the entire display for all-touches-can-be-authenticated goodness

Not even “soiled”. If you’ve just washed your hands Touch ID will likely not work. Touchscreen works just fine. Pretty annoying.

I've bought gloves at dollar stores that are touch sensitive. In this era, it's table stakes for things that you put on your two trusty smartphone operators. However, exactly zero gloves that cover your fingertips also work with Touch ID (naturally), so I don't think the gloves case is as edgy as you think.

The degree of muddled thinking around Apple's competence never cease to amaze me. Do you really think that Apple went about trying to replace TouchID, a fundamental part of the experience of using their most important product, with FaceID and didn't consider time to unlock as one of the most important engineering considerations?

There’s no fundamental reason they couldn’t let you add more than one face the same way they let you add more than one finger now.

I know these comments are generally frowned upon, so I apologize for veering off topic in advance – but I'm genuinely curious.

For the most part, there's no reason for my wife and I to interchange phones at any time. Functionality can be replicated easily between devices to the point where there are zero essential situations where she needs access to my device, or the other way around. Would you be willing to share the use case where your

> wife needs access to my phone (and vice versa)

For whatever reason, my finder is to sweaty or dirty for 20% of my TouchID attempts to work. I have to clean the home button with my shirt, clean my thumb, try again. The onstage demo didn't require cradling the iPhone like a babby to get FaceID working -- it can read your face from an angle. This is not like previous, selfie-based face-unlock strategies from other companies.

You don’t have to face unlock while It’s on the terminal. You can do it before.

Either way Apple Pay works much better in the Apple Watch than the phones and I doubt FaceID would change that either way (better or worse).

I live in a major metropolitan area and frequently travel to many others; I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually used Apple Pay. And two of them were at an Apple Store. Where are all these vendors with Apple Pay?

If they don’t then you’re covered under warranty for any defects.

If it’s a problem with something like face ID or a hideous screen you’ll know fast. It’s not like the FaceID sensor will ‘wear out’ after a few weeks of usage.

Regardless of what you call them, Geniuses are just CSRs, and I think we've all gotten ill-informed information about products and services from CSRs regardless of the company. I would stick to official press releases and copy about the device for accurate information.

There is absolutely no way FaceID is required, I would bet my life on it. It flies directly in the face of the whole "Apple cares about your privacy" thing they've been pushing as of late.

FaceID is not required to unlock your phone. From Apple's FaceID support page in the Privacy section:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208108

"If you choose to enroll in Face ID, you can control how it's used or disable it at any time. For example, if you don’t want to use Face ID to unlock your iPhone, open Settings > Face ID & Passcode > Use Face ID, and disable iPhone Unlock. To disable Face ID, open Settings > Face ID & Passcode, and tap Reset Face ID. Doing so will delete Face ID data, including mathematical representations of your face, from your device. If you choose to erase or reset your device using Find My iPhone or erasing all content and settings, all Face ID data will be deleted."

How about this objection:

With attention enabled, how is it any easier for police to force you to look at your phone to unlock it than it would be to grab your finger and force you to unlock your device with your fingerprint? Or beat you until you give up your passcode?

They all require restraining you and applying force, or threatening you until you comply. This is honestly the most ridiculous point.

All biometrics trade a little security for convenience. This is a known fact, it's not new, and it's no different with FaceID than it is with any other biometrics solution ever made.