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Apple Reduced Face ID Accuracy To Ease Production, Bloomberg Reports (bloomberg.com)
In order to speed up the production of iPhone X, which Apple plans to begin shipping starting November 3, the iPhone-maker told its suppliers that they could reduce the accuracy of the Face ID facial recognition system, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing multiple people familiar with the matter. Earlier reports suggest that suppliers were facing difficulties manufacturing the Face ID system, something that was holding them back from manufacturing enough iPhone X units for the holiday season. From the report: As Wall Street analysts and fan blogs watched for signs that the company would stumble, Apple came up with a solution: It quietly told suppliers they could reduce the accuracy of the face-recognition technology to make it easier to manufacture, according to people familiar with the situation. Apple is famously demanding, leaning on suppliers and contract manufacturers to help it make technological leaps and retain a competitive edge. While a less accurate Face ID will still be far better than the existing Touch ID, the company's decision to downgrade the technology for this model shows how hard it's becoming to create cutting-edge features that consumers are hungry to try. And while Apple has endured delays and supply constraints in the past, those typically have been restricted to certain iPhone colors or less important offerings such as the Apple Watch. This time the production hurdles affected a 10th-anniversary phone expected to generate much of the company's revenue. Apple has denied the claims made in Bloomberg report.
The reason Apple gave for introducing TouchID was that a vast majority of users weren't even bothering to put a PIN on their phone, so giving them an easy way to unlock the phone was better than nothing. There are definitely security concerns, but there's a BIGGER security concern when your phone isn't even locked to begin with.
FaceID is just a different extension of that. Neither of them is meant to be 100% secure, just somewhat MORE secure. For me, I went from having a 6-digit pin to a passcode somewhat over 15 characters because the overhead of only having to type it once in a while was more than offset by the convenience of TouchID. I simply wouldn't have a passcode that long if it weren't for biometric authentication.
If I really needed to keep my phone secure for some reason, I'd turn off TouchID/FaceID permanently.
Well, and this was the problem in the first place. Apple's stats indicated most people weren't bothering to set a PIN, so the phones were unsecured entirely. TouchID made it possible to provide some modicum of security (as much as 4 digits is gonna get you anyway) while giving everyone enough convenience that they were happy to use it.
FaceID has the potential to be a much better implementation AND do some interesting things with face mapping and depth mapping besides that (see the minimum-viable-product that is the snapchat filters that more accurately map to one's face).