

Touch ID Likely on iPad 5 Even Though Performance is Erratic - akosner
http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/10/13/iphone-5s-touch-id-likely-on-ipad-5-even-though-performance-is-erratic/

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akosner
A Polar poll shows 23% of respondents complain of "too many fails."
([http://www.polarb.com/131862](http://www.polarb.com/131862)) and certainly
that has been my experience. I wonder whether more people are not overtly
complaining about it because users feel that they are "doing it wrong," not
that the software might have been too fiddly for release.

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phren0logy
Sure, that's one possibility, but I'm not sure I'd take that poll's sample as
being even remotely representative. At this point it's people on both sides
pointing to weak evidence to support conclusisions they've already drawn.

To be clear, I have no dog in this fight, but I don't think that any
information I have seen so far has a hope of being accurate.

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akosner
The only dog I have in this fight is my iPhone 5S! My big question is whether
the problem is hardware or software. The necessity to press the fingers just
so and the UI validation giving, in effect, a false positive makes it seem
like software. For Apple's sake I hope so. Software updates are a lot easier
and cheaper than hardware recalls.

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tomfakes
Perhaps because it isn't erratic at all? My wife and I have not had the
problem where it stops working after the first day - my anecdotal evidence
beats theirs!

They even mention that there's a support post about this, but not a lot of
people complaining about it.

I fell for their link bait

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akosner
See comment above. This is a real story, not "link bait," but thanks for the
vote of confidence!

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aaronbrethorst
I haven't any trouble with Touch ID, modulo when my fingers are wet or I do
something dumb like use a part of my finger that I haven't scanned (like the
first joint on my thumb).

That said, it takes _way_ too long to work. I want it to be instantaneous and
instead there's a noticeable delay in between when the screen flicks on and
when I end up back on Springboard.

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achompas
I've discovered that resting your thumb on the home button _before_ waking
your phone speeds up the process. When I do that I barely even see the lock
screen. It's like the sensor eagerly scans upon contact.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
clever, good call. i'll try to remember that!

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mikeash
My own personal experience is that it works great as log as I'm not too hot.
The moment my hands get a little sweaty, it just fails nonstop. The reader
gets so confused that I can't even program a new fingerprint in this state.
Unfortunately, this happens with some frequency for me.

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YOSPOS
Touch ID works great for me and seems like its getting faster. Sometimes I
don't even get a chance to look at the lock screen before it unlocks. It's
pretty awesome.

