Live data from Hacker News

Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

techcrunch.com

361–370 of 715 posts

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the NSA told them they had to have access to the data, or else jail and whatnot.

Am I understanding this correctly? What if the NSA went to Apple and said you have to get us access to everyone's fingerprints or you'll go to jail and other stuff, so Apple put a fingerprint scanner on the iPhone? It seems like a stretch to me.

[deleted]

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#362
post #323
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Asking them to go away is just asking people to stick their head in the sand and ignore it." I think what's happening here is that you are being asked to go away. Your comments aren't adding anything to this discussion about a new iPhone.

And yet, the OP's comment is the top-voted comment in the thread, which would indicate the the democratic consensus of the HN readership is that this is worth talking about.

let it go.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#363
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.

When the NSA themselves is calling Apple "Big Brother" and the consumers "Zombies" -- then its damn hard to not be pretty worried about their capabilities.

http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-iphone-slides-in-der-spie...

(Sorry for the BI link, but the relevant slides are shown immediately)

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#364
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.

I guess the fanboys now have to defend the NSA, pathetic.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#365
"According to Apple, the processor is more than twice as fast as the A6, with a 40x CPU performance bump. Graphics are said to be 56x faster."

What does that even mean? I'm getting tired of claims like these. They're obviously non-sensical and groundless and they should be publicly shamed for it. But that'll never happen I guess.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#366

Better photos, TouchID, snappier performance -- a traditional incremental Apple upgrade befitting the "S" moniker. I've long been wondering when/if Apple would take on NFC and things like payments more aggressively. I get the feeling that they're going to skip NFC entirely, and that TouchID is going to be a large part of processing transactions without the need for any physical device interaction (swipe/tap/bump). Ri…

Well, there has to be some kind of interaction with a Point Of Sale device. Either Bluetooth 4.0 or NFC would suffice. NFC has enough Point Of Sale inroads (esp. in the rest of the world besides the US), that it is a more natural choice. It's possible Apple didn't want to radically redesign the 5S case and internals in the manner necessary to include NFC. But if Apple hasn't implemented NFC by next year's redesign, t…

Didn't Apple say they wouldn't consider NFC until the technology has matured enough not to hammer the battery life so much. As much as I want NFC I'm inclined to agree, if I wanted terrible battery life I'd buy an Android.

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not on high resolution cameras designed to record them attached to your identity.

Actually, my gym (24 Hr Fitness) uses fingerprint scanners to sign people in. I hadn't really given it much thought before, but indeed, it would be possible for their system to be compromised and for my fingerprint data to be released into the wild...

Yes, hackers could compromise your gym's systems, steal your fingerprint data, and then use it to... mooch off your gym membership?

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#369
post #141
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.

It's the first smartphone with 64bit CPU, it's a significant achievement, and they are rightly proud of it. I thought comparisons to the original iPhone were very silly though.

Yes, the iPhone 5S definitely needs to address more than 4GB of RAM directly, or do 64-bit integer math for Angry Birds to render accurately.

(This is a joke: I know 64-bit ARM is substantially improved, but it's really not a big selling point to the general population anymore, is it?!)

Re: Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S

#370
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…

So use a passcode - the fingerprint feature is optional. That said, I doubt they are doing anything nefarious with it - if it eventually leaked that fingerprints were being sent to the NSA, the cost to Apple would be incalculable. I would bet, or at least hope, that Apple has designed the hardware involved to be subpoena proof - meaning that the design would make it impossible to remotely collect fingerprints even if…

it HAS already leaked that emails, browsing, who knows what else, is being sucked up by NSA ... so apparently it doesn't matter. Apple is still selling plenty of iPhones, people are still using Gmail, etc etc. Apparently Americans don't much care.
Post reply on HN