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Comment by valine | Hacker News Reader

There's more to it than that. Touch ID was already secure enough for most people. With Face ID you lose the convenience of unlocking your phone as you take it out of your pocket and the ability to discreetly unlock your phone without entering a passcode.

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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.

> But you gain the convenience of unlocking your phone while wearing gloves, having dirty/wet hands, for people with callouses/scarring/other finger issues...

What are those people going to do with their fingers once they unlock it? Use their voice to operate the phone? Sounds like a practice in frustration.

Many gloves work fine with a touch screen, but obviously don’t work with fingerprint scanners.

Special gloves that are made to work with touch screens work fine with a touch screen.

> 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

Perhaps, but it's entirely reasonable for users to take a wait-and-see approach to anything security related. TouchID, for better or worse, has run the gauntlet. Security researchers have had their hands on it and tried to exploit it. And the vulnerabilities have been minimal. FaceID hasn't undergone any of that scrutiny and we won't know how safe it is until after it's been through that process.

For that reason, I'm advising all the people I know (who ask) to skip the iPhoneX. If it's proven to work well, then I'll change my recommendation for the second generation. First-gen Apple products have a history of unforeseen problems (holding it wrong and such) anyways, so it's pretty sage advice to avoid the first incarnation of any new Apple design, regardless of the security considerations.

> TouchID, for better or worse, has run the gauntlet.

Yet if you had a 5S you knew how awesome it was from day one.

I think the point is if you're preordering something with a new feature, you'd better have a lot of trust in the company you're preordering from to deliver on what they promise.

Many people have that trust with Apple, so they're fine with committing in advance. I don't see a big problem with that when they have a very solid track record.

> (holding it wrong and such)

I never met a single person who actually had this issue, and there were literally millions and millions of iPhone 4 devices in the wild. I owned one personally, never experienced it. Few things were as overblown as this.

Apple offered everyone the option of simply returning the device for a full refund, and nobody took them up on it. Why? Because the phone was great and the issue was pretty much non-existent.

> I don't see a big problem with that when they have a very solid track record.

Haha...you obviously don't have much of a memory about Apple first-generation products. There has been early adopter pain on many, many new Apple products, both with new software releases and hardware. Most of the time they've been able to fix problems with software releases, but there have been a few times where that hasn't been sufficient.

> I never met a single person who actually had this issue

Then I guess we've never met, because I experienced it personally. I could easily reproduce the issue--simply touching the wrong spot on the side to bridge the two antennae would make the call drop. Luckily for me, my natural way of holding the phone to my ear didn't involve touching that part of the phone, but it's easy to see how that wouldn't be the case for others. The iPhone 4 was my last straw that pushed me towards the wait-and-see strategy for Apple products. Since then, I've never bought their new hardware less than 3 months after release or installed their software less than 2 weeks after release. It's made life using Apple products so much more enjoyable.

BTW...I don't remember being offered a full refund, only a free case which deteriorated and became unusable long before my 2-year contract expired, so it really wasn't a fix. I eventually just learned to be wary of touching that part of the rim. Cue the joke about the guy who went to the doctor and said, "It hurts when I do this."

> Haha...you obviously don't have much of a memory about Apple first-generation products.

Actually, I do. I stand by my assertion. Most new features Apple introduces are actually fine. Outside of a couple token examples, the "1st generation Apple product" thing is BS.

> BTW...I don't remember being offered a full refund

https://www.pcworld.com/article/201283/apple_iphone_4s_not_p...

They had a press conference where they admitted the issue, then made a page on their site demonstrating the issue on every leading phone of the day complete with short demo videos for each model.[0][1] This put other manufacturers like RIM and Nokia into a tizzy releasing their own death-grip press releases![2]

Free bumper cases and refunds.[3]

The rapid evolution of that antenna page via archive.org is really interesting.

If customers aren’t happy with the iPhone 4—“before or after you get a free case,” Jobs added—they can bring back the undamaged phone within 30 days for a full refund. Jobs said Apple won’t charge a restocking fee and that users would be able to get out of their contracts with AT&T.

“We want to make all of our customers happy,” Jobs said. “And if you don’t know that about Apple, you don’t know Apple.”

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20100719021135/Apple.com/antenna

[1]: https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-launches-antenna-perfo...

[2]: https://gizmodo.com/5589639/rim-and-nokia-respond-to-apples-...

[3]: https://www.macworld.com/article/1152751/iphone4_antenna_fre...

> Luckily for me, my natural way of holding the phone to my ear didn't involve touching that part of the phone

Then you weren’t affected by the issue. Just like most people.

Anyone could recreate it just by putting their finger in a certain spot. It was trivial to do. I could do it on my phone too.

But it never affected me for the same reason as you. There may be some people who had actual problems, but for most people it wasn’t actually a big deal. It was just a ‘ha ha Apple sucks too screw you king of the mountain’ story that got a ton of press. It was the first one, and right after the stolen prototype.

Subsequent ‘gates’, like bendgate, have gotten something much closer to the attention they actually deserved.

Besides. Is anyone going to preorder one without reading one of the reviews that will come out before preorders go live? If FaceID doesn’t work well we’ll know ahead of time.

Yes I was affected, just less than others. I still had to think about the issue whenever I changed hands or adjusted my grip. Having to keep something front-of-mind is being affected because it's consuming part of your focus.

>>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)

How does Face ID perform when you are wearing sunglasses?

Sunglasses prevent the “attention” check that Face ID requires by default, but which can be turned off.

>"Most sunglasses let through enough IR light that Face ID can see your eyes even when the glasses appear to be opaque." Federighi said

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/14/face-id-works-with-sung...

Only if the IR filters in the glasses don't work on the IR structured light. You can buy dsark glasses without IR filters, but most nice ones are 99% blocking.

He said most... so 50% of glassess would be sufficient to meet Feserighi's claim.

Do the IR filters in those nice glasses block the wavelengths that the iPhone’s sensors use? I imagine they’re aimed at blocking the sun which is probably not the same spectrum.

They are broad band IR filters because those are easier to design. Apple is likely using a very narrow band that doesn't have sun problems (see IR window from 8-14nm). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_window

However that nice band also gets filtered by polycarbonate which is common in sun and protective glasses. It also gets heavily cut by other typical IR absorbers, and creating a pass window will cost more money.

Thanks for the info. It will be interesting to see how it plays out once this thing is released.

Sunglasses are meant to block UV, not IR ;-)

@hungerstrike

You can use your phone with many gloves (the screen registers touch) you just can't use TouchID

>> How does Face ID perform when you are wearing sunglasses?

According to their press conference their facial recognition algorithms work with changes such as hair and with glasses.

Only time will tell how well it works in actuality.

With glasses, not SUN glasses. I suspect, also not any large glasses that are IR blocking or ski goggles. Perhaps not outside in the sun with a baseball hat on (depending IR filters and dynamic range).

All of this including the 1:Mil number are up for grabs since nobody has really tried it, but the challenges of 3D structured light matching aren't rocket science.

They said it works with most sunglasses, but not all.

I can already see Luxotica's new Fall line branding: "Face ID compatible sunglasses!"

Don't forget FaceID compatible scarfs, and religious garb like niqabs and burqas!

With sunglasses I think it's kind of adorable that I might have to lift them to prove it's "really me" like I'm getting carded or something.

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