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Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#261

Post by laureny »

lttlrck wrote: post #148
jontas wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here, but if in fact the NSA required copies of all fingerprints, I doubt Apple would be allowed to publicize it.

Nor would they bother explicitly highlighting that it's kept local...

Makes me think of all these companies that your passwords are secure until one day, someone hacks their database and decrypts them. When confronted, the company says "But they were very secure, you should have mentioned that by 'secure' you meant "with one way encryption".

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#262

Post by sudomal »

stanleydrew wrote: post #213
cheald wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably when the NSA stops illegally spying on the citizens it is supposed to serve.

More snark. This isn't helpful. For those who want to believe it, I doubt there is any amount of information that could ever be released to convince them that the NSA isn't spying on people anymore.

Sarcastic or not, it's an important point. You are giving up a significant attribute of your identity to the protection of a US technology company. Whether that bothers you (or not) depends on how much you value your privacy.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#263

Post by TrevorJ »

res0nat0r wrote: post #197
cheald wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably when the NSA stops illegally spying on the citizens it is supposed to serve.

We take for gospel that the NSA is spying on everyone in the world via every hardware device that has been created in the USA because of a few powerpoint slides. Interesting.

This is a vast oversimplification of the facts.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#264

Post by nycruz »

pilif wrote: post #73

Now that we have to consider the iPhones to be backdoored by the NSA, I wonder whether I really want to give them my fingerprint together with the rest of my data. I'm also not so sure whether a fingerprint can't still be easily faked (like it was possible on that Mythbusters episode for example). Personally, I think I'd rather stay with my passcode. Did you btw know that you can turn off "simple passcode" and then u…

Doesn't the DMV requires thumbprint?

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#265

Post by nir »

meerita wrote: post #129

I visualize this: husband is sleeping deeply, wife picks up the phone and taps the home button while he's sleeping and unlocks the phone. Release the kraken.

First the NSA, now the wife, what's up with people in HN? Are you all planning a coup with your mistresses?

If you're married and your SO can't just ask you for your PIN code - and you will, without even thinking about it, give it to them - you might want to take some time to think hard about your relationship.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#266

Post by sliverstorm »

afterburner wrote: post #226
sliverstorm wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably already have your fingerprint. I believe you usually have to give it to the DMV to get your license.

First I've heard of it, but I'm not American. Is this really true?

It could depend on the state, but in America a driver's license is basically the de-facto form of ID. So, sometime back in the 50's or something, I believe fingerprints started to be taken as part of getting your license so that your fingerprints could be traced back to you for crime purposes. Similar to how in some states when you purchase a firearm, you are required to give the state a spent shell so that the state has a record of the "ballistic fingerprint" of your firearm.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#268

Post by mikeash »

sdoowpilihp wrote: post #17
ihuman wrote: post #7

Instead of using the iPhone 5 as the free option, they are discontinuing it and using the 4S as the free one.

I would surmise that is likely due to the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5 having very similar specs. A free iPhone 5 would cannibalize the 5C sales. Why pay 100 dollars for a color case? Then again, a number of people paid the "black tax" for their macbook a number of years back.

It's because they always have the two-generations-old model as the "free" one. It's been that way for years now. Current generation starts at $200, N-1 starts at $100, and N-2 is "free". The 5 is now N-1 and would have been the $100 model, but for whatever reason, they've decided that the 5C will take its place.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#269

Post by ctdonath »

bedhead wrote: post #45
alxbrun wrote: post #3

When I see Apple putting forward as a key feature the number of bits in their processor in a general public announcement... I'm really feeling the "new" product is not really new. In the past Apple was always laughing at the PC ads boasting processor speed and memory capacity.

Smartphone hardware is in the 9th inning. These devices have mostly hit the natural limits of what's achievable for now. Bad for Apple since this effectively levels the playing field.

Except that Apple just doubled the processing power. That, with everyone else now needing (and, given a year, able) to catch up & exceed, is hardly "the natural limits of what's achievable for now". The processing power curve shows no sign of slowing down, and with wireless tech racing past LTE toward 100Mb territory meaning local storage capacity becomes a mere buffer instead of a limit, we're nowhere near "natural limits".

The only limit we face now is users finding sufficient aggregate need for all that power & bandwidth. Build AppleTV into a touchable monitor, drop a wireless keyboard on the desk, and eliminate that 4" bottleneck for most users - BAM, death blow to Windows etc.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#270

Post by danabramov »

ekanes wrote: post #182
danabramov wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now that Jobs is gone Seriously, what does this have to do with the point you're making?

Jobs was famous for eliminating SKUs and simplifying.

Then how about that?

>But Apple executives, including Mr. Jobs, were seriously considering selling a less-expensive but similar phone as early as 2009, according to former executives involved in the plan. Then, the manufacturing teams were most opposed to it.

>Their concerns, which I previously reported on in the Wall Street Journal, were about manufacturing complexity: how could Apple build so many models with so many different components? Apple’s relatively simple supply chain had always been a big competitive advantage. Having relatively few products allowed it to focus, buy parts at scale and keep things secret.

http://jessicalessin.com/2013/09/10/what-really-held-up-the-...

What I want to say is, none of us, I suppose, were in the man's head, or worked at Cupertino. We can only speculate why there is a single iPhone/iPad. (And as you can read from the article, it may be due to operations and not because Jobs was so much about “simplicity“.)

Saying “Now that Steve is dead” contributes nothing to discussion unless you work at Apple and really know what you're talking about. (In which case your comments are very valuable.)

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