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By adding a fingerprint scanner to its newest mobile phone, Apple Inc is offering a tantalising glimpse of a future where your favourite gadget might become a biometric pass to the workplace, mobile commerce or real-world shopping and events.
Although Apple’s executives said at the recent launch that its Touch ID technology embedded into the iPhone 5S’ home button would only provide fingerprint access to the phone and its own online stores, analysts said Apple’s embrace of such technology, called biometrics, would be key to wider adoption.
“It really propels biometrics into the mainstream,” said specialist Alan Goode, the UK-based managing director of research consultancy, Goode Intelligence.
Jonathan Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of design, said: “Touch ID defines the next step of how you use your iPhone, making something as important as security so effortless and so simple.”
Passwords and personal identification numbers (PINs) have long been the mainstay of access to devices, bank accounts and online services, despite their poor record. Many passwords can easily be guessed, while others can be hacked by brute-force attacks – essentially a computer programme running through all possible permutations.
They also involve one too many steps for lots of users: Apple said that half of smartphone users don’t bother to password-protect their devices.
Hence the appeal of biometrics, which take something unique to the individual – a fingerprint, an iris, voice or facial features – as authentication.
Apple’s move may not have an immediate impact beyond improving the way users unlock their devices and interact with Apple services like iTunes and its App Store and reducing the appeal of stealing an iPhone.
But that is itself a significant step. Apple and other manufacturers have come under pressure to add more security features to their mobile devices in the face of growing theft: in the first nine months of 2012, the New York Police Department reported nearly 11,500 iPhones and iPads had been stolen.
Apple has more than 500 million iTunes accounts. Anything that increases security of transactions and removes steps in the payment process is bound to boost online purchases.
