facial recognition

It’s looking increasingly like facial recognition will replace Touch ID as the biometric unlock and Apple Pay authorization method in the iPhone 8 – with Apple likely to be selling this as one of the headline features.

But any technical advantage Apple’s facial recognition system may offer over Android phones will be short-lived, claims chipmaker Qualcomm, promising that its upcoming chip will match or beat the iPhone 8’s performance …

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We’ve been hearing a lot about the 3D camera system in the iPhone 8 being capable of facial recognition to allow automatic login without Touch ID or passcode. A new patent application published today suggests that Apple also wants to bring this capability to future Macs.

But Apple has more in mind that just a simple unlock function …

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Not too long after the first rumors surfaced, Apple has given its usual non-confirmation that it has acquired Faceshift, the company behind the technology Star Wars used to animate the faces of CGI characters. It’s not an obvious fit for Apple, so what could be the thinking behind the purchase?

Like Apple’s patents, it is sometimes easy, I think, to read too much into some of the company’s acquisitions. Sure, it doesn’t go around acquiring companies randomly, but it may not always be after the complete package. It may well be that there is some small element of the company’s technology that Apple wants, or it may be an acquihire – where it’s the engineers rather than the specific tech the company wants.

But in this particular case, there is reason to suspect that Apple does have an interest in the broad brush-strokes of what Faceshift does … 
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