Tim Cook made a public appearance at the Palo Alto Apple Store this morning for the launch of the iPhone 5s and 5c, and it looks like he may have finally taken to a Twitter account he created back in July to share about the experience in his first tweet ever.
Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint scanner has been welcomed as a “major step forward” by Biometrics expert Philip Smith, whose company pioneered the technology a decade ago.
“It’s a huge milestone in bringing fingerprint-based biometrics to the mainstream,” he said. “I’m thrilled to see this.”
Of course a biometrics would welcome an advance like this. But Touch ID has already set off a firestorm of controversy among privacy advocates who say there could be lots of Big Brother implications, especially following revelations by Der Spiegel Online that the N.S.A. already has the ability to capture photos, GPS data, contacts and texts from iPhones.
Tim Cook and company rocked today’s keynote. As expected, the iPhone 5s was announced with a new processor, fingerprint sensor and motion chip alongside the new cost-conscious and brightly-colored iPhone 5c.
Craig Frederhigi spent some time on Jony Ive’s upcoming iOS 7, running through the main features, most of which we’d heard back at WWDC in June, including Control Center, Search anywhere, more textured ringtones and the like.
The two new models of iPhone were the focus of today’s event. CEO Tim Cook said that the iPhone business was getting so big they decided to replace the iPhone 5 with two new models. The iPhone 5c looks to aim directly at kids and perhaps budget-conscious consumers with bright colors and the ability to purchase contrasting soft rubber cases. The iPhone 5s is a tour-de-force of new technology, including the much-anticipated fingerprint sensor, Touch ID, and the new A7 and M7 chips.
The keynote was even more densely packed with info, of course, so we’ve broken everything down into tasty, bite-size nuggets of information so you can get essentials of what happened today without having to read 30,000 different blog posts.
Here’s everything that Apple announced at today’s keynote:
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The iPhone 5S’s new TouchID looks incredible and will surely be handy in saving time and keeping passwords out of your mind, but should we be worried that the NSA and other organizations will steal Touch ID data for far more nefarious purposes?
Phil Schiller reassured the crowd this morning that all fingerprint data is encrypted, and secured inside a secure enclave. It’s never available to other software. It’s never uploaded to Apple’s servers or backed up to iCloud. But still, this is the NSA we’re talking about. What do you guys think? Vote in our poll and let us hear your thoughts in the comments below.
The iPhone 5S fingerprint sensor is officially confirmed. Apple just took the wraps off “Touch ID,” a capacitive sensor that is built into the home button.
Like the rumors have said all along, Touch ID is embedded into the device’s home button, which is now made of sapphire crystal. Apple’s Phil Schiller described the fingerprint as the “key you have with you everywhere you go” during the keynote.
Touch ID will be used for authenticating not only device passwords, but iTunes Store purchases with the user’s Apple ID.
The iPhone 5s is here, and it’s a powerhouse. Today Phil Schiller announced that the 5s features a brand new A7 chip built on 64-bit architecture, making the iPhone the first smartphone ever to go 64-bit.
We’re talking an insane amount of power here. To put the specs into perspective, Apple is claiming that the 5s delivers 56x faster graphics and 40x faster CPU than the original iPhone. The 5s is a “huge leap forward in mobile computing performance,” said Schiller at today’s keynote.
Today Apple’s Phil Schiller announced the new iPhone 5s in three colors: silver, gold, and a new “space gray.” The 5s comes with the same design as the iPhone 5, but it sports a tweaked home button with Touch ID. A new 64-bit A7 chip gives it 56% better graphics performance, and a drastically improved camera.
Apple’s Phil Schiller today announced that the iPhone 5 has been replaced by, you guessed it, the iPhone 5c. The tagline is, “more fun, more colorful.” Colors come in white, green, blue, red, and yellow.
After years of intentionally keeping its in-house marketing and ad team small, Apple is on a hiring spree and looking to double the department’s head count. According to a new report from AdAge, “the group could grow to 500 or 600 staffers from about 300.”
Under Steve Jobs, Apple would often outsource its marketing needs to firms like TBWA\Chiat\Day, and while it’s still doing that, the move to add more creatives to the payroll signals a shift in strategy.
If you purchased an iPhone 5 last year, you might remember how easily the black iPhone scratched and chipped. Christened ‘Scuffgate’ by upset owners, the black iPhone 5’s propensity for scratching even prompted Phil Schiller to comment upon the issue, saying such scratches were “normal.”
Well, no, they’re not, Phil. The white iPhone 5, for example, isn’t nearly as scratch prone as the black iPhone 5. Be that as it may, at this point, the iPhone 5’s scratchability can be taken as read. But what about the gold iPhone 5S? Will it be as scratchable as its black brother, or as pristine and unscuffable as the white model?