Apple Seeds First Public Betas of iOS 15.4 and iPadOS 15.4 With Universal Control, Face ID With Mask Support and More

[macbeth1026]

At least a dozen years before Apple introduced FaceID, many high security installations (including the data center I worked at) used Iris Scanning as an entrance control method.

To be initially registered in the system, you stood about 1-2 feet away from the access device (a high resolution camera) and stared at the camera while it recorded an image of your irises. The exact pattern of a person's irises are as unique as their fingerprints and from then on, to gain access to the facility you pressed a button and stared into the camera. If the pattern of your iris matched the previously recorded one, the door unlocked.

Is this starting to sound like Apple's new system? Hmmm......

It takes a very high resolution camera system to look at someone's face from a distance and be able to focus in their eyes in enough detail to resolve the individual fibers in the iris. This would possibly explain why an iPhone 12 or 13 is required; previous iPhone front camera systems weren't up to the task.

Note iris recognition systems didn't care if you were wearing a mask or not; they only looked at the geometry of the eyes (including interpupillary distance) and the irises.

I get what you're saying, for sure. However, from a marketing and PR perspective Apple would absolutely publicize this if this is how it works. That's a big innovation and you know how they get when people say they can't innovate anymore

 

[Shirasaki]

This iOS beta meh for me. iPhone XS Max tail of the end already, pretty much only new emojis. Installed iPadOS 15.4 and macOS Monterey 12.3 to play with so-called “universal control”, which is named “cursor and keyboard (beta)”. Tried for a while. Cool and works as intended so far. I wish I could remotely control nearby devices from another one though.

 

[Gold47]

I get what you're saying, for sure. However, from a marketing and PR perspective Apple would absolutely publicize this if this is how it works. That's a big innovation and you know how they get when people say they can't innovate anymore
Believe

"...That's a big innovation and you know how they get when people say they can't innovate anymore"

The iris biometric ID technology has been used for over 25 years, so I wouldn't thing Apple would feel it was innovative. Also, Apple likes to publicize new technologies they invent (like FaceID), not that they've adopted 25+ year old technologies -- doesn't fit their "innovative" image.

Interestingly, I had some administrative responsibilities for the iris recognition system at my data center and people hated it! Unlike other biometric identification systems like fingerprints, hand geometry, etc., people thought it was "creepy", "invasive", and "an invasion of privacy" to have a camera look at the structure of your iris! (Go figure).

NIST testing found accuracy between 90 percent to 99 percent -- far less than the 99.999% accuracy of Apple's FaceID.

I strongly suspect Apple incorporated elements of iris recognition technology into the new "mask" feature, but at some point I expect someone from Apple will give a public interview with more details on how they are doing Mask ID.

BTW, Wikipedia has a good article on the technology and its history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_recognition

 

[djcgeez2189]

So they can add 100 new emoji but the keyboard on the iPhone is still the worst in the industry….

 

[jimimac71]

All I had to do was change a setting on my Apple TV and it is running TV OS 15.4. Can’t get the iPad Beta.