Not sure if serious... It does not scan the whites of your eye (the sclera) but the iris. It looks at variation in colour and/or the radial pattern of the muscles in the iris. Thus allergies won't be an issue, but tinted contacts might (although I doubt it).
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Iris Scanning: The Newest Addition to Apple's Biometric Roadmap?
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Not sure if serious... It does not scan the whites of your eye (the sclera) but the iris. It looks at variation in colour and/or the radial pattern of the muscles in the iris. Thus allergies won't be an issue, but tinted contacts might (although I doubt it).
I don't think you can currently place both a camera unit and an eye scanning unit on the same apparatus. It'll be a long time before you see this implemented into iPhones and iPads.
But on the subject of biometrics in general, it's increasingly clear that a big part of iWatch's appeal will be based on very ambitious medical breakthroughs that cover a wide array of health and fitness based use-cases. Whether it's glucose monitoring, sleep monitoring, heart monitoring, and even common health dangers for the elderly, such as falling down and being able to notify the iPhone to call for help.
Clearly the deployment of iBeacons is with iWatch in mind too, and I'm sure Apple and many others have all sorts of creative ways to make local commerce a more exciting and modern experience. Whether it's finding your car in a large parking lot, finding luggage at the airport, or all sorts of shopping and point of sale scenarios...
The iWatch in theory is an incredibly ambitious project, and I think equally important to its success are the user-interfacing elements. I think Apple will have some continuity with watches of yore by having the UI be largely passive, meaning you don't do a lot of interacting with it. Most of the features I described is glanceable data. Like a Google Now, it'll provide you with information when and where you want/need it. And of course, I'm sure Jony Ive partnered with guys like Paul Deneve is going to make for some amazing designs.
This thing will sell to every hypochondriac on earth. Not to mention the elderly, the health conscious, and many people with applicable diseases, etc,. These stupid smartwatches out there now that think they're solving a problem because they give folks the convenience of not taking their phone out to view a text are DOA. Apple is going to reshape yet another market, and I believe this market is one that is most uniquely suited to Apple's assets.
But on the subject of biometrics in general, it's increasingly clear that a big part of iWatch's appeal will be based on very ambitious medical breakthroughs that cover a wide array of health and fitness based use-cases. Whether it's glucose monitoring, sleep monitoring, heart monitoring, and even common health dangers for the elderly, such as falling down and being able to notify the iPhone to call for help.
Clearly the deployment of iBeacons is with iWatch in mind too, and I'm sure Apple and many others have all sorts of creative ways to make local commerce a more exciting and modern experience. Whether it's finding your car in a large parking lot, finding luggage at the airport, or all sorts of shopping and point of sale scenarios...
The iWatch in theory is an incredibly ambitious project, and I think equally important to its success are the user-interfacing elements. I think Apple will have some continuity with watches of yore by having the UI be largely passive, meaning you don't do a lot of interacting with it. Most of the features I described is glanceable data. Like a Google Now, it'll provide you with information when and where you want/need it. And of course, I'm sure Jony Ive partnered with guys like Paul Deneve is going to make for some amazing designs.
This thing will sell to every hypochondriac on earth. Not to mention the elderly, the health conscious, and many people with applicable diseases, etc,. These stupid smartwatches out there now that think they're solving a problem because they give folks the convenience of not taking their phone out to view a text are DOA. Apple is going to reshape yet another market, and I believe this market is one that is most uniquely suited to Apple's assets.
Allow me to help:
Eye'm terribly allergic to puns and will pass out at an—
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"Current iris scanners used for the identification of multiple individuals can process 50 people per minute from multiple feet away as they walk at a normal pace."
...Wait what??
...Wait what??
Is anyone else not interested in any of these biometric devices being implemented on their phones or is it just me?
Not interested, I've always been for privacy, doesn't even matter if Apple has worked with the NSA or not, because according to recent reports the NSA has already hacked the iPhone, and can actually access user data If they wanted to.
And adding a Iris scanner or Fingerprint scanner will make matters worse.
And adding a Iris scanner or Fingerprint scanner will make matters worse.
This is great, as long as I can turn it off.
I don't want to go through a process to use my phone that would likely be affected by the glasses that I wear to be able to actually use said phone.
And despite what the article says it's never taken several seconds for my iPhone 5s to read my finger print after the first month of use, and even then it read it very quickly, just wrong.
I don't want to go through a process to use my phone that would likely be affected by the glasses that I wear to be able to actually use said phone.
And despite what the article says it's never taken several seconds for my iPhone 5s to read my finger print after the first month of use, and even then it read it very quickly, just wrong.
It's interesting reading all these comments against Iris Scanning! Feels like dejavo! Everything said about fingerprint scanning before iPhone 5S, being said all over again now 
I love puns.
There has to be a good cornea-copia worth of puns for eyes.
sorry, I deserve 20 lashes for that
Wouldn't want to make a spectacle of it.
I'm just not a pupil of the trade.
I'm closing the lid on this one
You read the article yesterday in which iris scanning with Samsung products was addressed, right?
You are right with allergies, but most probably tinted lenses would not cause any trouble if they are transparent.
I have been involved in some research projects related to iris scanning and possible medical conditions changing the recognition results. The most common recognition algorithm (John Daugman's IrisCode) has proved to be very robust.
Once the image is taken, the first step is to recognize the limits of the iris (white sclera on the outside, black pupil in the inside). The remaining ring is the "unrolled" (transformation to polar coordinates) to give a rectangle. The clever thing here is that after this it does not matter if the pupils are dilated or contracted.
The colour information in the resulting image is not significant. IrisCode can be calculated from colour images, but especially very dark eyes give better contrast in NIR (slightly longer wavelength than visible light). Also, with NIR a flash can be used without blinding the person to be recognized.
IrisCode does not even need to see the complete eye. Very often eyelids make it impossible to see the complete annular area. The required resolution is also quite small, a few hundred pixels across the eye is enough. (Which leads to the conclusion that the iris patterns can potentially be stolen from many photographs. In this sense retinal recognition is safer in high-security applications.)
It seems that very few eye-related diseases change the recognition results. However, there are conditions which change the way pupils react to light, so the "alive/dead" recognition may not be very robust.
Iris recognition is probably the most practical biometric recognition along with fingerprints. One of its advantages is better compliance due to it being a non-contact measurement. In the smartphone environment it does not necessarily need any extra hardware, which is a definite plus.
I'd think cost is really the factor that would prevent this technology from being used.
Fingerprint readers can run the gamut as far as cost goes depending on the complexity of the device and what your goal is, but generally speaking Iris technology is 5 - 10x as expensive as fingerprint and has been for a number of years.
Fingerprint readers can run the gamut as far as cost goes depending on the complexity of the device and what your goal is, but generally speaking Iris technology is 5 - 10x as expensive as fingerprint and has been for a number of years.
Any biometric MacRumors articles should begin with "This would be completely optional." Though I doubt the complainers even read them to begin with.
I was always under the impression they deal more with the radial pattern more than color, as color can be affected by lighting and glasses/contacts whereas the pattern cannot.
For tech I've seen, it needs you to take off glasses/contacts to enroll your iris, but it can identify with glasses/contacts on.
Of course, I'm referring to normal contacts - not contacts that change the color of your iris, as they have a fake iris on them and that clearly wouldn't work.