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Comment by bsimpson | Hacker News Reader

No TouchID? Surprised they'd introduce a new feature on their premium phone and not include it on the (currently) premium iPads, especially since the other 5s hardware (motion coprocessor, 64-bit architecture) has been carried over.

I would have thought they'd want to build a basic foundation for the future, e.g. "all devices better than the 5s include 64 bit, motion, and TouchID". When you vary on a feature (like TouchID), you discourage people from building cutting-edge experiences that require it.

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Touch ID sensors are supply constrained and putting it on more things than the 5s wouldn't help.

Probably the most logical answer to the question. Sometimes in the midst of all the speculation we forget about the simplest explanations.

Well, TouchID has no API, so it's not like third parties can build cutting-edge experiences on top of that either way.

Yet. It's much easier to upgrade software than hardware.

I agreed 100%. I'm assuming that it will come next year (or whenever) when/if they have multi-user support in iOS. Scan your finger, get logged in as your user.

I don't think that they'll add multiuser support because then the incentive for e.g. each family member getting their own idevice would be less. instead people might get a family ipad...

The benefit from having multiple iPads is that multiple people can use theirs at once. Multi-user doesn't help that fact, you end up with a family iPad that's just shared without separate user accounts.

Mostly agree - although you can only use TouchID now to unlock your phone and buy stuff from Apple. So I think they probably want to give it a year out in the wild to see exactly how secure it is, so they can then unleash it with an API to developers.

That's my hunch.

It's also not as useful on a tablet, so there's less hurry.

A phone is often in public spaces, and unlocked dozens of times a day. That's rare for a tablet.

I think TouchID is way more useful on the phone which you unlock tens of times daily vs the iPad which maybe you unlock once or twice depending on your usage.

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