Will Apple Take Facial Recognition Mobile?

By Darrell Etherington

Apple has a track record of taking products that work but haven’t yet caught on, then redesigning them with the appeal that makes them catch fire with the general buying public. The iPad is one example and Siri is another. Now there’s a new patent that suggests Apple could next tackle facial recognition.

A patent application published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Dec. 29—and spotted by Patently Apple—describes a system for presence detection that builds on two patents Apple had already filed related to the technology, but this one has a specific take aimed at use in mobile devices. Prior patents dealt with presence detection on MacBooks and with advanced recognition systems for use in processor-heavy home and business applications. This one (see graphic) combines sophistication with a light footprint for practical, everyday, mobile use.

Having used the Samsung (005930:KS) Galaxy Nexus for a while, I’m pleased to see what Apple’s new patent proposes to fix about presence detection. It describes a system in which lighting conditions, angles, and scale could all be accounted for, making face recognition usable on mobiles without strict caveats and conditions. The Galaxy Nexus’s ICS face-unlock feature is cute, but that’s about as far as it goes: It fails to match in most cases and can be fooled with a still photograph of the subject who activated the recognition feature.

Apple’s new method would use shortcuts to accurately determine who is using a device without requiring the heavy computational costs normally involved in such a process. It achieves this by ignoring facial biometrics and assessing the position of personal features to compensate for changes in subject orientation. Other advantages include a built-in feature that would evaluate a person’s level of attentiveness when using the system, which could help the system avoid being duped by still photographs.

The new patent also describes such other neat tricks as recognizing faces among family members, friends, and co-workers, then delivering different screen savers or non-secured information to those individuals. That’s a great advance for shared-use devices. It sounds as if it could eventually be used, for instance, to set varied parental restriction levels for family members who share an iPad.

Apple specifically envisions the tech for use in iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and MacBook devices. Although some patents never evolve to practical application, this one seems both useful and achievable in the next couple of years. It would decidedly add to Apple’s personal edge, in combination with its Siri assistant, and could make iOS devices even more accessible to a broader swath of the population.

What do you think? Is this the next technology in which we can expect Apple to make a good thing much better?

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What Will Apple Under CEO Tim Cook Look Like?

By Erica Ogg

It’s a question many in tech have pondered since Steve Jobs’s health issues cropped up several years ago: What would happen to Apple without Steve Jobs as CEO? Now we have to ponder the question for real, as the iconic businessman and chief executive officer of Apple just made his previous temporary medical leave permanent. He resigned on Wednesday as CEO of the company he co-founded and brought back from near bankruptcy. In his resignation letter to shareholders, Jobs recommended his longtime chief operating officer as his permanent replacement: “As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.”

Though Jobs steps out of his role as CEO, he’ll remain as chairman of the board, Apple has confirmed. Though markets will likely react when they reopen Thursday morning—having already dipped about five percentage points Wednesday after market close—having Cook in the executive office isn’t a change likely to be felt immediately in terms of the way Apple does business and the types of products it makes. That’s because Cook and Jobs are said to be very much of the same mind in their philosophy of how to run the world’s most valuable technology company.

The choice of Cook is no surprise. Though Apple hadn’t made its succession plans public, it’s been widely assumed that Cook would assume the role of CEO. He’s been a senior vice-president at Apple since 1995 and COO since 2005, and Jobs has entrusted him with the title of official acting CEO twice before. He’s also the man credited with turning around Apple’s manufacturing process and improving its inventory and margins, which are the envy of the industry.

When called upon during Jobs’s previous absences, Cook has been a calming, familiar voice on the company’s earnings calls for investors. That’s because he has overseen some of the most successful quarters in Apple history.

During his most recent six-month-long temporary CEO role, beginning in January, Apple has:

• Increased its cash reserves from $60 billion to $76 billion.

• At least temporarily become the most valuable public company in the world.

• Introduced a new iPad, dominated the tablet market, and sent industry heavyweight Hewlett-Packard running for cover.

• Had the iPhone remain the best-selling smartphone in the market, even after more than a year in release.

• Added more retail locations, including opening a fourth Apple Store in China, which has been a boon to the company’s bottom line.

• Been shepherded through a major new operating system update, launching OS X Lion last month.

Despite Cook’s clear ability to lead the company, he won’t be the public face of Apple in the way Jobs as CEO has become. Cook is known for being an extremely private person, and he’s not known to possess Jobs’s salesman qualities. So will we see Cook emceeing Apple events in the same style and manner as Jobs? Very likely not. We have seen Cook on stage at Apple press events, but this role will likely be shared, as it has been recently during Jobs’s absences, among Cook and other Apple executives like marketing chief Phil Schiller, head of iOS Scott Forstall, and hardware vice-president Bob Mansfield.

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