“This afternoon, Apple rolled out the latest iterations of its tablet line: the iPad Air and the new iPad mini. Though the new iPads are smaller, lighter, and faster than the previous models, they lack the great new Touch ID fingerprint reader of the iPhone 5s,” Max Eddy reports for PC Magazine.
“One of the signature features of OS X Mavericks, Apple’s newest desktop operating system, is cloud synching for your passwords between desktop, iPad, and iPhone. If someone nabbed your iPad, they’d be able to log in to all of your saved sites and use saved credit card numbers,” Eddy reports. “Including Touch ID on the iPhone made a lot of sense. The default four-digit passcodes are easy to break, and easy to learn just by watching someone use their device. Also, Apple said that a whopping 50 percent of its users didn’t even bother with a passcode. Touch ID, which can quickly authenticate you via your fingerprint, was meant to solve those problems.”
Eddy reports, “But the iPad Air and the new iPad mini, which have access to just about everything your iPhone has thanks to iCloud and other services, is stuck with the standard passcode. And, we have to assume, a huge number of users that simply don’t bother with security… Touch ID, or its next iteration, is coming to iPad but it’s not coming today. Which is a shame, but we probably won’t have long to wait. In the meantime, be sure to lock down your iPad just as carefully as you do your iPhone.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “We probably won’t have long to wait?” That depends on your definition of long, we suppose. The lack of Touch ID anywhere was today’s most glaring omission.
Got the iPhone 5s two weeks ago – now every time I pick up my iPad mini I try to unlock just by touching the home button. My 5s makes the iPad feel less cutting edge….the new one should have had Touch ID. The user experience across the IOS devices should be consistent.
I agree with you 100%.
Why no touch ID? Simple. My phone is my phone. It’s out and about with me, I need it to be secure. My iPad is *everyone’s* iPad at home. That level of security immediately goes from quick but appreciated to annoyance when my wife/daughter can’t unlock the iPad.
Apple, as ever, have clearly thought this through. Tech pundits, as ever, are just clamouring for everything, now, and haven’t thought it through.
I don’t want touch ID on my iPad …… iPhone yes, iPad no!
You need sell like iPhones
Here’s why there is no touch id on this version…because the next igeneration Pad mini is going to be thinner and even more streamlined in size and weight and will become a phone that eats the lunch of the Samsung note. This is the last generation of the existing iPad mini and the new generation of the larger iPhone…diverse enough to distinguish between and not mess up the existing fits in your hand iPhone. People who prefer to have a Goliath phone will at least get an A8 mini along with the deal. Samsung will weep, because they can only scale up, not invent. Touch id will be better by then and added incentive to purchase.