AuthenTec Sells Off Embedded Security Systems, Leaving FingerPrint Technology for Apple

everything-i · Nov 20, 2012

izyreal said:
I have never had a run in with a mugger, and I doubt that you have either. The scenario that you are describing is highly unlikely.
On the other hand, I HAVE lost my phone. Requiring fingerprint authentication would prevent somebody from being able to use your phone to buy things. I would much rather take the risk of losing my finger in the mugging scenario you posit (statistically will never happen to me) then take the risk that losing my phone = losing everything I have in the bank.

To put your scenario in perspective, if there is no fingerprint scanner included on your phone, then payment security will be in the form of a number/question that you need to answer in order to make a payment. Conceivably a 'crack-head' mugger could capture you and torture you until you give up your information. Like finger-chopping, this is highly unlikely.

I really want my phone to replace my wallet. The way I envision the future of mobile payments is this:
-Credit card readers will all have NFD sensors installed on them.
-Payment will be made by activating a payment app and then passing your phone over the NFD sensor. A digital signature will then be requested by your phone. This signature can take the form of a security question, fingerprint, PIN code, etc.
-A digital receipt is transferred to your phone

A system similar to the one that I describe above would make tracking expenses very easy. You would have digital access to not only how much you spend at a given store, but exactly what you purchased. Budgeting would be extremely simple because the daily input of data that a good budget requires would be almost completely automated. You would suddenly be able to see exactly what your shoe addiction costs.

Yes, there are security concerns to consider with a mobile payment system. The company (hopefully mine ) that ultimately creates the mobile payment system that we all use, will need to consider everything from your far-fetched mugging scene, to the more realistic possibility that your entire purchasing history/location/habits could be packaged and sold.

Fear is no bedfellow of innovation.

No this is why finger print ID has never been used on cash machines, if someone is willing to beat the crap out of you to get you to tell them your pin they are perfectly capable or razoring off a finger. And yes I have been mugged and it isn't a pleasant experience getting a knife held to your back to get you to divulge your pin after they have already punched you in the face a couple of times to soften you up a bit.

hchung · Nov 20, 2012

KnightWRX said:
You don't get it sorry. That's not my line of thought. I don't apply simple black and white moralistic determination to corporate entities.

I can add a few points, like all their IP lawsuits which is not meant to win them anything, it's meant to stall, hence why they go for early preliminary injunctions on shaky IP (all the patents getting invalidated, the lawsuits thrown out) and want unfair terms and refuse to negotiate with patent holders for standards they use, accusing them of FRAND abuse and trying to redefine FRAND to benefit them.

Apple is allergic to competition. It hates having to compete, because frankly, Apple kinda sucks at competing. It's sad because they make truly great products a lot of people (including myself) enjoy using. They make tons of money, but it seems they want more, especially for the iPhone which is right now, their biggest source of revenues and could hurt them seriously if it comes crashing down.

BTW, the supply chain bit ? http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/22/technology/apple_supply_chain/index.htm.

I'll ignore the pro-Apple marketing rhetoric links you posted. Gruber and AllThingsD... gah. Link me to Apple's site next time, I think it'll be less biased.

So... clang?

It certainly sounds to me like you apply moralistic traits to corporate entities.
In this thread, you've implied that Apple buys up supply just to give other companies a hard time.

"If this is anything like the Liquid Metal exclusivity license Apple acquired, it could very much be not about integrating it in its own products, but about locking its competition out of it."

"Apple is allergic to competition. It hates having to compete, because frankly, Apple kinda sucks at competing. It's sad because they make truly great products a lot of people (including myself) enjoy using."

If you're going to invoke Occam's Razor in a discussion, you have to take the simplest explanation:
Apple bought tons of parts because they needed to make tons of widgets. That the market ran out of parts wasn't a goal, but a side effect.

Did you read the article or just run a search for "apple blocks competition" and return the first link? The article you link to says the same thing as the articles I linked to. It doesn't say Apple does this because they hate competition. It doesn't say Apple does this specifically to lock competitors out. It says Apple bought to ensure supply.

You ignored the fact that Apple has fronted the cost for other company's plants. Claiming biased sources doesn't evade facts.

There's a difference between intending to cause competitors supply chain issues as a goal, and causing competitors supply chain issues as a natural side effect.
Your wording strongly implies you believe the former.
Had you claimed the latter, I probably would have just hit +1 and ran along.

izyreal · Nov 20, 2012

everything-i said:
No this is why finger print ID has never been used on cash machines, if someone is willing to beat the crap out of you to get you to tell them your pin they are perfectly capable or razoring off a finger. And yes I have been mugged and it isn't a pleasant experience getting a knife held to your back to get you to divulge your pin after they have already punched you in the face a couple of times to soften you up a bit.

I am sorry that you were mugged. I am quite sure that it was an unpleasant experience, just as losing a finger would be terrible.
On the other hand (no pun intended), your unfortunate experience should not be used to disallow everyone else from utilizing a technology like fingerprint scanning. If a large enough user base is comfortable with the risk, and I suspect that there is a large enough base, then it should be an option. Personally, I would prefer the convenience of a fingerprint scan (takes a fraction of a second) to the hassle of having to remember and type a password/pin code. I fully recognize that many users would not have a problem using a password; I just prefer a finger swipe.

The question really comes down to whether the credit card companies and banks are willing to take the risk. They are the ones with the financial finger in the pie

What I really want is a mobile payment system that is just as fast and convenient as a credit card, but that allows for the digitizing of my purchasing history (as described in my last post). If that can be achieved without using a fingerprint scanner, I'd be just as happy. Maybe a retinal scanner?

Breathalyzer?

KnightWRX · Nov 20, 2012

hchung said:
So... clang?

What about it ? A University of Illinois project has something to do with this discussion... why ?

Clang is pretty much the same situation as WebKit.

BTW, feel free to browse Apple's open source site to try to find other "arguments" that don't really matter here :

http://opensource.apple.com/

hchung said:
It certainly sounds to me like you apply moralistic traits to corporate entities.
In this thread, you've implied that Apple buys up supply just to give other companies a hard time.

There is no morals involved. Apple does what it does to benefit itself. It does it through arming competition in the supply chain, IP litigations and by blocking technologies that could offer advantages or level the playing field.

It's not an evil thing, it's not a good thing. But it does tell me that Apple doesn't want to compete, if it can prevent competition, it would rather do that than face off with the competition on the market place.

subsonix · Nov 20, 2012

KnightWRX said:
What about it ? A University of Illinois project has something to do with this discussion... why ?

Clang is pretty much the same situation as WebKit.

You're wrong. Clang is an Apple C/C++/Obj-C compiler front end to LLVM.

hchung · Nov 20, 2012

KnightWRX said:
Then. Why. The. Exclusivity ?

*sigh*

Look, I'm not saying Apple shouldn't be looking into Liquid Metal, or trying it out, or getting a license to the some of the patents. It's the exclusivity bit that bugs me, especially in light of Apple not actually using it.

Sandisk had MP3 players built with the stuff in 2006. That it's not ready for Apple to use in the quantities they need for parts they need is not what I'm having an issue with. It's locking out other players that might have a use for which the product is ready that is the puzzling part. It's Apple trying to gain an advantage using its cash reserves, locking people out of technology.

Same as their stylus patents, touch screen Macs even though "they don't work" patents.

Apple needs to stop trying to compete by preventing others from competing, it needs to rely on its great products and marketing instead. There will always be users who don't want/need Apple products and trying to prevent them from having the choice to go elsewhere is just going to hurt their brand image in the end.

It all remains to be seen if this applies to this AuthenTec purchase, it's just sad that people that have these AuthenTec enable devices outside of Apple are now locked out of future updates because Apple is picking up the IP, especially in light that they don't really seem to have a use for it.

Why the exclusivity?

Probably because they had intentions of making a product using it and wanted to make sure they wouldn't be held up.
Either the project got cancelled or they actually are using it and we just don't know. If it got cancelled, then yes, the investment in a license was mostly a waste, and goes unused. And in that case, the only end effect would be that nobody else can use it in consumer electronics until the license expires. We don't actually know.

Evidence from people I know pointed to Apple working on multitouch research as far back as 2000, leading up to the Fingerworks acquisition. Most of the details, they obviously didn't want to tell me. If you were to tell me in 2006 that buying out Fingerworks was just to bury it, I'd be sad and probably nod in agreement because there's little other evidence. But in reality, their tech got rolled into a project that shipped after 6+ years of development.

Unlike Fingerworks, production usage of Liquid Metal is obviously harder because it's a physical material. If it would go into mass production, it's not silly to think that Apple would think its production volumes would require a company's dedication.

I doubt any of us commenting on this thread know what's going on in Apple's hardware groups with regards to anything that Liquid Metal can be used for. But something else that bothers me is that while we've heard that other manufacturers have used Liquid Metal before, and we've heard people claim that Liquid Metal isn't being used by Apple except in some glorified paper clips, I can't seem to find any details.

1) What were other manufacturers using it for? What for then?
2) What are Apple's Macbook and iMac hinges made of? Maybe brackets or some structural frame? iFixit never goes into that level of detail.

If it turns out that Nokia used it for a wriststrap loop or the company logo, that's just be amusing.

hchung · Nov 20, 2012

KnightWRX said:
What about it ? A University of Illinois project has something to do with this discussion... why ?

Clang is pretty much the same situation as WebKit.

BTW, feel free to browse Apple's open source site to try to find other "arguments" that don't really matter here :

http://opensource.apple.com/

There is no morals involved. Apple does what it does to benefit itself. It does it through arming competition in the supply chain, IP litigations and by blocking technologies that could offer advantages or level the playing field.

It's not an evil thing, it's not a good thing. But it does tell me that Apple doesn't want to compete, if it can prevent competition, it would rather do that than face off with the competition on the market place.

University of Illinois project? What? Oh, you're talking about LLVM. Not clang.

They're separate projects but typically used together. It replaces using gcc as a front end for LLVM.

clang was written by Apple from scratch, released in a pretty unrestrictive license as open source, and Apple continues to contribute resources to it publicly. How does that block competition?

everything-i · Nov 20, 2012

izyreal said:
I am sorry that you were mugged. I am quite sure that it was an unpleasant experience, just as losing a finger would be terrible.
On the other hand (no pun intended), your unfortunate experience should not be used to disallow everyone else from utilizing a technology like fingerprint scanning. If a large enough user base is comfortable with the risk, and I suspect that there is a large enough base, then it should be an option. Personally, I would prefer the convenience of a fingerprint scan (takes a fraction of a second) to the hassle of having to remember and type a password/pin code. I fully recognize that many users would not have a problem using a password; I just prefer a finger swipe.

The question really comes down to whether the credit card companies and banks are willing to take the risk. They are the ones with the financial finger in the pie

What I really want is a mobile payment system that is just as fast and convenient as a credit card, but that allows for the digitizing of my purchasing history (as described in my last post). If that can be achieved without using a fingerprint scanner, I'd be just as happy. Maybe a retinal scanner? Breathalyzer?

I understand your point but the banks already declined to do transactions with finger prints because of risks of prints being faked or evil people collecting fingers, after my experience I wouldn't go near a device that used finger prints for transactions, that's all I'm trying to say

KnightWRX · Nov 20, 2012

hchung said:
University of Illinois project? What? Oh, you're talking about LLVM. Not clang.

They're separate projects but typically used together.

Considering clang is a front-end to LLVM, I don't see how they can be seperated.

hchung said:
It replaces using gcc as a front end for LLVM.

GCC is not a front-end to LLVM.

hchung said:
clang was written by Apple from scratch, released in a pretty unrestrictive license as open source, and Apple continues to contribute resources to it publicly. How does that block competition?

How does that even have anything to do with my argument ? Your initial response was to a post about WebKit. I simply pointed out to the poster that Apple released the WebKit source to comply with the LGPL, not out of the goodness of their own hearts. This comment wasn't meant to apply to every Apple project under the sun, so why you are trying desperately to bring a LLVM front-end into this, I still don't understand.

kdarling · Nov 20, 2012

hchung said:
... the only end effect would be that nobody else can use it in consumer electronics until the license expires. We don't actually know.

The Apple license acquired perpetual exclusive consumer electronics rights to any technology created or acquired by Liquidmetal up to at least February 2014.

Evidence from people I know pointed to Apple working on multitouch research as far back as 2000, leading up to the Fingerworks acquisition.

Quite possible, considering multitouch dates back to the early 80s.

Most of the details, they obviously didn't want to tell me. If you were to tell me in 2006 that buying out Fingerworks was just to bury it, I'd be sad and probably nod in agreement because there's little other evidence. But in reality, their tech got rolled into a project that shipped after 6+ years of development.

People repeat this all the time, yet I can't think of one Fingerworks patent that got used in iOS. Or even close. As a Fingerworks founder noted when asked about this, their company was about opaque items, not transparent touchscreens.

But something else that bothers me is that while we've heard that other manufacturers have used Liquid Metal before, and we've heard people claim that Liquid Metal isn't being used by Apple except in some glorified paper clips, I can't seem to find any details.

One example is Samsung. They started using Liquid Metal for phone hinges back in 2002. They continued using LM for parts over the years, even creating the world's first LM luxury phone in 2008, citing its corrosion and scratch resistance. They continued to use it for trim.

KnightWRX · Nov 20, 2012

kdarling said:
One example is Samsung. They started using Liquid Metal for phone hinges back in 2002. They continued using LM for parts over the years, even creating the world's first LM luxury phone in 2008, citing its corrosion and scratch resistance. They continued to use it for trim.

Sandisk also used it in the Cruzer USB flash drives and Sensa e200 line of MP3 players.

subsonix · Nov 20, 2012

KnightWRX said:
Considering clang is a front-end to LLVM, I don't see how they can be seperated.

They are, clang handles parsing and errors, llvm handles code generation. llvm by itself is not a c compiler. The modular characteristics makes it useful in different projects. The decision to open source clang can be found straight from the horse's mouth:

http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/cfe-dev/2007-July/000000.html

KnightWRX said:
GCC is not a front-end to LLVM.

The gcc front end was used with llvm prior to clang, yes. Don't know about Mountain Lion but on for example Snow Leopard llvm-gcc is part of the dev tools. From the man page description section:

llvm-gcc uses gcc front-end and gcc's command line interface. Consult the cc(1) man page for command line options supported by llvm-gcc.

hchung · Nov 21, 2012

KnightWRX said:
How does that even have anything to do with my argument ? Your initial response was to a post about WebKit. I simply pointed out to the poster that Apple released the WebKit source to comply with the LGPL, not out of the goodness of their own hearts. This comment wasn't meant to apply to every Apple project under the sun, so why you are trying desperately to bring a LLVM front-end into this, I still don't understand.

Sorry, I thought I had read that you were saying that they only release source based on license restrictions as a line of thought continuing from the locking competitors out discussion.

hchung · Nov 21, 2012

kdarling said:
People repeat this all the time, yet I can't think of one Fingerworks patent that got used in iOS. Or even close. As a Fingerworks founder noted when asked about this, their company was about opaque items, not transparent touchscreens.

I can't say for sure since I can't follow up, but I recall some mention of gestures. I'd guess it'd have something to do with the way multitouch gestures were distinguished from each other since that was a relatively unique feature on their pads. Does Fingerworks have any gesture implementation patents you know of?

kdarling said:
One example is Samsung. They started using Liquid Metal for phone hinges back in 2002. They continued using LM for parts over the years, even creating the world's first LM luxury phone in 2008, citing its corrosion and scratch resistance. They continued to use it for trim.

That's pretty interesting. Happen to know any details about whether it worked out well for them or not? I'm curious if there's any published data about if LM hinges failed less often compared to other materials, or if there's alternative failure modes.

guido.domenici · Nov 21, 2012

Finger-cutting no longer cuts it

Hi,

if someone is willing to beat the crap out of you to get you to tell them your pin they are perfectly capable or razoring off a finger

I believe AuthenTec fingerprint sensors nowadays are able to tell whether a finger is a live or dead one, by checking for things like heartbeat presence and other telltale clues.

Search

Search

AuthenTec Sells Off Embedded Security Systems, Leaving FingerPrint Technology for Apple

everything-i

macrumors 6502a

hchung

macrumors 6502a

izyreal

macrumors regular

KnightWRX

macrumors Pentium

subsonix

macrumors 68040

hchung

macrumors 6502a

hchung

macrumors 6502a

everything-i

macrumors 6502a

KnightWRX

macrumors Pentium

kdarling

macrumors P6

KnightWRX

macrumors Pentium

subsonix

macrumors 68040

hchung

macrumors 6502a

hchung

macrumors 6502a

guido.domenici

macrumors newbie

Our Staff