Apple Reduced Face ID Accuracy To Ease Production, Bloomberg Reports (bloomberg.com) 130
In order to speed up the production of iPhone X, which Apple plans to begin shipping starting November 3, the iPhone-maker told its suppliers that they could reduce the accuracy of the Face ID facial recognition system, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing multiple people familiar with the matter. Earlier reports suggest that suppliers were facing difficulties manufacturing the Face ID system, something that was holding them back from manufacturing enough iPhone X units for the holiday season. From the report: As Wall Street analysts and fan blogs watched for signs that the company would stumble, Apple came up with a solution: It quietly told suppliers they could reduce the accuracy of the face-recognition technology to make it easier to manufacture, according to people familiar with the situation. Apple is famously demanding, leaning on suppliers and contract manufacturers to help it make technological leaps and retain a competitive edge. While a less accurate Face ID will still be far better than the existing Touch ID, the company's decision to downgrade the technology for this model shows how hard it's becoming to create cutting-edge features that consumers are hungry to try. And while Apple has endured delays and supply constraints in the past, those typically have been restricted to certain iPhone colors or less important offerings such as the Apple Watch. This time the production hurdles affected a 10th-anniversary phone expected to generate much of the company's revenue. Apple has denied the claims made in Bloomberg report.
Apple has already denied it (Score:5, Informative)
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And apple has never lied before?
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The problem is that News Organization in order to get the Headline over summarize something complex to a point where it is understandable to an 8th grader.
Changing an engineering tolerance in a part once in mass production is actually fairly common action. This doesn't mean that they will reduce its accuracy as stated in its engineering specifications, but the lower tolerance would mean the mean of the products would reach the lower end of the tolerance range approved before manufacturing. I expect the pr
Face ID (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Face ID (Score:4, Informative)
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Mostly I don't think Face ID is an improvement to the User Experience, but an attempt to maximize screen space. A fingerprint reader takes a lot of space. Just because we have big fingers.
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A fingerprint reader takes room for Apple because they planned on having it integrated with the screen. WHen they couldn't...the back was likely already formed and committed. Samsung had this strange idea of moving the fingerprint reader to the back (where, TBH, it is FAR more convenient) and it seems to work out just fine for them.
Apple may be obsessed with screen size but they have a ridiculous notch cut out of theirs...so you lose the full-screen experience anyhow.
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Problem is, we're at a point where any reasonably recent smartphone has plenty of processing power to do pretty much everything the average consumer wants.
Apple, Google, Samsung, and others are struggling to come up with ways to distinguish their own hardware and keep people from treating their products as commodities, which would be a disaster for the companies' bottom lines.
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Re: Face ID (Score:1)
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yeah, no one wants face id specifically, but people do want a log-in that doesn't require a gesture but still deters at least casual intrusion. that happens to be done by face id, and the face id process/api is probably also going to be used for advertising/content delivery purposes.
apple's profit margins are already high enough to be the wet dream of every executive in the tech industry.
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They do? I'm pretty sure everyone is happy with PIN based logins. Does anyone even use Touch ID?
I can only assume you're being sarcastic here. Given the demand this generation has brought forth to automate and voice activate every damn thing, operating technology with as little effort as possible is now a design requirement.
PIN based logins would require someone to lift more than a finger, which is why I see a lot of people using Touch ID. And Face ID reinforces the fact that now even lifting a finger is too much effort.
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Re: Face ID (Score:2)
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I'm not being sarcastic. Who is demanding automation and voice activation? The reason there is a current push to automation and voice activation is FOR TRACKING AND DATA COLLECTION PURPOSES. It is amusing you think it is about what YOU want.
If no one was buying this shit, the automation industry wouldn't be in a constant state of growth. Doesn't matter who started it, or who didn't ask for it, or even what nefarious activity it drives. People DO use automation. A LOT of people. And none of them give a fuck about trading privacy or security for that convenience. Consumers are also lazier than ever, which is another reason automation and voice activation have become insanely popular, and ultimately drive demand. Look at the migration of au
Re:Face ID (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, and this was the problem in the first place. Apple's stats indicated most people weren't bothering to set a PIN, so the phones were unsecured entirely. TouchID made it possible to provide some modicum of security (as much as 4 digits is gonna get you anyway) while giving everyone enough convenience that they were happy to use it.
FaceID has the potential to be a much better implementation AND do some interesting things with face mapping and depth mapping besides that (see the minimum-viable-product that is the snapchat filters that more accurately map to one's face).
Re:Face ID (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Face ID (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, see, here's the thing:
A PIN is a nuisance. 99 times out of 100, I'm opening my phone to look at something like Facebook or check movie times or take a picture or place a call or whatever. 1 time in 100, I'm using my phone to pay for something, transferring money between bank accounts, or some other system where I really want to make sure that there's a way for the phone to verify that it's me.
What I want is some way for my phone to know it's me without me having to memorize some number. Fingerprints, retina scans, face scans, voice-print, whatever.
Now, yeah, grampa, you can yell about the kids today and how when you were their age you memorized 57 different unique passwords and you were happy! They have no business being anywhere near your lawn.
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It's all about friction. We KNOW that users are bad with passwords and all that jazz, and they feel like they should be better, but it's just one more thing they have to remember. It seems alien to a lot of us, but that's how it is. And that's why Apple made TouchID. The phones aren't unhackable, but they're close enough for most purposes, and they prevent casual intrusion if nothing else.
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Believe it or not, but all those "tracking features" you seem to think are intractable, are all easily defeated by a variety of means. Here is just the quick half dozen I could think of.
1) Disable Data unless actually using it
2) Disable Location.
3) GPS Spoofing App
4) VPN services
5) Firewall rules
6) DNS Encryption
7) Change your ROM (Several available, different focus/approach)
8) Incognito Mode
The problem is, that there are plenty of different ways to improve the profile being generated by the "mobile trackin
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the priorities of the vast majority of smartphone users work like this:
1: ux: it must be easy to use because stopping to think about a password causes "friction" with my obsessive-compulsive lifestyle. any cognitively perceivable delay between thinking about facebook and posting on facebook must be eliminated at all costs.
2: material design (no, not the google shit): it sure would be nice to have one in gold, and with a huge fragile screen. thin too.
3: security: i don't want my partner or kids picking it up
Re:Face ID (Score:5, Insightful)
They do? I'm pretty sure everyone is happy with PIN based logins. Does anyone even use Touch ID?
Ah yes, the classic, "this is the way I experience things, ergo I'm sure that's how everyone else does too."
I use the fingerprint reader on my Android and find it wayyyyyyy superior to using a PIN.
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Who uses TouchID?
Just about every single iPhone user out there?
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I don't use TouchID on my iPhone.
Posted from my iPhone 4.
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I use the fingerprint reader. It's quick enough that you wouldn't see me doing it unless you were paying attention.
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I use a password on my Android device and I find it wayyyyyyyyy more secure than, and thus superior to, using a fingerprint reader.
Re: Face ID (Score:2)
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But some of us don't want to share our biological datas like fingerprints, faces, etc.
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And some people like to shit in public. That doesn't make either of you intelligent.
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Apple uses Touch ID to brick phones repaired by an unauthorized third party. There is always a need to put terror into the heart of Apple customers who don't go directly to the 'Genius' bar when anything scary happens.
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What? I totally want FaceID! I can keep my Android phone safe while hacking into encrypted iPhones by holding the phone up to someone's Facebook page! Then I can tell everyone I'm Zero Cool!
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Yeah... this isn't Space Quest III, it's real life.
Go watch Apple's keynote. Even a 3D mask of your own face should fail to authenticate with FaceID.
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And for years hardware makers claimed fingerprints were secure, when they can be fooled by silicone molds. Just because they say it doesn't mean its true.
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Except you're wrong and all of those can and do fool a variety of fingerprint sensors. Given the newness of the technology I trust facial recognition even less. I'll stick with a pin or password, thanks.
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I totally want FaceID! I can keep my Android phone safe while hacking into encrypted iPhones by holding the phone up to someone's Facebook page!
Other than the fact that's not how FaceID works.
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I wanted a notch in my phone's display. It wasn't good when they implied the new Applephone would have no bezel. Faceid is just a good way of insuring that people know when watching a video that they have a genuine Apple product, because of that part of the view that is obscured.
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FaceID means Apple has the "courage" to not to not worry about a fingerprint scanner, so more real estate used for the display on the phone.
How about a compromise... stick the fingerprint scanner on the back. Everyone is happy now.
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I like the idea behind Face ID. Being that it is doing a 3d scan of your face, it makes it more secure then a finger print, which is much easier to duplicate.
Also while the current Face Emoji are just silly. It does open the technology up to doing more interesting types of more practical work. If you are not looking at the device it could slow down the GPU to save battery. Improve accuracy on speech to text, as it can read your lips in connection on what you are saying. The technology could also be modi
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Riiiight.
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Being that the FBI had a hard time breaking into an older iPhone, that they had the actual system on hand. And Apple had stated that they do not store the information off the phone, And this phone will need to function in areas where there is no cell or network connections. There is little need to store in the cloud, and just a lot of risk if they do. I tend to take Apples word on this.
Now they may be sending every time I use the phone, and where I am located, but I doubt they are sending my actual face
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If the data were being sent to the cloud, you'd have to have an internet connection to use it, and you don't. You can turn wifi off or go into the forest or whatever and all these features still work. The TouchID (and presumably FaceID) systems are stand-alone, on-device only. They don't store pictures, they create a mathematical hash of the data, and then generate a new hash every time you're scanned. The hashes are then compared to see if they're alike, so there's nothing that's stored that can be turned
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I think Face ID is interesting tech, and potentially makes sense as a piece of the puzzle of authentication. I imagine that eventually there might be a variety of authentication factors that are weighted and considered together, intelligently, to verify a person's identity. For example, your phone could look at:
* Your fingerprint
* Your face
* Whether you're wearing your smart watch
* Location information (whether you're at home or at work)
... and perhaps some other things that I'm not thinking of, and
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We've had facial recognition for a long time. We haven't had a lot of compact, practical, and reliable consumer implementations.
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Really? I had a webcam that did it 10 years ago, and so did my old Windows Phone.
I believe you when you say you had a webcam that did it 10 years ago. I'll even believe that it kind of mostly did an ok job of recognizing that there was a face in the image. Maybe it even could identify people and tell one person from another... kind of... maybe if they looked very different from each other, and looked very much the same from one day to the next. If you changed your hair or grew a beard, it probably wouldn't be able to figure out who you were. If you had a family member with a strong
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Holy shit are you wrong (Score:2)
I see Slashdot continues in trotting out the most amazing of luddites, those who predict failures moments before unquestionable success is at hand...
Consider just one small aspect why FaceID will be a huge boon. How many people with winter coming up in the US will no longer have to take gloves off or use a passcode to unlock a phone? FaceID and touch-capable gloves are the perfect pairing.
And again that's just ONE aspect of the benefit FaceID brings, which applies to every single person where it is ever c
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Or just use a PIN like a normal person. More secure, you can lend your phone to friends/family/coworkers as needed.m FaceID is a solution that nobody needs or wants.
vastly LESS secure (Score:2)
Or just use a PIN like a normal person. More secure
You use your PIN in public??? EVER???
How is that more secure than a face you can't even steal by making a 3D model? I'll bet in the last month 100 security cameras have you entering a phone PIN on video, much less anyone nearby who simply shoulder-surfs the presses and grabs it from you immediate after... can't as easily grab your face now can they.
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They can very easily grab my face- just grab the phone and hold it up. You really are an idiot aren't you?
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You are the most insanely stupid person I've come across this week. And I visit Leftist websites, so you have managed to beat a rather high bar.
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Why are you also looking at the phone with your eyes open in that case which is ALSO required to unlock the phone..
So you are not just an idiot, but an ignorant one.
I'll let you have the last word as you are too stupid to bother correcting further, at this point no reader is going to do anything but roll eyes at whatever you have to say.
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coming up in the US will no longer have to take gloves off or use a passcode to unlock a phone
No, but you'd have to take the gloves off to answer the phone or do almost any useful work after unlocking it.
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No, but you'd have to take the gloves off to answer the phone
Why???? Have you ever used gloves that worked with touch screens? I need to nothing like that to answer a call, I just swipe over as I normally would.
I can easily operate the iPhone camera with my gloves, including turning on or off a variety of settings, focusing, taking the picture, etc. Typing might be trickier but I can also just dictate if I really don't want to remove the gloves...
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Luckily it won't be cold anywhere outside of the poles for too much longer. can we go back to using PIN based auth methods for our phones then?
(This post was not meant to be taken seriously, yet I predict that somehow the AGW / anti-AGW crowd will not be cool about it.)
ps: That was indeed a shitty pun.
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No one really 'wanted' any biometric security in their devices, and yet Touch ID ( and similar technologies from other vendors ) is used my millions of people today. Face ID is rational evolution of Touch ID and will undoubtedly become pervasive in all Apple devices and no doubt in devices by other vendors because it's easier.
This article is BS (Score:2)
Not only has Apple already publicly addressed this (denied it), they would be insane to change the specs after they've already started selling pre-orders. That would open them to all kinds of consumer advocacy lawsuits.
This article is high on hype and short on facts.
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Yes there is! They gave them during the presentation. They specifically discussed the error rate and compared it to the error rate of touch ID. Go watch the presentation. Don't take my word for it.
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I think that was the chance of two people having a very similar face. Not FaceID specs
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An error rate based on internal testing and data (and extrapolation/guessing) which they will never show.
Unless they've shat out a spec sheet, or you can statistically disprove their claim to a high degree of confidence, they can say whatever they want and change whatever they want.
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No. Preorders for the iPhone X start this Friday (the 27th). So Apple has not actually taken any pre-orders yet. Carriers might have, but that's a carrier problem, not Apple. Apple has said pre-orders open October 27.
Too much? (Score:2)
Isn't this too much technology crammed into a smartphone? Over 50% of components manufactured being trashed because they fail the QA test? That's really not green, Apple.
From A Technical Standpoint This Makes Zero Sense (Score:3)
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Apple have already denied that any change was made to the spec, however, you need to go look at what they've implemented. This is not just "facial recognition using the existing front facing camera". There's an IR dot projector, a FLIR sensor, and convolutional neural network acceleration chip in their implementation - this isn't just Android's 'does this image kinda look like the person' facial recognition.
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It's apparently the dot projector that's at issue. It's a component that projects 30000 infrared dots onto your face...and it's so small it fits in one part of the notch on the iPhone X. That's bound a high-complexity component at that size.
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It the news is real, that would probably be looser tolerances with optics as a way to increase throughput.
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FaceID uses an infrared blaster that projects a point cloud of over 30,000 infrared dots onto the surface (often a face) being scanned. If, for example, the infrared dots weren't of the expected intensity, sharpness, or spacing precision, I'd imagine performance of the 3D scan would be degraded. Presumably, SW might be able to correct for spacing precision, but not sharpness or intensity issues. This technology is essentially the same as the MS Kinect v1 device and was acquired by Apple when they purchased
Biometrics (Score:3)
Is biometrics a dead end for authentication/identification purposes?
Even if it is unequivocally a dead end, is there still merit to seeing how far the rabbit hole goes, for the sake of discovery along the way?
Re:Biometrics (Score:4, Interesting)
The reason Apple gave for introducing TouchID was that a vast majority of users weren't even bothering to put a PIN on their phone, so giving them an easy way to unlock the phone was better than nothing. There are definitely security concerns, but there's a BIGGER security concern when your phone isn't even locked to begin with.
FaceID is just a different extension of that. Neither of them is meant to be 100% secure, just somewhat MORE secure. For me, I went from having a 6-digit pin to a passcode somewhat over 15 characters because the overhead of only having to type it once in a while was more than offset by the convenience of TouchID. I simply wouldn't have a passcode that long if it weren't for biometric authentication.
If I really needed to keep my phone secure for some reason, I'd turn off TouchID/FaceID permanently.
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giving them an easy way to unlock the phone was better than nothing.
Not only that, I'm pretty sure you're required to set up a PIN or other password when you set up TouchID.
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Yes, exactly, you can't have the feature on without a PIN being set. And I think setting a PIN turns on full-device encryption, though that may be on by default now, no matter what. (I'm not sure where they'd get the key from, or what good it would be without a PIN, but still.)
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Storing the key in plaintext would be fine, since then you only have to encrypt the key when you set the PIN rather than encrypt the whole device (a poor user experience) - would save loads of time. And not knowing exactly how the secure enclave works, I don't know that the key itself would ever have to be exposed to userspace - just unlocked without authentication.
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You would feel better if you took your face off and stuffed it in a paper shredder. No worries about being face-tracked. You'd probably look infinitely less ugly, as well.
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Is biometrics a dead end for authentication/identification purposes?
Yes. Leaving aside the fact that, up till now, biometrics-based authentication can be bypassed by woefully low-tech approaches, the fact they can't be revoked when compromised kills them instantly, in my view. But, they make for cool-looking gadgets, which many will pay to enjoy.
Biometrics as userid, sure (Score:2)
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Basic security principles state that biometrics are best used for a "username", as opposed to a "password". The true "password" would be something you type in.
However, with mobile devices, there is a "good enough" factor, so fingerprint scanners are used. This has worked well so far, although with Android, one can have some apps be PIN protected, so a fingerprint scan couldn't have access to the entire phone and its contents.
Is biometrics a dead end? With more sophisticated scanners to get usable points
No, they are an additional layer (Score:2)
The issue with Touch and FaceID is that its pushed as a replacement for more secure factors (pattern, PIN), rather than an additional layer.
That is incorrect - they really are an additional layer.
When you use TouchID today, you still need a passcode, and the passcode is asked for at some specific points - like just after you have booted the phone.
So then between these points there is a convenience period where the device is pretty sure you are still the one using it, in which you get to use the biometric a
This is part of the R&D process (Score:2)
There are always tradeoffs when developing something. Is this really news?
Software (Score:2)
I'm curious, what do the suppliers have to do with the accuracy of the system? Is it not entirely software-based? Or is Apple actually licensing someone else's software to do it, and that is the "supplier" they are referring to? Some kind of embedded firmware?
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Is it not entirely software-based?
It requires sensors.
There's a significant HW component (Score:2)
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Apple is not doing this the easily-exploitable image comparison way. Samsung tried that and it was terrible. They've got a projector that paints the face with 30,000 dots, then a height map is created and face analysis is done. That data is converted into a mathematical representation (that can't be reverse engineered, assuming you could even get to it) and compared with the mathematical representation that was already stored.
No pictures are taken or stored. You're not taking a selfie. That's also why this
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He could already do that, thanks to the ill-conceived PawID.
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Many modern phones won't even work if you put electrical tape over that camera.They MUST see something so they can register the image and put it in their database.
Use a smaller piece of tape and stop covering the ambient light sensor.