Dustin Kirkland:

I could see some value, perhaps, in a tablet that I share with my wife, where each of us have our own accounts, with independent configurations, apps, and settings.  We could each conveniently identify ourselves by our fingerprint.  But biometrics cannot, and absolutely must not, be used to authenticate an identity.  For authentication, you need a password or passphrase.  Something that can be independently chosen, changed, and rotated.

From a security perspective, he’s absolutely right. If I were designing a corporate security policy, I would not allow TouchID to be used to secure sensitive information (which is why I’ve been kind of surprised to read how TouchID is supposedly a boon for the iPhone in the enterprise).

From a consumer perspective, however, this genie is already out of the bottle. Fortunately, as loose as it is, it’s more secure than what was being used before.

I think his perspective on how private your fingerprints are (“not private at all”) is interesting. Speaking personally, having once had a security clearance and having adopted a child, the government’s already got more copies of my fingerprints than they know what to do with.

AndroidBeat’s Stefan Constantinescu on the “neat software trick” the Galaxy Note uses when you want to use your phone one-handed:

When you enable a buried option in the one-hand operating menu, you can enable a “tiny screen” mode with a simple swipe gesture. Like Alice in Wonderland, what you see on your Note 3′s display suddenly becomes smaller and you’re effectively using Android as if it were a windowed application on your desktop computer.

Phabletous!

(Via Matthew Panzarino and Sebastiaan de With)

ZDNet’s Zack Whittaker:

Windows 7 generated more growth in share in the past month than Windows 8, amid warnings on continued poor PC sales and a weak “back to school” season during the third quarter.

I suspect Windows 8.1 could turn that around, but… yeeeeeesh. Meanwhile, most iOS users are on iOS 7 now.

Android Police’s Artem Russakovskii digs into Google’s code and determines the following:

The most significant under-the-hood and probably not active yet addition to Gmail 4.6 is ads. Yup, ads are most definitely coming to Gmail for Android which managed to stay ad-free all this time, unlike its web counterpart.

His conclusion?

After all, it seems almost silly to not monetize a core app with an absolutely massive install base – between 500 million and a billion.

Exhibit A for people wondering why many of us prefer Apple’s business model.

(Via The Verge)

Once again I join John Gruber on The Talk Show to discuss Martha Stewart, Added: Turns out John and I mispronounce “Lodsys” throughout this episode. It should be “lod-sis” not “load-sis”. The unfortunate people at Loadsys Consulting (with an “a”), who are not at all evil, have apparently suffered from mistaken mis-association. Apologies for the mispronunciation.

Equinux (via Daring Fireball):

In our opinion, the passcode in iOS 7 has a visual security gap: when you enter your passcode, the larger buttons light up a lot longer than with iOS 6.

I don’t see it as being that much worse — they fade out instead of going off on release — but I’d recommend turning off Simple Passcode whether you have TouchID or not. You can still use a 4-character passcode if you want but it’s a lot harder to read from a distance off the full virtual keyboard. (You do have to hit “Done” at the end with the full keyboard, which is an extra tap. Sorry if that kills it for you, lazypants.)

As imagined by Edgar Rios. I don’t usually think much of these concepts because they so often go off the rails, but this one’s pretty restrained. I wouldn’t doubt something like this is coming. Strangely, the desktop looks a little more like Elementary OS‘s desktop.

(Via Khoi Vinh)

Lodsys sues Martha Stewart, Martha fights back. I’m making an adorable crushed velvet table centerpiece with lilies and sparklers that says “GO, MARTHA!”

Kelly Clay writing for Forbes:

According to an inside source at Microsoft, Microsoft Stores will begin giving a minimum $200 in-store credit (as a Windows Store gift card) for iPhones on Friday as part of its “#timetoswitch” campaign, obviously hoping consumers will use the cash to buy a Windows Phone.

On the other hand, I really have no other suggestions for them for improving Windows Phone’s fortunes.

I can’t find evidence of this anymore, but I distinctly remember that in the summer before the Zune came out there were rumors that Microsoft was going to just give people licenses to the songs they’d already bought on iTunes to get them to switch, which Microsoft boosters said the company could do because they were such a money-making dynamo. They didn’t do that, of course, at the very least because it would be technically unfeasible if not monetarily unfeasible.

Even if they had, though, there are some problems you can’t just buy your way out of. The problem isn’t getting the iPhone out of customers hands, it’s giving them a compelling reason to pick up a Windows Phone.