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Apple Applies for Patent on Fingerprint Sensor Packaging System
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well do you plan on doing something bad? A lot of medical, police, and fire department jobs require your finger prints before getting hired. A lot of ppl are in the system from their jobs already including myself.
Oh boy, here we go with getting defensive about seeing facts!
Seriously... grow up.
Yes... in this instance, Apple is copying a feature that has been used on a mobile phone before.
Let's just hope their implementation is better or it will disappear just as fast as the one on the Atrix did.
Motorola dropped the feature on the Atrix 2.
I would have to agree with him. I don't think he's getting defensive; its just getting really old and tiresome to see the same argument brought up about EVERYTHING apple does.
My feelings are I don't care who had it first, all I care about is who does it better/best! Apple sure as hell didn't make the first tablet, but they sure as hell made the best tablet until recently(arguable there).
It seems unlikely that Apple would need to store your fingerprint data on iCloud*, so I'd imagine your fingerprint hash would only be stored on the local iPhone / iPad.
(* Personally, I don't mind if Apple does store my data on iCloud, as long as it's encrypted appropriately. Which does seem to be the case, e.g.: iMessage / FaceTime encryption that Apple themselves are unable to decrypt -- a nice defence against subpoena-ing!)
Lol, what can the government do with your fingerprints??!
Build false fingers like in spy movies & set you up for murder??
Hahahaha.. you people (by which I mean crazed conspiracy theorists) are ALWAYS good for a crack-up! =P
Kinda said it 1/2 jokingly, but you are living in a fantasy world if you think the govt. has the peoples best interest as priority #1.
Also this isn't a Obama/Bush thing, both are absolutely atrocious when govt. overreach. Bush created the Patriot act / expanded NSA and Obama is perfecting and polishing it up.
Like how when the Wright Brothers designed their airplane they were just copying that guy who jumped off a cliff with his arms stretched out.
I don't know how to react when I get a tech response to a tech question on this site . . .
Rocketman
The quote he was being defensive about made no mention of "apple just copying again". It merely pointed out that this tech already exists in the wild. He was being defensive when nobody was attacking.
Oh boy, here we go with getting defensive about seeing facts!
Seriously... grow up.
Yes... in this instance, Apple is copying a feature that has been used on a mobile phone before.
Let's just hope their implementation is better or it will disappear just as fast as the one on the Atrix did.
Motorola dropped the feature on the Atrix 2.
Apple might be and probably is working on all kinds of features and innovations, sizes and packaging concepts that never have been or for that matter, will ever see the light of day. Perhaps that is why Motorola in particular and Android OEM's in general, always seem to be first with features that are less than ideally implemented?
To wit; a history of large screen smartphones would lead one to the very fact that early Android phones were greatly lagging the iPhone's power efficiency, and the remedy was a larger battery. Once the compromise was made on size and volume, might as well opt for a larger screen. Such are the phat phones today.
Even now, there isn't any Android OEM that matches iPhones capabilities in a similarly dense package of features, build, performance or power efficiency. But of course, human sexual dimorphism (larger hands compared to females as an example) would favor a male's preference for phat phones, and yet, make the same phat phone less suitable or desirable for females. Reason enough for Apple not to have built a phat phone to date, yet should they in the future, cries of "copying" will ring loud.
Perhaps the shine is coming off these feature rich dreadnoughts as early sales of Samung S IV's appear to be greatly overstated and production is being cut? Perhaps the 5 inch screen feature is overreach, literally for the bulk of potential buyers? How can that be?
Well, there's certainly a fair amount of evidence to suggest they 'innovated' the designs of the people who allegedly built and flew their aeroplanes in the few years prior to their flight (actually, to clarify, there's no suggestion they copied designs, just that they weren't first, but they just had a more polished package and better media attention!).
Also a bit of controversy over subsequent use of lawyers and threatening behaviour (for instance, requirement in the contract selling the Flyer to the Smithsonian forbidding them from ever suggesting that anyone besides the Wrights were the first flyers - which when the Smithsonian did, resulted in the Flyer being removed and displayed in London's Science Museum).
Oh, also just read about the Wright Brothers being involved in a lengthy patent war, suing US and foreign aviators and companies for using their patents (in some cases despite prior art) which ultimately hampered their own development and damaged their public image. Hadn't heard about that part before. Some interesting parallels between the early flight industry and the modern smartphone industry ;-)
Ahh... the Apple Jedi mind trick defense.
"This is not the fingerprint scanner you're talking about".
Get help... soon.
Now everyone go back and look at what I was responding to in the first place and you will see the real argument here.
This was the comment I responded too...
Please explain to me why simple Siri commands have to be sent to a centralized server to be recognized and followed? Do you really think iOS will have the ability to read a fingerprint locally when it can't even follow a Siri command?
Plus, please explain why Apple's iOS 4 was recording location tracking data without user's knowledge back in 2011?
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Many people need to get fingerprinted for their employment, myself included. But, I don't think my fingerprints are "kept on file". They may just be used to see if they match anyone who is in the system (criminals and the like).
A fingerprint scanner, no. However, this appears to be a new way of constructing/packaging a fingerprint scanner. They're not patenting the idea of an integrated fingerprint scanner (which has existed - in PCs certainly - for probably 5-10 years). Just this particular method of constructing and packaging in a small form factor.
If there's something innovative about it then I don't see an issue - let other companies who want to use that particular method license it. Or they can license one of the other existing types of fingerprint scanner and use that.
And if there's nothing innovative about it, it's just the same as another scanner, but in a different colour or slightly different shape, then it'll probably be contested away.
They are different things. Siri requires servers to extract information and return it (admittedly no idea why (does it?) it needs to send the voice data up to a server for processing though).
Fingerprint scanners have existed for many years that don't need any sort of connectivity to work. It doesn't scan the entire fingerprint and upload it to a central server. It just finds a number of key points, measures distances etc between them and forms a hash that is resistant to minor fluctuations.
Probably a close analogy would be a QR tag. It contains enough redundancy in the data that even if it's badly photocopied or has a line drawn through it, it can read the data out, without needing to upload it anywhere to compare against a master catalog of tags.
then surely you wont mind scanning all of your digits and posting your fingerprints on Facebook for us? you dont, do you? because doing so would be so innocuous, right? send us the link, please.
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you sound like a troll.
...that original quote makes perfect sense -- this is a *new way* of doing fingerprint scanning on mobile devices. innovation. thus the patent. if its implemented properly and works well, yes, everyone will copy it and the proponents of those devices will argue this new way is the natural way to do it...just as they argue now about why their laptop designs *naturally* ape apple's look.
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but this new implementation is. thus the patent.
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really? apples & oranges. when scanning fingerprints you have only a few true-positives to choose from (the source prints data). when parsing natural language, you have thousands & thousands of words to analyze...thus the cloud computing solution rather than a lowly mobile processor.
completely different use cases, needing different solutions.
which has nothing to do w/ anything.
And yet, not one seems to have made it consumer friendly yet. Perhaps that is the innovation?
Exactly! IBM (Lenovo) have been doing this for years with their laptops. Pretty sure its a standard feature on Thinkpads and is on all of the ones I own. It even came standard on my Lenovo V570. Fingerprints are scanned and stored locally on each device to authenticate login. Works flawlessly and is extremely easy to use. No typing in passwords... gotta love it! It's one feature I really hope Apple adds to all of their mobile devises, including laptops.
Amazing, Since Apple are going to use the technology its the next best thing, if Samsung were to bring it in it would be a "gimmick" I love these forums lol.
Wow... you are really, really, really, really dumb. Lol, the GOVERNMENT does NOT equal everybody on the Internet.
Let me give an example: the government knows my social security number; however, I will NOT paste it on Facebook. It's sad that you can't see the difference. I understand identity theft... unless you think the US government is going to try to buy Amazon books using your account WTF do you think they could POSSIBLY do with your fingerprints?? Lol, blind fear at its most loony. Thanks for the pretentious & combative post.. too bad it backfired and shows how little you think before clicking "submit reply".
Oh, btw- were you to do an ounce of research before your rabid paranoia fear-mongering.. you'd know that Apple bought a fingerprint tech company SOLEY for its patent on tech that houses fingerprint locally & securely.. on the phone. To be clear- APPLE WILL NEVER HAVE A DATABASE OF FINGERPRINTS AND DOESN'T WANT ONE.
Google it...
Save the troll remarks... I gaurantee I have more Apple gear within arms reach than most people on this forum.
If you knew how to follow a comment thread you would have seen where I specifically acknowledged the difference in implementation.
Apple's patent itself is on the "packaging", not the underlying tech.
Most of that is still owned by AuthenTec.