Hasta La Gadget!

Recently KGI Securities analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo, released a research note that revealed some information regarding Apple’s upcoming plans for the rest of the year. Some of those plans were shown briefly in a slide in our previous post that revealed what Kuo thought could be Apple’s roadmap for the year.

According to the roadmap, Kuo believes that Apple could be refreshing the iPad Air and iPad mini in Q3 2014, but what sort of upgrades could we be looking forward to? Well for starters we’d expect that both tablets will be getting a boost in performance, naturally, but in addition to that, Kuo reports that both the iPad Air and the iPad mini are set to get Touch ID fingerprint sensors as well.

Touch ID originally debuted with the iPhone 5s and thanks to alleged photos leaked at that time, it was rumored that Touch ID could be making its way onto the iPad as well, although that did not turn out to be true, but it is possible that Apple wasn’t ready yet at that time. Kuo also states that he believes the A8 processor will also debut in both tablets and that the iPad Air 2 could include an upgraded 8MP rear-facing camera as well.

Kuo also touched briefly on the rumored iPad Pro which will allegedly come with a 12.9-inch display. The rumored device was left out of Kuo’s roadmap because he expects that the tablet will only debut in 2015 and that Apple is currently working on a new interface that has been designed for the larger tablet.

Once again we have to state that these are an analyst’s opinion and they are not necessarily facts, but given Kuo’s track record, which has been pretty spot-on, perhaps some of it might prove to be true after all.

Touch ID Rumored To Arrive For The iPad This Year , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Apple, Rumors, Tablets, iPad, iPad mini, touch id,

You shouldn’t really have been worrying about how Touch ID works too much, but if you have been, then Apple has finally explained most of the security details behind the technology in detail.

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These days OEMs are putting in a lot of time and resources towards improving smart access systems on their mobile devices. A popular method is fingerprint scanning, which Apple used in its existing flagship smartphone, the iPhone 5s. Called Touch ID, the scanner sits underneath the home button and only grants access to users that have configured their fingerprints. Its quite secure, seeing as how all eight billion plus of us have unique fingerprints, but LG claims its access control system found on the G Pro 2 is much safer. Its system is called Knock Code.

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LG Claims G Pro 2 Knock Code Safer Than Touch ID original content from Ubergizmo.

If there’s one drawback to fingerprint sensors, at least in the past, is that it tends to degrade quickly overtime, meaning that after a certain amount of time, it will fail to real fingerprints, ultimately rendering the technology useless. Apple claims to have solved that problem with Touch ID by using sapphire to protect the sensor, but it seems that there have been a smattering of reports which claims that Touch ID is no longer able to accurately read fingerprints after a month or so.

This is according to tech blogger, Dr. Drang, who claims that he had to reset Touch ID every month or so to teach it to read his fingerprints all over again. According to him, he believes that Touch ID could be polluting its data by updating the initial scan with additional scans, and overtime the image that is stored will no longer resemble those of your fingerprints, hence the need to reset it every now and then. John Gruber at Daring Fireball semi-agrees with Drang’s findings, claiming that he has had several readers ask him about it recently, although he himself did not find any drop-off in accuracy.

What do you guys think? Any of our readers experience a drop-off in accuracy with Touch ID on the iPhone 5s?

Report Claims Touch ID’s Accuracy Degrades Over Time original content from Ubergizmo.

A new patent application published by the USPTO (via MacRumors) shows some more detail around Apple’s use of Touch ID and the fingerprint sensor in the iPhone 5s. Apple has been mostly quiet about the specifics of how the tech works, while generally asserting that the fingerprint information never goes to a server, and only remains on the phone itself in a “secure enclave” which isn’t accessible by the rest of the system or third-party devs.

The patent describes a system that not only siloes data on the Touch ID “enclave” section of the A7 processor, but that also encrypts the fingerprint maps registered on the device to make it that much more difficult for any thieves to even attempt to pull the data off in any kind of usable form. The enclave is a one-way street, too: the system can check new fingerprints against the stored ones, but there’s no way to check or call up the stored fingerprints at all for external examination once they’re registered.

Otherwise, the system works likely as you’d expect it to, checking against stored profiles for possible matches (and using stored lower resolution templates based on variables like different angles to make it more likely to correctly ID your finger). But another patent also published this week shows a breakdown of all the components within the Touch ID hardware, and explains how the actual sensor hardware can be hidden behind an opaque lens that’s been printed with an “ink assembly.” It’s likely this needs to be uniform to read correctly, however, as Apple notably left off its small rounded square icon on the 5s home button, after that has graced each since the iPhone’s initial introduction.

These patents provide a little more clarity on what exactly is going on when you rest your finger or thumb on that 5s home screen and have it magically unlock, and it’s reassuring to see just how much thought Apple has put into making sure the info truly is secure.