Touch ID is Apple’s fingerprint sensor built-in to the Home button that first debuted with the iPhone 5s. A year later Touch ID became an integral part of Apple Pay that launched just after the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and also came to the iPad Air 2. The first Mac to gain Touch ID was the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar in late 2016.
Conflicting reports have been plentiful this year as to how Apple will handle Touch ID with the iPhone 8 or whether face recognition may replace it altogether.
The iPhone 8 reports to date mostly point to Apple embedding the Home button and a new type of fingerprint sensor into the display itself, as a way to lose most of the ‘chin’ of the device. Today, however, the sketchiest of reports suggests that the company will instead move the existing Touch ID sensor to the rear of the phone.
The report mixes this in with a raft of things we’ve heard before. Glass backs, vertical cameras (which would be horizontal when used in the more common landscape mode) and iPhone Edition naming are all things that have been reported previously. So while iDropNews would like us to believe that its unspecified ‘insider’ has revealed a whole bunch of new things, the report is actually just a mish-mash of earlier rumors coupled to one piece of supposedly new information …
With the iPhone 8 expected to embed a fingerprint sensor into the display to allow much smaller top and bottom bezels, there’s no doubt that Apple has the technology required to make this possible. We’ve seen a steady stream of patents describing different ways to achieve this.
A four year old boy was able to call the emergency services after his mother lost consciousness, thanks to a combination of Touch ID and Siri.
Police report that the boy from just outside London first used his mother’s thumbprint to unlock her iPhone, then asked Siri to call 999 – the British equivalent of 911. Releasing a recording of the emergency call (below), they said that the boy’s actions enabled life-saving action to be taken …
Apple has filed a number of patent applications for different ways of embedding a fingerprint reader into a display, and one of these has today been granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Apple first applied for the patent in 2015.
In addition to allowing Apple to eliminate a separate Touch ID sensor, the patent also explains how embedding the reader into the screen can make for a more seamless experience …
All signs are pointing to Apple’s iPhone 8 arriving with new technologies that will replace Touch ID as we know it. So far the predicted possibilities include an optical fingerprint sensor, facial and gesture recognition, a next generation on-screen capacitive touch method, and as we reported last year when Apple filed the patent, ultrasonic imaging. More details have just come out about how sound imaging technology will work in a patent filed today by Apple.
With everyone expecting the iPhone 8 to feature minimal bezels, a key requirement to realize that vision would be to remove the chin housing the Touch ID fingerprint sensor. While an iris scanner has been rumored as a replacement for fingerprints, Apple is also not short on options for embedding a fingerprint reader into the display.
We’ve previously seen Apple patents for two different methods of doing this, and a patent granted today describes a third …
The Florida Court of Appeals has ruled that a suspect must tell police the passcode for his iPhone 5, overturning the original ruling that Fifth Amendment protections applied. This contradicts a Virginia court ruling in a separate case that a suspect can be forced to unlock a phone with their fingerprint, but cannot be forced to reveal their passcode as this would contravene the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
The new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is the first of Apple’s Macs to include a Touch ID sensor built-in for Apple Pay, unlocking the Mac with your fingerprint, and authentication purposes in third-party apps.
Other Macs can use Apple Pay, but they need to use a nearby iPhone or Apple Watch to authenticate and complete the purchase.
Here’s how it works:
With the new MacBook Pros with Touch Bar arriving to the first pre-order customers and going on sale at Apple stores this week, you might be looking to try out some apps that support the new hardware. Fortunately, Apple has already confirmed many apps that will get support for Touch Bar, the new contextually sensitive touchscreen panel embedded into the MacBook Pro’s keyboard, and many others app developers are announcing updates.
Head below for the full list.
After releasing major updates to its apps on both Android and iOS back in May, eBay has just updated its apps yet again to introduce brand new features. For iPhone and iPad users, that includes long-awaited supported for Touch ID as well as the addition of eBay’s new “One Time Password” login method.
A second federal judge has ruled that a suspect can be compelled to unlock their iPhone using their fingerprint in order to give investigators access to data which can be used as evidence against them. The first time this ever happened in a federal case was back in May, following a District Court ruling in 2014.
The latest case involves a suspect accused of particularly unpleasant crimes, reports Ars Technica.
A Dallas, Texas man accused of prostituting underage girls was secretly ordered by a federal judge to unlock his iPhone using his fingerprint, according to federal court documents that are now unsealed.
The legal position of forcing suspects to use their fingerprints to unlock devices won’t be known with certainty until a case reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, but lower court rulings so far appear to establish a precedent which is at odds with that concerning passcodes …
Following Bank of America’s announcement that customers could withdraw cash from ATMs using Apple Pay, FIS and Payment Alliance International have today announced a new partnership that will allow users to perform cardless withdrawals using Touch ID, proving that the end of plastic cards is fast approaching.
Popular last-minute hotel booking app Hotel Tonight has announced this evening that it is making it even easier for iPhone users to quickly book hotels. In a press release, the company announced that it is updating its iOS with expanded support for Touch ID, which it says allows users to book hotels in “5 seconds flat.”
Hidden inside all of the changes that are coming with macOS Sierra are several notable additions to the developer side of things. On Apple’s API differences webpage, you can see several new resources that hint at potential features that could be coming with future Macs, including that OLED touch bar and Touch ID support.
As we approach Apple’s WWDC 2016 developer conference scheduled for June 13-17, there are more than a few reported in-development features and fixes that are likely candidates for stage time. An Apple Music revamp, Apple Pay updates, improvements for the App Store, and new features for HomeKit, Siri, and Apple News are just a few possibilities for Apple’s event next month. Below we roundup those features and much more as we take a look at the most likely new iPhone and iPad features in the works for iOS 10:
Earlier this year, we reported that Mac OS X 10.12 would bring Siri support as one of the tentpole features. Apple is likely to introduce the next big update to OS X in just a few weeks at its annual WWDC event, and now we’re learning a bit more about what the company has in store. A new report today brings to light the possibility that Apple could add Touch ID support to OS X with 10.12, as well.
Something that has been bugging me for some time is that my iPhone, normally unlocked with Touch ID, asks for my passcode way more often than it ought to. That mystery has now been solved by a bullet-point that Apple added to its iOS Security Guide earlier this month – though the behavior has been there a lot longer.
Previous versions of the document said that iOS devices should only ask Touch ID users for their passcode in one of five circumstances. I found I was frequently asked for my passcode when none of these applied, but a sixth, recently-added bullet-point explains it …
Concept image: Martin Hajek for Computer Bild
Concept designers have been creating renderings of bezel-free iPhones – where the display extends all the way to the edges of the phone – for years now. One major barrier to realizing this vision has, of course, been the Home button with its embedded Touch ID sensor.
Third-party companies have already developed transparent fingerprint sensors capable of being embedded into a smartphone display, and an Apple patent filed in March of last year but only published yesterday describes the exact same approach …
Apple subsidiary FileMaker is today releasing FileMaker 15, introducing a number of notable additions for mobile device users as well as a host of other new features and enhancements for the platform.
ProtonMail, the iOS app that makes using PGP email a near-seamless experience, has now made itself even easier to use. Instead of having to use both your login and mailbox passwords, you can now use Touch ID to unlock encrypted mail. The app also offers support for password managers.
For the first time in a federal case, a suspect has been ordered to use her fingerprint to unlock her iPhone using Touch ID. The LA Times reports that a federal judge signed a warrant allowing the FBI to compel a suspect in an identity theft case to to unlock the phone just 45 minutes after her arrest.
Authorities obtained a search warrant compelling the girlfriend of an alleged Armenian gang member to press her finger against an iPhone that had been seized from a Glendale home […]
In the Glendale case, the FBI wanted the fingerprint of Paytsar Bkhchadzhyan, a 29-year-old woman from L.A. with a string of criminal convictions who pleaded no contest to a felony count of identity theft.
The warrant is consistent with a 2014 case where a Virginia District Court ruled that while passcodes are protected by the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination, fingerprints are not. Legal experts, however, have differing views …
I mused recently about the limited support for 3D Touch, not just from third-party developers but even by Apple itself. That’s not something I consider a huge deal: the novelty appeal of 3D Touch soon wore off for me, and I decided I could happily live without it when switching from the iPhone 6s to the iPhone SE. It was just something that struck me as odd.
But exactly the same issue exists with Touch ID, and that’s something I do think is a big deal.
Passwords are horrible. They were fine way back in the days when we only needed a handful of them, but these days you need a password to do everything from transferring photos from a camera to an iPad through to ordering a pizza. We probably each have hundreds of the darned things.
And passwords are especially horrible on iOS devices – where we have to switch an on-screen keyboard between letters, numbers and symbols multiple times to type a single password. That’s a problem that ought to have been almost completely solved by Touch ID – yet that’s not the case …
Along with Night Shift mode, having the ability to password-protect notes in the default Notes app is one of the big new features in iOS 9.3. Individual notes within the Notes app can now be secured with a password, and Touch ID users can gain even faster access to password-protected notes.
Securing notes in iOS 9.3 is a simple exercise on the surface, but it’s not always entirely straightforward. Have a look at our full video walkthrough and tutorial for all of the details.
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Microsoft has enabled Touch ID support to its email and calendar app Outlook today. This introduces a level of security not yet seen in any other major emailing application. Since its acquisition of Acompli a year back, Microsoft has slowly been revamping and adding new features to their purchase. Supporting multiple email account and cloud storage services, swipe options, Skype integration, and now Touch ID, Outlook is becoming quite a formidable email application.
