Apple made a huge deal about how secure it was an how much of an improvement and how very sophisticated it was. It turns out, it wasn't really.

Now people are saying "well, they never really said it was all that good, or meant to keep you secure", blah blah blah.

Let's start with the basic press release:

"and introducing Touch ID™, an innovative way to simply and securely unlock your phone with just the touch of a finger."

" “iPhone 5s sets a new standard for smartphones, packed into its beautiful and refined design are breakthrough features that really matter to people, like Touch ID, a simple and secure way to unlock your phone with just a touch of your finger.""

From http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/09/10Apple-Announces-iP...

"“There’s so much personal stuff on these devices; our email, our photos, our contacts. We have to protect them. The most common way is to set up a passcode. A simple 4-digit passcode, or a more complex one if you want. Unfortunately, some people find it’s too cumbersome and dont set it up. In our research as much as half of people don’t ever set it up.”"

"We’ve set up a new technology that makes this super easy to do. We call it: Touch ID."

"“Your fingerprint is one of the best passwords in the world.”"

This was said by Apple at the iphone 5s press conference.

This says it is meant to replace the passcodes, and it was "one of the best passwords in the world", and supposed to be able to protect personal data.

Here's a cite: http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/10/live-blog-from-apples-iphon...

You can verify from other transcripts as well. I avoided the slides they had explaining how very sophisticated the sensor technology was.

So what i'm getting at is that most of the comments in this thread smack of "Apple never really meant it to do X, or Apple didn't say it would be all that secure". They did, on both counts. They said it would replace passwords, and they said it was quite secure.

The claims otherwise are ridiculous.