iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new privacy controls, and more • Hacker News Board

Re: iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new privacy controls, and more

#451

Post by WorldMaker » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

justapassenger wrote: post #328

lethologica wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better the devil you know. For now, I know that this devil doesn’t sell my information to hundreds of other devils.

It’s because they couldn’t figure out how to get better ROI from data processing than they get from positioning themselves as tron, fighting for the user. Once they figure it out, their story will change very quickly. It’s naive to think that sending data to other huge company is proper solution.

It's because they don't have a business model that requires them to squeeze "ROI" lemonade from data processing lemons. Google's ad tech-driven business model will always require them to optimize that ROI. Their clients are advertisers and the advertisers want all the lemonade they can get and that snowball's the ROI.

Apple's clients are much more directly the users. Their financials seem to make it clear that they are way more profitable from user-oriented products and services than anything they could return on data processing and sale to advertisers or worse. They "couldn't figure it out", because they don't need to squeeze any lemons, they have far better things to sell than lemonade. (It's Google that looks far more undiversified beyond their single lame lemonade stand, and way more at risk if advertisers get bored of the taste of lemonade.)

Re: iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new privacy controls, and more

#452

Post by WorldMaker » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #236

crazygringo wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new iMac has it on its external wireless keyboard. So it's coming, just slowly. FaceID surely won't ever work with webcams however -- it uses a custom-built depth sensor separate from the camera.

> FaceID surely won't ever work with webcams however -- it uses a custom-built depth sensor separate from the camera. iMacs could absolutely have the entire camera module, depth sensor included. Things would be rather more complicated for the laptops, the cover is thinner than an iPhone. Though obviously not as bad as the protruding back cameras, the front cameras module is still rather deep and would likely require…

On the Windows side you can find Windows Hello certified third party cameras with the necessary IR and depth sensors. (I've seen Intel and Logitech options in stores.) Since the death of the Kinect the cost has generally gone way back up as it is a niche of a niche just to support easier logins and few applications anymore are using the IR/depth sensors as much (though even this far past the Kinect, Windows itself has additional eye tracking/attention tracking features these days than it ever had before for accessibility reasons).

Surely Apple could release a FaceID-compatible USB webcam if they wished. It's probably less likely for them to FaceID certify third party hardware, though.

(That said, I think Apple's other excuse for not supporting FaceID on more hardware is it uses the ML capabilities of some of their mobile A* chipsets. Maybe another thing they might claim can only be done with M1+ macOS.)

Re: iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new privacy controls, and more

#453

Post by WorldMaker » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

lwansbrough wrote: post #364

TetOn wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Watch is not required; it is a convenience option that can be used to unlock the phone if you are masked.

What I said was "requiring an Apple Watch to unlock the phone with your mask on", so I'm not sure what you're correcting.

You can always unlock a phone with your mask on with a passcode. The Apple Watch method is an added convenience, not a "requirement".

Re: iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new privacy controls, and more

#454

Post by WorldMaker » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #384

fastball wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like mine did too towards the beginning of the pandemic, but not anymore.

Partway into the pandemic Apple added mask detection, so if it sees a mask it will fail instantly and not even attempt face recognition (so people could enter their passcodes right away without having to wait for face recognition to fail).

They also supposedly added the mask recognition "cut-off" because the ML was mistakenly learning people's masks and you could impersonate some people by wearing the same mask as they regularly wore. Another case where statistic models were likely to learn the wrong things.

Re: iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new privacy controls, and more

#455

Post by gambiting » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #442

gambiting wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? Obviously just because Samsung's implementation used to be shitty doesn't mean apple's would be, hopefully that's not what you are suggesting?

Point is, saying "Samsung has that feature" is like saying "Tesla has L5 self-driving next month". Just because a company says something doesn't make it true, and other companies are not required to try and compete with snake oil. Apple's ability to execute has little to do with it.

But....Tesla doesn't have L5 self driving. It's bogus. It doesn't exist. Samsung has an in-screen fingerprint reader. It works. The technology clearly exists and works. Whether Samsung fucked up in the past or not is irrelevant - the fact I was pointing to was that the technology to make in-screen fingerprint readers clearly exists, as an Apple customer I'd expect them to integrate it with their usual level of polish. Do it 4x as good as Samsung. Because at the end of the day it's not about Samsung - it's about why Apple hasn't decided to introduce this feature yet despite the pandemic painfully showing that having just FaceID is not good enough. This is not a rant to say Samsung it great and apple isn't - just purely saying that once again we're in a position we've seen hundreds of times before - other manufacturers have some fancy new features that Apple hasn't integrated yet. As their customer I wish they'd hurry up.

Re: iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new privacy controls, and more

#456

Post by tinus_hn » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

matdehaast wrote: post #251

tinyprojects wrote: post #164

Everyone is missing the point. This is the start of a major battle between two tech juggernauts. One look at the Facebook ads manager will show you Facebook is very scared about this privacy update and trying to do everything in their power to mitigate it. Apple is the gatekeeper and Facebook can't do anything about it. Their dominant revenue stream is about to be strangled. I think Zuckerberg realizes he is screwed…

Good chance FB will own the VR space from platform on a hardware and software level. My bet is they will be bigger in 10 years than they are now if VR materialises

If VR materializes and requires Facebook it’ll be ignored. We lived without VR for a long time, it really isn’t a necessity.

Re: iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new privacy controls, and more

#457

Post by dan_hawkins » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 10:00 AM UTC

jensvdh wrote: post #165

_jal wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just fixed it by turning off FaceID. Apple reached phone perfection with the iPhone 4; they reached access perfection with touchID. Things have gotten worse since then.

I hate TouchID, never works when my fingers are sweaty or I'm cooking or anything like that. FaceID is perfect.

I've run into this problem with my iPhone 8 but almost never with my iPhone SE 1st gen - talking about constant regression.

Re: iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new privacy controls, and more

#458

Post by mvkel » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

aikinai wrote: post #27

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An even better solution would be to just show the "unlock with passcode" button at all times, and not just after Face ID has spent 15 seconds not recognising you because you have a mask on.

They fixed this a few versions ago. Now if it sees a mask, it shows the passcode input immediately.

This has never worked for me.

Re: iOS 14.5 delivers Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, new privacy controls, and more

#459

Post by hipjiveguy » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:47 AM UTC

lwansbrough wrote: post #154

Touch ID is an entirely superior technology and Apple is profoundly stupid for removing it. It doesn't have to be in the screen, just put it on the back. The lengths they'll go to offset the removal of Touch ID are astounding, from IR face tracking, to degraded biometric security, and now to requiring an Apple Watch to unlock the phone with your mask on. Talk about a Rube Goldberg machine.

touch id never works - i've tried it a ton of times, and it eventually forgets my fingerprints or something, and just stops working... max it works is like 2 weeks, then... it's like i'm a new person. I have even tried training the same finger lots of different times, still no luck. And I've tried it on iphone and mac, no go.