Here’s a humorous look at how Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor happened:
“Remember those persistent rumors of a fingerprint sensor that would be baked into the iPhone 5S? Well, it’s not a rumor any longer — Apple has just confirmed that the iPhone 5S will feature a 500ppi fingerprint sensor right in the 5S’ home button.”
“It seemed like a puzzling addition at first, but the company just shed some light on what the sensor actually brings to the table. Users will be able to simply touch their home buttons (rather than swipe the screen) to unlock their iDevice, but more importantly, Touch ID can be used to authenticate your iTunes purchases. Granted, the prospect of giving your fingerprint to Apple seems like a conspiracy theorist’s dream come true (though the events of the past few months make such concerns much more understandable), but Apple says that user fingerprints will be encrypted and will not be available to third parties.”
Related link: Apple’s Touch ID Is A 500ppi Fingerprint Sensor Built Into The iPhone 5S Home Button [TechCrunch]
Apple also claims that the scanned fingerprints will not be available to Apple nor even to iCloud, that it will only reside on your device. The small inconvenience too is that if you have multiple iDevices, you have to enroll your fingerprints on each one of them. The added security measure is you can use different fingers on different devices.