Idea Number 3 in the new iPhones

The third of four ideas 'seen' in the new iPhone announcements, as reported  by Kyle Vanhemert at Wired:

A True Digital Self

Tim Cook called the iPhone 5S the company’s “most forward-thinking phone yet.” What else is he going to say? But moreso than the new 64-bit processor, the improved camera, or even iOS 7 itself, there’s one iPhone 5S feature that truly is forward-looking, in a potentially game-changing way. It’s the fingerprint sensor.

On the surface, it does seem a bit gimmicky. Just like those Android phones that unlocked themselves by scanning your face, there’s an element of a cheesy sci-fi that tags along with the idea of fingerprint scanning. But as Ive reminds us, “it’s not just rampant technology for technology’s sake.” Apple has a plan for Touch ID, and the fact that the idea of the fingerprint scan is such a familiar one gives it a head start.

The thumbprint is a psychologically powerful mode of authentication.

Your average person doesn’t know anything about RFID or PGP or how secure any of it all really is (perhaps as they’ve gleaned from the news lately, not very). But they do know that scanning into a building with a fingerprint is good enough for bank vaults and high-level government clearance, at least from what they’ve seen in the movies. Apple knows that in a world consumed with privacy concerns, the fingerprint has a decent chance of being accepted as the password of the future. In a clip dedicated to the feature, Apple’s Senior VP of Hardware Engineering, Dan Riccio, comes right out and says it: “The fingerprint is one of the best passwords in the world. It’s always with you, and there’s no two alike.”

The immediate plans for the technology are clear. The thumbprint will be your pass code into your phone. It will let you buy things from iTunes with the single mash of a thumb, no fingertip pecking required. In combination with iBeacon, the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol baked in to iOS 7, the tiny new finger-sensing home button could be the biggest, smallest step we’ve seen towards a future where we’re buying stuff with our phones, not our wallets.

But Touch ID has farther reaching implications than simply letting you walk out of Walgreens without stopping at the register. Right now, we’re at a delicate locus where privacy is a greater concern than ever and where our digital selves are fragmented across countless platforms, apps and services. The catch, though, is that the next generation of interactive, digital experiences could well depend on some sort of unified personal profile–a more portable digital identity, including your preferences, your apps, your content, your settings and the rest, that could be brought from device to device. The fingerprint could be the key to all that.

It doesn’t solve issues of privacy and security out of the gate–not by a long shot. Armchair critics responded to the news of the iPhone 5S sensor with a common refrain: one more thing for the NSA to collect. Still, though, the fingerprint is a psychologically powerful mode of authentication. As we’ve seen, our usernames and passwords are simple puzzles to be cracked; the rise of sophisticated phishing makes them as insecure as ever. Two-step authentication remains a slightly mystifying pain in the ass. A thumbprint is essential, and elemental. It’s convenient and, at least in theory, uncrackable. These are all things Apple’s evoking when they write, on the website for the new iPhone, that the Touch ID system is “inspired by a perfect design: your fingerprint.”

Those unique qualities give the fingerprint the power to usher in a totally new paradigm for mobile computing–one where your “digital” identity isn’t just a bunch of different sets of usernames and passwords and a scattered assortment of data profiles, but something that is actually, fundamentally, you–a digital version of your real, flesh-and-blood identity, as linked by your thumb.

As designers look to the future–one where real world experiences that seamlessly blend devices and services are privileged over discrete use cases and sandboxed apps–this type of centralized digital identity will be paramount. Services like IFTTT have showed us the power of linking up isolated services and features; how jerry rigging Twitter to talk to Dropbox to talk to your Photo Roll can come up with some novel workflows. In much the same way, the thumbprint is poised to be the connective tissue for the cross-platform experiences of tomorrow, where data profiles can be shared in vastly more flexible ways. Walk into a room, and all the devices inside it–not just the computers and TV screens but the lightbulbs and thermostat, too, potentially–will know it’s you. Apple wants to be at the center of all that. When Jonny Ive says “Touch ID defines the next step of how you use your iPhone,” he’s not just talking about how you unlock the thing. What he’s hinting at is use cases we’re just now starting to dream up.