Open a gate or unlock your bike at just the press of a finger with Tapplock One+. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
The combination lock you used in school is a dinosaur now. It’s been replaced with much smarter versions like Tapplock One+. This has a fingerprint scanner, and a Bluetooth connection to your iPhone. It’s a padlock with no key to lose or combination to memorize.
Extra protection for your messages. Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac
Your WhatsApp conversations can now be protected by Face ID or Touch ID on iPhone.
The latest update to the world’s most popular messaging app lets users take advantage of the iPhone’s biometric security features for an extra layer of protection. Here’s how it works.
Touch ID could be back, but not as you know it. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
When Apple decided to create a bezel-less iPhone, it needed a replacement for the fingerprint scanner in the Home button. The company decided to go with facial recognition, but also looked into embedding a Touch ID scanner into the display.
A holdover from this period is a patent the company received today.
Samsung’s facial recognition system isn’t very accurate Photo: Samsung
Samsung touts the new Intelligent Scan facial recognition system in the Galaxy S9 as better than the easily fooled system used in the S8, but there’s no real-world change for owners of the new device. Samsung’s facial recognition technology remains far less secure than Apple’s Face ID.
2017 was a great year for consumer technology. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
2017 was an exciting year for consumer technology. It brought us big advancements in areas like machine learning and biometric security, as well as a big boost for augmented reality, and some not-so-satisfying changes to smartphone price tags.
Sure you can take pictures with it. But the iPhone X shows the future of the camera will have little to do with the photographic image. Photo: Apple
Each generation of iPhone has brought with it a camera more amazing than the last. As users ogled over higher resolution, bigger sensors and new computational features, few saw the device’s evolution as more than just the making of a better camera.
But the iPhone X gives the camera a new job description — it’s not just a photography specialist anymore. How iPhone cameras function in the future will have little to do with the photographic image. And the iPhone X previews the innovations to come.