MacRumors

Apple debuted its Touch ID fingerprint sensor in September of 2013 with the iPhone 5s, making it the first major smartphone to include fingerprint recognition technology. Samsung followed with its own version of a fingerprint scanner in the Galaxy S5, which is slated to be released on April 11.

A new YouTube video from Tanner Marsh compares Touch ID on iPhone 5s with the fingerprint scanner of the upcoming Galaxy S5, walking through the process of setting up fingerprint recognition on both devices and comparing and contrasting some of the available functionality.

The two fingerprint scanners are quite different, with Apple's Touch ID utilizing a round home button that captures a motionless fingerprint while Samsung's sensor is activated using a swiping motion that scans the finger from base to tip using a rectangular home button.

iPhone 5s users may be familiar with the setup process of Touch ID, which includes placing each finger on the home button multiple times in order to register a fingerprint from multiple angles. Samsung's setup is a bit different, involving multiple swipes downward on the screen over the home button.

Early reports suggested Samsung's fingerprint sensor was somewhat inaccurate, and the video depicts some of the same problems with fingerprint recognition. Marsh notes that he has to swipe directly over the center of the home button for a fingerprint to register and describes how the sensor on the S5 is hard to use with a single hand.

It seems like it's sort of hit or miss unless you swipe directly over the center of the button, covering most of it with your finger. Moreover because you have to swipe starting from the bottom of the touchscreen it makes the process nearly impossible with one hand.

As for the iPhone 5s, because the device essentially captures multiple scans of your finger in various positions you can literally unlock it from any orientation including upside down, left, right, or diagonally. It doesn't matter. It will almost always recognize your finger.

While Samsung's fingerprint sensor appears to have some issues, Apple's Touch ID faced its own problems early on, including "fade," or the increasingly erratic performance of the fingerprint sensor over time. iOS 7.1, released in March, solved the issue, bringing much-needed improvements to Touch ID's fingerprint recognition capabilities.

Apple also faced significant scrutiny over both hacking and privacy concerns after the launch of the iPhone 5s, leading it to publish multiple documents detailing how the feature works, assuring users that only mathematical representations of fingerprints are stored in the A7 processor’s Secure Enclave, which is walled off from the rest of iOS.

Samsung may face some of the same scrutiny following the April 11 release of the Galaxy S5, especially as the company has plans to allow developers access to the feature.

Samsung's S5 will also be compatible with PayPal's mobile payment app, allowing users to authorize PayPal payments with a fingerprint, a feature that could also cause concern with some users. Apple has plans to enter the payment arena with its Touch ID fingerprint scanner, but has yet to do so.

Apple is exploring touch screen technology that determines pressure sensitivity using a combination of capacitive touch and infrared light sensing, according to a new patent application recently published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (via AppleInsider).

The patent describes a method of determining the force of a user's touch on a capacitive screen using infrared transmit lines from transmitters and receivers positioned under the frame of the cover glass. Capacitive touch combined with light would determine both the position of the finger and distinguish a soft touch from a harder touch, allowing Apple to implement gestures that could vary with force.

Using infrared light to determine where a user touches a screen is a method known as Frustrated Total Internal Reflection, or FTIR. FTIR is essentially a light-based way to detect multitouch, bouncing infrared light off of the touch screen to detect interference from a finger. When combined with capacitive touch, the interference measurements can also deduce force.

FTIR has been used by Microsoft for its Perceptive Pixel products, as noted in Apple's patent application. Microsoft offers several large-screened multi-touch sensing devices that use FTIR and offers a technology called Microsoft PixelSense, which is used in the Samsung SUR40.

As implemented by Microsoft, the FTIR technology, which uses cameras to detect light refracted by pressure, allows multiple people to use the device at once and it also recognizes and distinguishes objects that are not fingers.

Though Apple has not yet built pressure sensitivity into the touch screens of its mobile devices, the company has been looking at various techniques for implementing pressure detection over the last several years. In addition to infrared light, Apple has explored force sensors, spring membranes, and pressure sensitive device casings.

Given Apple's continued interest in pressure sensitive touch screens and competing products that already include pressure sensitivity, such as Microsoft's Surface Pro line of tablets, the implementation of the technology in some form or another seems like a logical step for Apple's future mobile devices.

Apple purchased automatic speech recognition company Novauris Technologies last year, reports TechCrunch. Novauris' main product was NovaSystem, a server-based distributed speech recognition system.

According to the company's website, its technology is able to handle multiple simultaneous voice requests, recognizing complete phrases and analyzing syllable structure for better speech recognition.

NovaSearch doesn’t carry out recognition at the word or sequence-of-words level, but rather identifies complete phrases from start to finish by matching them against a potentially huge inventory of possible utterances. This enables it to assemble information about what has been spoken over utterances of virtually any length and take near-optimal decisions.

While the Novauris website does not mention its acquisition by Apple, TechCrunch notes that a phone call to the U.K. offices was answered with "Apple," by Novauris's co-founder, who confirmed that the team now works for Apple. Novauris's founders are well-known speech researchers and formerly worked at Dragon Systems, the company behind products like Dragon NaturallySpeaking and DragonDictate, now owned by Nuance.

One of the biggest differentiators about Novauris in terms of the competitive landscape, is that they operated in both the embedded and server space, and they also owned the core engine. This of course would make them a valuable asset for Apple, which had tried to acquire Nuance, the technology that powers Apple's Siri – a partnership that has long been known, but only officially confirmed last year.

Novauris's technology has been used by companies like Verizon Wireless, Panasonic, Samsung, Alpine, BMW, and more. It has also been used to power several different voice-activated mapping systems, as seen in the demo video below.

The acquisition took place in 2013 and the Novauris team has been working on improving Siri, Apple's voice-based digital assistant. Apple is rumored to be working on making some significant upgrades to Siri with iOS 8, possibly expanding its ability to interface with third-party apps.

Apple's customers may receive a boost in performance and improved battery life from the company's 2014 products thanks to improvements in Micron's LPDDR4 DRAM technology, claims Matt Margolis (Via 9to5Mac).

According to Margolis, Micron is ramping up production of its LPDDR4 RAM and will supply Apple with memory chips for its 2014 iPad, iPhone and Mac models, which are expected to debut later this year. Margolis believes a "mystery" $250 million payment Micro received for "product to be supplied through September 2016" is from Apple as part of a multi-year deal.

Apple is a current DRAM customer of Micron Technology, having last used Micron’s LPDDR3 DRAM memory in 2013. Micron presented detailed benefits and product highlights regarding their LPDDR4 DRAM Memory technology almost a year ago. Furthermore, just yesterday Micron’s Vice President of Wireless Solutions Marketing published an article highlighting the benefits of Micron’s next generation DRAM LPDDR4, which tells me this technology is ready for the big show. Lastly, Micron received a mystery payment of $250m from one customer that was reported during their Q1 2014 conference call and their 10-Q indicates that the payment was “for product to be supplied through September 2016″.

Apple is in an arm’s race to improve the performance of their mobile, tablet and ultrabook devices and improve overall battery life. There appears to be little doubt that Apple is going to be showing off Micron’s LPDDR4 DRAM memory across their 2014 iPhones, Macbook and Tablets. You can take my word for it that Apple users are going to love how “lightning quick” the 2014 devices will be compared to the 2013 devices.

Though not confirmed, this transaction is plausible as Apple currently uses Micron’s LPDDR3 DRAM in its 2013 models under the brand name of Elpida, a company that Micron acquired in July 2013. Even earlier, Apple reportedly inked a deal for DRAM chips with Elpida in 2012 that purchased half of the capacity at the firm's main manufacturing facility in Japan.

This new LPDDR4 RAM technology offers two times the bandwidth performance of the previous generation LPDDR3, while keeping power consumption low, claims Reynette Au, Micron's Vice President of Wireless Solutions Marketing, in an article at Wirelessweek.

These technological advancements in LPDDR4 RAM may complement Apple's 64-bit A-series processor, which powers the iPhone 5s, iPad Air and Retina iPad mini. Detailed analysis from Anandtech claims Apple's current A7 processor is so powerful that users are likely to encounter RAM bottlenecks and battery consumption limitations before overextending the CPU.

Apple today announced that its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) for 2014 will be held June 2-6 at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco. The company also announced that application for tickets to the event will start today through Monday, April 7. Tickets will be issued to attendees via a random lottery.

“We have the most amazing developer community in the world and have a great week planned for them,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Every year the WWDC audience becomes more diverse, with developers from almost every discipline you can imagine and coming from every corner of the globe. We look forward to sharing with them our latest advances in iOS and OS X so they can create the next generation of great apps.”

To handle overwhelming demand for tickets, Apple adopted a lottery system that will issue tickets to developers chosen randomly from the pool of registered applicants. Developers who apply for a ticket via lottery will know their status by Monday, April 7 at 5:00 PM PDT. Scholarships will be given to 200 students, who will have the opportunity to attend the conference for free.

Apple's requirements for purchasing a ticket to WWDC include membership in one of the company's paid developer programs, including the iOS Developer Program, iOS Developer Enterprise Program, or Mac Developer Program. With the new lottery system in place, Apple also is requiring that developers be a member of a paid program prior to today's announcement, thus preventing last-minute signups from obtaining tickets.

As was the case in previous years, developers between the ages of 13 and 17 must have their tickets purchased by a parent or guardian who also is an eligible member. Tickets are limited to the applicant only and cannot be sold, resold or otherwise transferred.

Earlier today Amazon launched its Fire TV media streaming box, entering a market that features fierce competition from Roku and its streaming boxes, Google's Chromecast and the Apple TV. To help set it apart from its competitors, Amazon included an app store, strong gaming support and much more for its box, which are features that have been heavily rumored for Apple's next generation streaming box.

While gaming on a media streaming box is nothing new, as Roku has allowed users to play games like Angry Birds on its devices, Amazon has gone through great lengths, including purchasing Killer Instinct game developer Double Helix and reaching out to third-party publishers like EA, Disney, Ubisoft and Minecraft creator Mojang, to bring 133 high quality games to the Fire TV, with more arriving in the future. In addition, they've launched a $39 Xbox-like controller to make it easier for users to play advanced games on the box.

Apple has long been rumored to be including gaming support on the next version of the Apple TV with support for gaming controllers. More recently, Apple and third-party hardware manufacturers have begun shipping iOS 7 game controllers for iPhones, but they've been poorly received due to build quality issues and high price tags.

To power these high quality games, Amazon has outfitted its Fire TV with a quad-core processor, which Amazon says boasts 3 times the power of Apple TV, a dedicated graphics engine and 2 GB of RAM, which is four times the amount in the Apple TV.

While its unclear what specs the new Apple TV could sport, it's likely it gets a significant improvement over the currently used A5 chip to the much more powerful A7 chip, which is used in the iPad Air and would allow developers to easily port over their best-selling iPad and iPhone games and vice versa.

Other rumored changes for the new Apple TV include a brand new interface that blends TV listings with apps and video from the web rather than a the current setup of a grid of app icons. Amazon's Fire TV does something similar according to a hands-on report by The Verge, displaying various movies and TV shows next to apps and games when the device is turned on.

In addition, Apple has been rumored to want to include some sort of Siri-like voice control to allow users to easily navigate through the interface without a remote control. While Roku already had voice control on their media streaming box, Amazon has included voice control "that just works" on its Fire TV remote control, allowing users to bypass typing for voice searches.

However, the largest difference between the new Apple TV and Fire TV could be content. While Amazon says its streaming device is "open" and has an app store, Apple has been long rumored to also include an App Store to allow for a greater variety and quicker access to more "channels" than ever before. While that would put the two boxes at parity, Apple has also been rumored to be discussing a possible partnership with Comcast for a streaming TV service on the new Apple TV, allowing users to switch between live TV via Comcast, a Hulu-like on-demand video service and third-party apps like HBO Go, YouTube and Netflix.

Apple has been rumored to be launching their new Apple TV as early as April.

Microsoft today announced Windows Phone 8.1, which comes equipped with the company's digital assistant, Cortana. In development for several years, Cortana is Microsoft's answer to Siri and Google Now, the digital assistants from Apple and Google.

Cortana is named for an AI character in the popular Halo video game series and as in the game, the assistant is voiced by actress Jen Taylor. Given a distinctly female personality, she is powered by Microsoft's search engine, Bing, and is designed to learn about users by asking questions and monitoring user activity, interacting through both text and speech.

According to an extensive piece on Cortana from The Verge, Microsoft designed the feature based on real personal assistants, giving Cortana a "Notebook" to work from. The Notebook can be described as a settings page, allowing users to designate what Cortana can track. In her Notebook, Cortana stores information like personal interests, relationships with people, frequently visited places, appointment dates, quiet hours, and more.

"It's her view of you, but clearly you can just snatch it from her at any time and say 'That’s not right, I don't want you to know this' or 'I'm not comfortable with you reading my email,'" explains Ash. "So you have complete control over what she knows and she’s transparent about it."

Entries in the Notebook are stored in the cloud, and you can share contact information with it, as well as your interests, home and work locations, and more. The notion of Cortana acting as a personal assistant with a notebook— as opposed to a creepy stalker — has been drilled into the team from the beginning, they say.

Cortana is a core function of Windows Phone 8.1, replacing the existing search function. Like Siri she can schedule reminders, but Cortana's functionality is somewhat more powerful, allowing reminders to be tied to people and locations. For example, Cortana can be asked to give a reminder to discuss a certain topic when calling a contact, with that reminder popping up when a call is placed.

The digital assistant also offers a daily summary of information, similar to what can be found in Apple's own Notification Center. Cortana lists upcoming appointments, reminders, weather information, and more. She can, with permission, track user email to pull out information like airline reservations.

Like Siri, Cortana has a personality. She has witty responses for certain questions, such as "Who is your father?" to which she replies, "Technically speaking, that'd be Bill Gates. No big deal." Displayed as a circle on a phone screen, she's also able to express 16 different emotions.

While Siri has not been opened up to developers, Microsoft is releasing a third-party SDK. Cortana will integrate with services like Hulu, Twitter, Facebook, allowing people to use voice commands to launch television shows or send a tweet.

Cortana remains in the beta stages, as there are bugs with the software that still need to be worked out. Windows Phone 8.1 will launch in late April or early May, but Cortana will only be available in the United States for the time being.

Microsoft also announced that it is making Windows licenses free for mobile phones and tablets that have screens of less than nine inches, putting it on par with Google's Android, which is offered to device manufacturers for free.

Mounting and organizing options for heavy duty Mac Pro users continue to grow since the new machine's launch at the end of last year, with Sonnet now announcing a new rack mount enclosure capable of holding two Mac Pros. The new enclosure is an additional option to go along with the enclosure and expansion chassis the company announced last week.

This time, the Sonnet Rack Mac Pro allows users to rack mount one or two Mac Pro machines in a 4U space. The unit includes a front panel power button with USB 3.0 port for each machine, plus a second USB 3.0 port, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and an HDMI connector on the back of the rack for each Mac Pro.

There are no rear Thunderbolt ports because, Sonnet says, there are no panel-mount Thunderbolt connectors available. There is, however, room inside the rack for Thunderbolt cables to be attached, and the company says it is "fairly easy" to directly connect Thunderbolt cables and they can be secured to the Mac Pro so they can not be accidentally unplugged.

The Rack Mac Pro also supports the mounting of Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel adapters like the Promise San Link2.

Pricing is expected to be $599 to rack mount a single Mac Pro, with an add-on to mount a second Mac Pro available for $299. Availability is likely to come in June alongside the previously announced combination enclosure and expansion chassis.