Given that I said it's also a gaming device for me, that's one way where 'more' is roughly equivalent to 'better'. And actually, per clock, we're using less power. The new Apple processors are a lot more efficient than the old ones.
The camera in this phone isn't just 'marginally' better, it's a lot better. Better optics, faster focusing.
Browsing the web is faster, which is meaningful because of how bloated and bad the web has gotten.
I can use TouchID, which doesn't sound like a big advance, but it really saves me a lot of time and gives me a measurable amount of additional security. I've upgraded from a 4 or 6 digit passcode to something that's more than 15 characters long, and I don't have to type it in every single time I want to do something on the phone. My thumbprint is theoretically something someone could duplicate, but when you look at the people that have 'hacked' the phone that way, it's incredibly time and resource intensive. If someone wants my phone that bad, there's nothing I could've done to stop them anyway. They certainly would've cracked any passcode I had.
But basically, arguing against the progress in phones as good or useful or noteworthy is just shouting at clouds. The phones are better the way our PCs are better. Does that mean we should upgrade every year? Or even every two? Probably not--this world has enough waste as it is. But I do do 'more' on my phone than I ever have before. It's the central piece of technology in my life, and I perform more tasks on it than I used to. I don't use my desktop computer as much because I can lean on my phone more heavily. How is that not 'more'?
Then you hide the app in a folder like everyone else. The app itself literally only takes up less than 1MB, I think. I'm looking on my phone and it reads 4.7MB, but that's all 'Documents and Data', which is probably a cached old podcast that I used to test it out.
But there's a reason why the overwhelming majority of podcast listeners are on iPhones--not only does the iTunes store make podcast discovery really easy, but having a default app on the phone really simplifies the matter.
Actually, according to Anandtech, there seems to be a significant upgrade to Apple's IO on the 6s and 6s+--it looks like they took the SSD controller from a laptop and crammed it in there: http://anandtech.com/show/9662...
"Previous writers on the site have often spoken of Apple’s custom NAND controllers for storage in the iPhone, but I didn’t really understand what this really meant. In the case of the iPhone 6s, it seems that this means Apple has effectively taken their Macbook SSD controller and adapted it for use in a smartphone."
Sequential reads and writes are crazy fast on those two devices; they far outclass even the iPad Air 2, and certainly any Android devices. (Things fall back into line with the random read/writes, though.)
They did no such thing. The single core score is right there--there are two bars per device--and it's almost twice as big as the next device. Just add up the numbers for an aggregate score, and it's trivially obvious that the phones are in the right order.
1. Javascript benchmarks are a real-world test, since these phones are constantly executing javascript when you use the browser. What you say is true, though--Apple has an advantage because it has both the best processor and best engine for executing javascript, so it's not showing exactly how powerful the CPU is. But that's what the synthetic benchmark is for.
2. The display on the iPhone isn't 'low res', it's just a lower resolution than the one on other phones. But that's a relevant trade-off, because it means that Apple can push those pixels faster, for less battery cost than other phones. It's a calculated trade-off, because nearly nobody can tell the difference. The games on the iPhone will look just as good or better. Don't blame Apple for not throwing pixels at a problem that doesn't exist.
Apple's 'bloatware' is most irritating for the screen space that it takes up more than anything else. It's otherwise generally useful software if you don't already have a favourite app to do that thing. The Podcasts app on the iPhone is, apparently, basically the most used podcast listening app there is. The power of defaults is really strong, and a lot of those applications get used more than you'd expect. In terms of space, it takes up around 100MB, last I checked, which is a pretty trivial amount, even on a 16GB unit.
The single-core figure is listed in first place because it's the most relevant predictor of phone performance. Very few applications are written to be parallel--they're mostly games with physics simulations and the like. Even then, you have to remember that Samsung packs 8 cores into those phones and the A9 only has two and is clocked lower. That means that not only is the A9 more efficient per tick, it's also significantly more efficient per core. That means better output for less power draw.
So yes, the multi-core scores are lower, there's no doubt. The only thing that means is that in that one artificial benchmark, the bar is shorter for the A9 than for the other phones. In nearly every other benchmark--and most importantly, in benchmarks meant to simulate real-world situations--it outperforms the other CPUs by a wide margin.
This is useful information the next time someone talks about 'following the money' because scientists are just trying to get rich off of sweet, sweet grant money. (These are people that have never met a scientist and don't know how grants work.)
Anyway, even such a direct and obvious link will probably still change very few minds, but it's nice to have as an additional thing to bring out.
My phone is also my in-car GPS, my primary camera, my facebook/twitter/tumblr/rss machine, the device I do my home budgets on and the device I'm most likely to turn to for entertainment, since I don't really have enough time to sit at a computer to play games.
Most of that was possible on my iPhone 4, but my iPhone 6 does all of it a lot better.
And when I say my iPhone 4 'lasted' 4 years, what I mean is that I gave it to my Mom after 4 years. It's still in use, and because what she needs is just a phone and SMS and a few small apps, it still works fine. I think the iPhone 4 will be remembered as Apple's most iconic phone, honestly. It was great in so many ways.
They were never a monopoly because you didn't have to buy music from them--not only were there other digital stores, physical sales were still a thing. The iPod was the most popular digital music player, sure, but that itself isn't a monopoly; there were lots of other players to buy. If you had an iPod and wanted to buy music online and sync it easily, you would probably get that music from iTunes, but you didn't have to. You were always allowed to add mp3s to your library and sync them to the iPod. If you didn't have an iPod and wanted to get music from iTunes, too bad--but that's not a monopoly either. They're not obligated to make their service work with arbitrary hardware.
At any point in the chain, you could decide to avoid Apple. They had no monopoly in any sense.
I can't find a link to substantiate my claim, unfortunately, but I'm pretty sure that I read that Apple's best selling model is still the 16GB version.
We're probably a bit guilty of power-user bias here on/. I won't ever buy another 16GB device, but my Mom is getting by just fine on the smallest storage size iDevices. And when you look at the general population, more people are like her than like us.
It used to be that you could only get their lowest tier model as an 8GB phone. Now the 5s at the bottom of the scale comes with 16 or 32GB. I'm not sure what their motivation is, but I don't think it's a matter of lifting the average selling price--they make a profit at all tiers, and it's not like Apple is shy about prices. If they wanted to charge more, they would.
Or if it's about price, it's only about price in the sense that people buying 64GB phones would have bought them even if they had a 32GB version, but the perceived value in their own heads wouldn't be as great. That is, it may be a sort of ego-stroking for people that pony up an extra $100.
The phone is expensive, no question, but my last iPhone lasted me 4 years and I expect this new one to do the same. I get support during those 4 years and I don't have to wait for updates. The resale value is really good, too. The cost of an iPhone is a lot less if you consider how much you can sell a phone that's still in good shape.
But these are all trade-offs, and I won't pretend they're not. I get a lot of things that are important to me by buying an iPhone, but I trade off being able to buy a new, cutting edge phone every year because it costs way too much. If I want to sell it, I can, but I have to go through the ordeal of selling it.
I *do* regret buying a 16GB phone (I thought I would be okay because 16GB was always plenty on my iPhone 4, even with a healthy music playlist), but streaming music and some smart cloud offloading definitely make this phone liveable, even with games and apps and podcasts. If there's one complaint I have--and that the Apple community and pundits have--it's that stupid 16GB tier.
Are you sure it stops phone tracking? There are all sorts of passive things going on when your phone isn't 'on'. Wasn't this one of those things that you have to remove the battery to properly stop?
(Honest question—I seem to recall from a while ago that a surprising number of passive things go on while the phone is off. The OS may not be running, but it's not the only thing tracking you.)
I don't think the iPhone really teaches that lesson either. Let me preface by saying I like the smaller phone sizes; the iPhone 6 is too big. But the normal iPhone 6 is selling a lot better than the 6+. I don't think the iPad Pro will sell terribly well. Not badly, but it's pretty niche. The real money is at the Air level.
Oh, you mean versus all that pristine land that coal mines leave behind? Or if you step slightly to the side and consider the tar sands, the utterly blighted landscape left by that mining operation. The tailings ponds leak into the ground water, poisoning everything. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima have things living in their exclusion zones. There aren't any exclusion zones for the tar sands, and nothing can live there. If birds land in the tailings ponds--and they do--they pretty much immediately die.
The tar sands are considered a SAFE operation, one that's operating within the bounds of the law. This is what happens when there are NO accidents. With operations like these, who needs meltdowns?
(...as of about 8-9 years ago) The psych department had its own stats class, taught by a psych professor. You couldn't get an exemption if you had a high-level statistics course under your belt already, they insisted that psych stats were 'special' somehow, and needed to be taught differently.
If by 'special', you mean 'less rigorous' and 'taught by people that literally don't understand the definition of a function', then yes, the classes were special, and failed to prepare the students in any significant way for good statistical analysis.
I'm sure the story is the same at many universities.
He and his wife had a child, and afterwards, she lost interest in sex. Her desire never came back, and that was it. He still loved her and she still loved him, but he wanted to have sex. So he did the 'right thing' and divorced her. Now, their story isn't so bad. He divorced her and it was amicable enough, he still visits almost every day (they live down the street from one another) but they live in different homes.
My first advice to that guy would've been to have a consensual open relationship, but absent that possibility, I think that maybe having 'an affair' would've been a better solution than divorce. The result would've been nearly exactly the same (he doesn't even want a relationship with the women he sleeps with), but they wouldn't have had to live in different locations.
Your view of infidelity and relationships isn't wrong, but it's somewhat incomplete. I can easily come up with a slightly worse case for this--they could've been living in the USA, for instance (they're in the UK). That would've meant that she would've lost any health coverage that he brought to the family through his employment. You can modify this scenario subtly in a lot of ways to make it worse, and sometimes the least bad option is going to be cheating on your partner so you can stay married and in the same house and sane so you can raise your kids properly.
As someone that's consensually non-monogamous, this is all just abstract philosophy to me--I think there's too much emphasis put on sexual fidelity in the first place, and not enough on emotional support and availability. You can be monogamous with someone and still be a wholly shitty partner to them.
So don't be too quick to judge the people that were paying for memberships on the site. Some portion of them are CPOS (cheating pieces of shit, in Savage Love parlance), but some of them are almost certainly people (and, according to the analysis, almost certainly men) that want to stay married but can't live in a sexless marriage anymore, or want to explore other parts of their sexuality that their partner can't provide. You don't know the story.
You know, I keep hearing this and it keeps boggling my mind.
It would never occur to me to stop doing things if I had free money. I'd do MORE things. I have a good job right now, but I'd really like to go back to school and study something else. If the government were supporting me and tuition were free, I'd definitely do that right away.
So why do so many people say that everyone would stop working? Is it because THEY'D stop working?
And have you noticed that the incredibly wealthy still work? I mean, Jeff Bezos has a whole lot of personal wealth. He could've quit ages ago. Half of silicon valley could retire somewhere slightly cheaper and never work another day in their lives? Why do they even bother to work? Is it because there's more to life than being the idle rich?
The people that seem to do the least are the ones raised in moneyed privilege. Trust fund kids. They want for nothing, so they do nothing. They've got nothing to strive for.
But someone on a guaranteed income--man, they're just paying the rent and affording groceries. It's hardly the high life. Based on my own life experience, they'd be happy to find something better.
So I have to wonder at the internal process of people that say, "Gosh, everyone would stop working." I don't meant to cast aspersions, but are you projecting? Is the reason why you say that about other people because you know that for yourself, you'd rather just sit on the couch and play console games all day? I actually won't judge you if that's what you DO want to do, but stop telling the rest of us that we have no work ethic independent of money.
I haven't heard of anyone cracking it yet, and that's the sort of thing you'd hear about immediately if it happened. Breaking into an Apple device comes with a lot of press and noise. It's something we'd all know about if it'd happened. We immediately heard about how the security of the device was 'compromised' if you had access to a lab, a really incredibly clear picture of a finger print, and more time on your hands than your average criminal would be willing to expend.
Based on that, I feel reasonably confident that there's been no breach of security of the secure enclave.
But even if there were, this theoretical setup of Apple's is an indication that someone that thinks about security was involved in the development. There's no image. There's not really even useful data being stored, per se. You put your finger on the sensor and it creates a cryptographic hash from your fingerprint data, and every time you want to unlock the phone, it goes through the process again and compares it against the data it has stored. It's not even clear to me that if you had what was in the enclave that you could unlock the phone with it. (Someone that understands the tech better than me can correct me.)
I can do that on my iPhone without the voice component. I just block the number, and the phone rings forever on their side without my phone ever picking up.
I've heard that despite Google's usually excellent voice recognition, there are complaints about the quality of Google's transcription service. I don't have it or use it myself.
But it sounds like this is more than just transcription, though that's the main crux of it. If Siri is answering for you, you can have her filter calls, transcribe voicemail, reject calls, etc. It's like a spam filter for your phone. (Not that I give my number out to people so they can phone much anymore. It's mostly just the bank or callbacks for appointments.)
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Given that I said it's also a gaming device for me, that's one way where 'more' is roughly equivalent to 'better'. And actually, per clock, we're using less power. The new Apple processors are a lot more efficient than the old ones.
The camera in this phone isn't just 'marginally' better, it's a lot better. Better optics, faster focusing.
Browsing the web is faster, which is meaningful because of how bloated and bad the web has gotten.
I can use TouchID, which doesn't sound like a big advance, but it really saves me a lot of time and gives me a measurable amount of additional security. I've upgraded from a 4 or 6 digit passcode to something that's more than 15 characters long, and I don't have to type it in every single time I want to do something on the phone. My thumbprint is theoretically something someone could duplicate, but when you look at the people that have 'hacked' the phone that way, it's incredibly time and resource intensive. If someone wants my phone that bad, there's nothing I could've done to stop them anyway. They certainly would've cracked any passcode I had.
But basically, arguing against the progress in phones as good or useful or noteworthy is just shouting at clouds. The phones are better the way our PCs are better. Does that mean we should upgrade every year? Or even every two? Probably not--this world has enough waste as it is. But I do do 'more' on my phone than I ever have before. It's the central piece of technology in my life, and I perform more tasks on it than I used to. I don't use my desktop computer as much because I can lean on my phone more heavily. How is that not 'more'?
I couldn't answer that (since I do have an iTunes account), but given that podcasts are free, I suspect that it's fine.
Then you hide the app in a folder like everyone else. The app itself literally only takes up less than 1MB, I think. I'm looking on my phone and it reads 4.7MB, but that's all 'Documents and Data', which is probably a cached old podcast that I used to test it out.
But there's a reason why the overwhelming majority of podcast listeners are on iPhones--not only does the iTunes store make podcast discovery really easy, but having a default app on the phone really simplifies the matter.
In that case, why are the benchmarks always so much slower than the iPhone benchmarks for web browsing? I'd expect Chrome to be way ahead.
Actually, according to Anandtech, there seems to be a significant upgrade to Apple's IO on the 6s and 6s+--it looks like they took the SSD controller from a laptop and crammed it in there: http://anandtech.com/show/9662...
"Previous writers on the site have often spoken of Apple’s custom NAND controllers for storage in the iPhone, but I didn’t really understand what this really meant. In the case of the iPhone 6s, it seems that this means Apple has effectively taken their Macbook SSD controller and adapted it for use in a smartphone."
Sequential reads and writes are crazy fast on those two devices; they far outclass even the iPad Air 2, and certainly any Android devices. (Things fall back into line with the random read/writes, though.)
They did no such thing. The single core score is right there--there are two bars per device--and it's almost twice as big as the next device. Just add up the numbers for an aggregate score, and it's trivially obvious that the phones are in the right order.
iPhone 6s+: 6885 ...
Samsung S6: 6449
S6 Edge: 6446
1. Javascript benchmarks are a real-world test, since these phones are constantly executing javascript when you use the browser. What you say is true, though--Apple has an advantage because it has both the best processor and best engine for executing javascript, so it's not showing exactly how powerful the CPU is. But that's what the synthetic benchmark is for.
2. The display on the iPhone isn't 'low res', it's just a lower resolution than the one on other phones. But that's a relevant trade-off, because it means that Apple can push those pixels faster, for less battery cost than other phones. It's a calculated trade-off, because nearly nobody can tell the difference. The games on the iPhone will look just as good or better. Don't blame Apple for not throwing pixels at a problem that doesn't exist.
Apple's 'bloatware' is most irritating for the screen space that it takes up more than anything else. It's otherwise generally useful software if you don't already have a favourite app to do that thing. The Podcasts app on the iPhone is, apparently, basically the most used podcast listening app there is. The power of defaults is really strong, and a lot of those applications get used more than you'd expect. In terms of space, it takes up around 100MB, last I checked, which is a pretty trivial amount, even on a 16GB unit.
The single-core figure is listed in first place because it's the most relevant predictor of phone performance. Very few applications are written to be parallel--they're mostly games with physics simulations and the like. Even then, you have to remember that Samsung packs 8 cores into those phones and the A9 only has two and is clocked lower. That means that not only is the A9 more efficient per tick, it's also significantly more efficient per core. That means better output for less power draw.
So yes, the multi-core scores are lower, there's no doubt. The only thing that means is that in that one artificial benchmark, the bar is shorter for the A9 than for the other phones. In nearly every other benchmark--and most importantly, in benchmarks meant to simulate real-world situations--it outperforms the other CPUs by a wide margin.
This is useful information the next time someone talks about 'following the money' because scientists are just trying to get rich off of sweet, sweet grant money. (These are people that have never met a scientist and don't know how grants work.)
Anyway, even such a direct and obvious link will probably still change very few minds, but it's nice to have as an additional thing to bring out.
My phone is also my in-car GPS, my primary camera, my facebook/twitter/tumblr/rss machine, the device I do my home budgets on and the device I'm most likely to turn to for entertainment, since I don't really have enough time to sit at a computer to play games.
Most of that was possible on my iPhone 4, but my iPhone 6 does all of it a lot better.
And when I say my iPhone 4 'lasted' 4 years, what I mean is that I gave it to my Mom after 4 years. It's still in use, and because what she needs is just a phone and SMS and a few small apps, it still works fine. I think the iPhone 4 will be remembered as Apple's most iconic phone, honestly. It was great in so many ways.
They were never a monopoly because you didn't have to buy music from them--not only were there other digital stores, physical sales were still a thing. The iPod was the most popular digital music player, sure, but that itself isn't a monopoly; there were lots of other players to buy. If you had an iPod and wanted to buy music online and sync it easily, you would probably get that music from iTunes, but you didn't have to. You were always allowed to add mp3s to your library and sync them to the iPod. If you didn't have an iPod and wanted to get music from iTunes, too bad--but that's not a monopoly either. They're not obligated to make their service work with arbitrary hardware.
At any point in the chain, you could decide to avoid Apple. They had no monopoly in any sense.
I can't find a link to substantiate my claim, unfortunately, but I'm pretty sure that I read that Apple's best selling model is still the 16GB version.
We're probably a bit guilty of power-user bias here on /. I won't ever buy another 16GB device, but my Mom is getting by just fine on the smallest storage size iDevices. And when you look at the general population, more people are like her than like us.
It used to be that you could only get their lowest tier model as an 8GB phone. Now the 5s at the bottom of the scale comes with 16 or 32GB. I'm not sure what their motivation is, but I don't think it's a matter of lifting the average selling price--they make a profit at all tiers, and it's not like Apple is shy about prices. If they wanted to charge more, they would.
Or if it's about price, it's only about price in the sense that people buying 64GB phones would have bought them even if they had a 32GB version, but the perceived value in their own heads wouldn't be as great. That is, it may be a sort of ego-stroking for people that pony up an extra $100.
The phone is expensive, no question, but my last iPhone lasted me 4 years and I expect this new one to do the same. I get support during those 4 years and I don't have to wait for updates. The resale value is really good, too. The cost of an iPhone is a lot less if you consider how much you can sell a phone that's still in good shape.
But these are all trade-offs, and I won't pretend they're not. I get a lot of things that are important to me by buying an iPhone, but I trade off being able to buy a new, cutting edge phone every year because it costs way too much. If I want to sell it, I can, but I have to go through the ordeal of selling it.
I *do* regret buying a 16GB phone (I thought I would be okay because 16GB was always plenty on my iPhone 4, even with a healthy music playlist), but streaming music and some smart cloud offloading definitely make this phone liveable, even with games and apps and podcasts. If there's one complaint I have--and that the Apple community and pundits have--it's that stupid 16GB tier.
Ehn, this is particularly weak. This isn't a matter of a few hours, it's short enough to fit into a quick youtube video. :/
Are you sure it stops phone tracking? There are all sorts of passive things going on when your phone isn't 'on'. Wasn't this one of those things that you have to remove the battery to properly stop?
(Honest question—I seem to recall from a while ago that a surprising number of passive things go on while the phone is off. The OS may not be running, but it's not the only thing tracking you.)
I don't think the iPhone really teaches that lesson either. Let me preface by saying I like the smaller phone sizes; the iPhone 6 is too big. But the normal iPhone 6 is selling a lot better than the 6+. I don't think the iPad Pro will sell terribly well. Not badly, but it's pretty niche. The real money is at the Air level.
This is the only valid complaint of Apple I've read today. It's mostly in the naming scheme, though.
They should have
iPad Mini and iPad Mini Pro
iPad Air and iPad Air Pro
iPad Plus
That naming scheme conveys a lot better what you get. Pro is faster, mini is smaller, plus is bigger. Done.
Oh, you mean versus all that pristine land that coal mines leave behind? Or if you step slightly to the side and consider the tar sands, the utterly blighted landscape left by that mining operation. The tailings ponds leak into the ground water, poisoning everything. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima have things living in their exclusion zones. There aren't any exclusion zones for the tar sands, and nothing can live there. If birds land in the tailings ponds--and they do--they pretty much immediately die.
The tar sands are considered a SAFE operation, one that's operating within the bounds of the law. This is what happens when there are NO accidents. With operations like these, who needs meltdowns?
(...as of about 8-9 years ago) The psych department had its own stats class, taught by a psych professor. You couldn't get an exemption if you had a high-level statistics course under your belt already, they insisted that psych stats were 'special' somehow, and needed to be taught differently.
If by 'special', you mean 'less rigorous' and 'taught by people that literally don't understand the definition of a function', then yes, the classes were special, and failed to prepare the students in any significant way for good statistical analysis.
I'm sure the story is the same at many universities.
Let me tell you a true story of a guy I know.
He and his wife had a child, and afterwards, she lost interest in sex. Her desire never came back, and that was it. He still loved her and she still loved him, but he wanted to have sex. So he did the 'right thing' and divorced her. Now, their story isn't so bad. He divorced her and it was amicable enough, he still visits almost every day (they live down the street from one another) but they live in different homes.
My first advice to that guy would've been to have a consensual open relationship, but absent that possibility, I think that maybe having 'an affair' would've been a better solution than divorce. The result would've been nearly exactly the same (he doesn't even want a relationship with the women he sleeps with), but they wouldn't have had to live in different locations.
Your view of infidelity and relationships isn't wrong, but it's somewhat incomplete. I can easily come up with a slightly worse case for this--they could've been living in the USA, for instance (they're in the UK). That would've meant that she would've lost any health coverage that he brought to the family through his employment. You can modify this scenario subtly in a lot of ways to make it worse, and sometimes the least bad option is going to be cheating on your partner so you can stay married and in the same house and sane so you can raise your kids properly.
As someone that's consensually non-monogamous, this is all just abstract philosophy to me--I think there's too much emphasis put on sexual fidelity in the first place, and not enough on emotional support and availability. You can be monogamous with someone and still be a wholly shitty partner to them.
So don't be too quick to judge the people that were paying for memberships on the site. Some portion of them are CPOS (cheating pieces of shit, in Savage Love parlance), but some of them are almost certainly people (and, according to the analysis, almost certainly men) that want to stay married but can't live in a sexless marriage anymore, or want to explore other parts of their sexuality that their partner can't provide. You don't know the story.
You know, I keep hearing this and it keeps boggling my mind.
It would never occur to me to stop doing things if I had free money. I'd do MORE things. I have a good job right now, but I'd really like to go back to school and study something else. If the government were supporting me and tuition were free, I'd definitely do that right away.
So why do so many people say that everyone would stop working? Is it because THEY'D stop working?
And have you noticed that the incredibly wealthy still work? I mean, Jeff Bezos has a whole lot of personal wealth. He could've quit ages ago. Half of silicon valley could retire somewhere slightly cheaper and never work another day in their lives? Why do they even bother to work? Is it because there's more to life than being the idle rich?
The people that seem to do the least are the ones raised in moneyed privilege. Trust fund kids. They want for nothing, so they do nothing. They've got nothing to strive for.
But someone on a guaranteed income--man, they're just paying the rent and affording groceries. It's hardly the high life. Based on my own life experience, they'd be happy to find something better.
So I have to wonder at the internal process of people that say, "Gosh, everyone would stop working." I don't meant to cast aspersions, but are you projecting? Is the reason why you say that about other people because you know that for yourself, you'd rather just sit on the couch and play console games all day? I actually won't judge you if that's what you DO want to do, but stop telling the rest of us that we have no work ethic independent of money.
I haven't heard of anyone cracking it yet, and that's the sort of thing you'd hear about immediately if it happened. Breaking into an Apple device comes with a lot of press and noise. It's something we'd all know about if it'd happened. We immediately heard about how the security of the device was 'compromised' if you had access to a lab, a really incredibly clear picture of a finger print, and more time on your hands than your average criminal would be willing to expend.
Based on that, I feel reasonably confident that there's been no breach of security of the secure enclave.
But even if there were, this theoretical setup of Apple's is an indication that someone that thinks about security was involved in the development. There's no image. There's not really even useful data being stored, per se. You put your finger on the sensor and it creates a cryptographic hash from your fingerprint data, and every time you want to unlock the phone, it goes through the process again and compares it against the data it has stored. It's not even clear to me that if you had what was in the enclave that you could unlock the phone with it. (Someone that understands the tech better than me can correct me.)
I can do that on my iPhone without the voice component. I just block the number, and the phone rings forever on their side without my phone ever picking up.
I've heard that despite Google's usually excellent voice recognition, there are complaints about the quality of Google's transcription service. I don't have it or use it myself.
But it sounds like this is more than just transcription, though that's the main crux of it. If Siri is answering for you, you can have her filter calls, transcribe voicemail, reject calls, etc. It's like a spam filter for your phone. (Not that I give my number out to people so they can phone much anymore. It's mostly just the bank or callbacks for appointments.)