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Apple Announces iPhone 5s With 'Touch ID' Fingerprint Sensor

I really miss the 'available today'-announcements of the past.

Anyway, the very nice specs of the 5C are guaranteed to sell truckloads of phones. And if you are not currently on a 5, the 5S sure is a kick-ass mobile.

If we had never seen iOS7 and the spy info/photos of the 5C and 5S, this would have been a cool presentation.
 
AppleFan1984 said:
It's about as close to being a non-feature as one could get and still be a bullet point.

64-bit addressing allows a device to make use of RAM space greater than 4GB, but since this model has less than that (1GB, 2? I couldn't find the RAM spec on Apple's site), about the only benefit I can think of is compatibility with certain development tools, which may help end users by helping devs port some games from OS X.

I was more than a bit surprised that Apple made such a key talking point out of the 64-bit thing. Are they planning on providing >4GB soon? Now that could get interesting.
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64-bit processing does more than just address more RAM. With software properly written for 64-bit it crunches twice as much data. For developers it starts to make sense to optimize for 64-bit and then compile to 32-bit if you need the legacy support.

64-bit is not a useless feature by any stretch.
 
Number 41 said:
Who has information that sensitive on their phone?

Every app that can "do damage" (banking, iTunes, credit card, etc.) requires it's own independent password anyway.

I can't fathom the need for this much security on a phone. What are people keeping on there? Blueprints for stealth drones?
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Just about anyone who works in the corporate world. Do you enter your password every time you open mail? Lots of sensitive files go through email. Also documents on iWork, contact information and all kinds of other things. Most passwords are saved on the phone as well so you don't have to type them in each time you go to a website. This is a huge improvement and one that will help sell the iPhone to the government/military as well as many corporations.
 
macsrcool1234 said:
Developers can't use it for authentication? TouchID is crippled right out of the gate....only two uses.
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It's the same reason SIRI is useless -- it can only do what Apple wants it to do as opposed to what developers are creative enough to do with it.
 
Mobster1983 said:
Just about anyone who works in the corporate world. Do you enter your password every time you open mail? Lots of sensitive files go through email. Also documents on iWork, contact information and all kinds of other things. Most passwords are saved on the phone as well so you don't have to type them in each time you go to a website. This is a huge improvement and one that will help sell the iPhone to the government/military as well as many corporations.
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No, because nothing I do on my phone is remotely sensitive.

I do all my sensitive e-mail work from my office workstation and I leave all my confidential files secured in my office.

If something really needs to be protected like that, I sure as hell am not going to access it over an open signal on a device that can be lifted from me in public.
 
Pretty happy with the 5s announcement - I've got a 4s, so for people in the same boat, there's plenty of new features to keep us happy (larger screen, thinner, iOS7, better camera, fingerprint scanner etc. etc.).

The majority of iPhone owners I know are using a 4 / 4s (I think the 4s was the time a lot of people jumped ship from Blackberry, certainly amongst my friends!) so I can see a lot of 5s's (should that be 5s' ?) being sold!

It seems that the really impressive bits about the 5s though are on the inside with that A7 chip and improved graphics etc...
 
I wonder what they are planning to call color version iphone when they release iPhone6s. There would be already iphone6c, released with iphone6.
 
mrxak said:
Somebody really needs to ask Tim Cook what is up with the 5S having no apparent preorder date. If they expect me to go into a store on the 20th, they cannot expect my business this quarter.
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Well THAT'll teach 'em! I can feel the tremors of fear all the way from Cupertino!
 
macsrcool1234 said:
Developers can't use it for authentication? TouchID is crippled right out of the gate....only two uses.
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Why would you think developer need access to Touch ID? Developers don't have access to my Apple ID password? Eventually the hope may be that Touch ID becomes the authentication portal for more mobile commerce needs but that needs to be exposed to developers via an API and we really need to ascertain the security prowess of Touch ID before that happens.
 
Huge Apple fan, and all I have to say is SNOOZE-FEST!:mad:

I remember a time when the iPhone event day was awesome. Now we all know everything that's coming and what came is not very impressive to me at all.

I mean this is literally the first new product Apple has released in nearly a full calendar year (bizarre for them). $120B in the bank and it took them 12 months to release the same phone with a fingerprint scanner to unlock it? The HTC One and Galaxy S4 are already killing the iPhone and now we all can wait until September 2014 to for Apple to do something about it. I might not be on the bandwagon with them to wait. HTC One is gorgeous and what the iPhone *should* be. What good is all of this horsepower for gaming if you need a magnifying glass to see what you're playing on this mini-baby-screen?
 
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kaielement said:
So they get rid if the iPhone 5 make a 5c and 5s and make the 4s free wow. Keeping the 4s and cut the 5 I don't get it.
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The iPhone 5 production line is needed to build more 5c and 5s. As expected the "c" stands for color, not cheap or china. The 4S (even if it is not made out of plastic) is the cheapest iPhone Apple can build with its old machinery.
But no one should buy it. Its too far behind in every aspect of technology.

With a full contract the iPhone 4S is basically a ripoff. :mad:
 
bart4u said:
I have no interest in what was updated. I love my Iphone but I need a bigger screen. I could careless about colors or fingerprint. I will not be getting the Iphone 5S, I wish the phone had 128 MB of storage so I could some how shoot my Canon camera into my Iphone. Another reason for a bigger screen so I could possibly use the Iphone as a second monitor while shooting video with the GoPro. Hopefully the Iphone 6 will have what I need.
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I hope not, the iPhone 5 screen is just right for me and my 5 family members... Need a larger screen, get yourself a iPad mini. That huge samsung phone is just too awkward to use, and fit in a pocket. Most of my friends are planning to turn them in for the iPhone 5.... not that the 5 doesn't have some room for improvement...
 
Anyone notice apple emphasizing on the following regarding Facetime Calls:


HVGA-resolution (480 by 368) calls over Wi-Fi


I dont remember seeing it ever before for any other older iPhone model...
 
nuckinfutz said:
Why would you think developer need access to Touch ID? Developers don't have access to my Apple ID password? Eventually the hope may be that Touch ID becomes the authentication portal for more mobile commerce needs but that needs to be exposed to developers via an API and we really need to ascertain the security prowess of Touch ID before that happens.
Click to expand...

Ugh, maybe for the same reason as iTunes purchases? Logins. Also, the password (or print) is and never would be exposed to a developer.

Obviously you are not a programmer and have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
 
Bit weird about the mention of third party apps not getting access to the fingerprint; they don't need access to the fingerprint, all they need to be able to do is ask for verification and to get true or false as a response, iOS can securely handle the rest.

The only reason you'd want to get actual data is for distinguishing between multiple users, but iOS devices are fundamentally single-user environments, which is actually a shame but never mind that. Even if they were multi-user environments an API wouldn't need to expose fingerprint details, as it could just use an app's package identifier to generate a unique ID that the app can then use to distinguish between individual users and present some other form of id request (e.g - e-mail address and password) which it can then save locally so that in future the login can be handled automatically when the same finger print ID is observed.

Ideally Apple would do the latter system as it'd be more future-proof, especially if we were to later get this for laptops for example.
 
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arif1490 said:
I am really missing the slate version :(:(:(
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The "slate" they tried comes off as "whimpy grey" and scratches too easily.
The problem is that true brite-coat, piano black anodize is horribly non-friendly to the environment if you mishandle the chemicals... there's just no "nice" way to do it. So Apple can't control their suppliers to properly handle the nasty stuff, so they just don't do it at all. Not all "horrible chemicals" need to be banned because sometimes the results just can't be duplicated... you just gotta clean up after yourself.
 
freedevil said:
If the 5 is free no one will buy the 5c. I get what you mean though.
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Could have put the 4s specs in the 5c and made that the free iPhone. I just don't like the idea of the 3.5" screen when you have the 4" screen and the lighting connector issue don't get me started lol.
 
macsrcool1234 said:
Ugh, maybe for the same reason as iTunes purchases? Logins. Also, the password (or print) is and never would be exposed to a developer.

Obviously you are not a programmer and have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Click to expand...

So says the guy that laments that Apple didn't have a new fingerprint authentication system AND software ready for 3rd party developers.
 
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