iPhone News

Apple Loop: A Mandela Tribute, China Mobile Deal Nears, iBeacon Turned On, No iPhone for President Obama

Keeping you in the loop around some of the things that happened around Apple this week.

Honoring Nelson Mandela. Apple on Friday honored anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, who died earlier this week at the age of 95, by turning its home page into a tribute. Keeping true to its design style, the home page shows a black-and-white photo of South African’s president with his name and the dates 1918-2013. CEO Tim Cook also tweeted about Mandela . “Amazing human being. Champion of freedom and human dignity. He set an example for all of the world. RIP Nelson Mandela. We miss you already.” He also shared via a tweet one of Mandela’s quotes from 2002: “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others.”

Using your face as a password? Fingerprint and retina scanners used to be the stuff of Sci-Fi, but not so much so these days. And the same may be true for face recognition technology. Apple this week got a patent entitled “Personal computing device control using face detection and recognition.”CIO Today says it describes the ability of a device to “detect the presence of at least one user, without the need for receiving active user input information,” so that certain device operations can be controlled on the basis of whether a user is present.The operations would not have to be restricted to unlocking the phone, but could include, say, turning off certain apps if the owner’s face was not detected. The patent describes one configuration where control would be in response to one or more faces in captured images, at least one of whom is detected as an authorized user.”

No iPhone for President Obama. The president said this week that the Secret Service won’t let him use Apple’s iPhone for security reasons, which is why he still relies on a 2007 Blackberry, according to Security Week. Obama did say that his daughters, Sasha and Malia, get to use the iPhone. Why no iPhone for Obama, who has been spotted using an iPad and MacBook Pro? Because it takes the government a while to catch up with new technology and its unlikely that the iPhone will get the required security clearance before Obama leaves office. 

That’s it for this week. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.