Category: COVID-19

iphone and ipad technology failures in the age of coronvirus

whbeebe3 Comments

There are countless and mounting problems with our so-called “perfect” technology having to deal with imperfect real life. Here are two example problems with my use of Apple technology during the coronavirus pandemic here in the US.

I own a number of Apple devices; several Macs , an iPhone and a pair of iPad Pros. The biggest issues I have are shared by the iPhones and the iPads having to do with their biometric locking features, TouchID and FaceID.

If I use TouchID on the iPads, over time after initial configuration both iPads will exhibit increasing failures to unlock when the front button is pressed. No matter how many times I erase and then reprogram touch ID, unlock remains erratic. I believe the problem is TouchID wants to decode “perfect” fingerprints, and mine are now far from perfect.

Based on recommendations due to coronavirus, I wash my hands extensively, both in length of time and number of times during the day, especially if I (seldom, as it turns out) have to leave home. To clean up I use Softsoap manufactured by Colgate-Palmolive. It does a great job, but one problem is it dries out the skin, especially on my fingertips. This leaves a lot of cracking and tiny flakes of skin. That detritus makes fingerprint matching with TouchID very difficult, requiring multiple touches/button presses to open the device. Either it eventually succeeds, or else I just punch in the password (which for me is at least eight characters because I’m that paranoid). In the end I decided that, because I don’t go out with either device, I would disable both password and TouchID. Now, when I want to open the iPads I just push the button and I’m into the device. With a cover on it, when the cover is opened I’m immediately into the device. Securing the device with TouchID while at home is too much of a burden.

Which leads us to the latest and greatest iDevice biometric lock, FaceID. In practice, on my iPhone 11, it works better than TouchID does on any Apple device that supports TouchID. When my phone can see my face at the position where I would comfortably look at the screen, it rarely fails. When it does fail it’s because I’ve either pushed my glasses up onto my forehead or I’ve taken them off completely. The second time I push up on the bottom edge of the screen, it succeeds. So only two attempts to unlock, which is far better than TouchID. The only time I have to enter my password is when it explicitly asks due to its built-in security timeout (after so many days you have to enter the password to get into the iPhone).

FaceID worked great until coronavirus and having to wear a mask. Now it fails repeatedly while I wear my mask. The only saving grace of failure is that FaceID fails fast. And now that I’m used to it failing with my mask on, I’m ready to enter the password. The time to fail first and then enter the password isn’t that much longer than two successive failures, where the second FaceID attempt normally succeeds. Failure due to a face mask underscores the limitations of the existing system.

I say existing, because rumor has it that a better FaceID that can work with a mask on is being engineered and will be installed with the next point release of iOS. In the meantime I can live with the way it behaves because, well, I really have no choice. I won’t remove the device lock because I always travel away from my home with my iPhone and I do want it locked down as much as possible.

I look at the failure of both of these security systems as yet another example of many. These failures illuminate the deep limitations of machine learning that backstops these features running on the devices. It also points to a broader level of poor quality and too many failures in our current technology in general. We spend too much on tech that doesn’t work nearly as well as advertised, and we’re putting it into critical parts of our system of systems, leading to overall fragility in our daily lives. I’ve begun to look at our world as a house of cards. Trouble is, you can’t go anywhere else in the world without running into the same issues. If we ever do have a machine apocalypse it’ll be because the machines themselves malfunctioned, not because they rose up in revolt.

Personal Postscript

Back in October 2019 I spent a premium sum on this particular iPhone 11 Max Pro just for the privilege of trying it out in real life. After seven months of continuous use I now consider that purchase a mistake, especially given how little I’ve come to use a number of its vaunted features. I won’t spend that amount of money again on an iPhone, or any smart phone for that matter, especially an Android. My next iPhone will be “down market”, a much cheaper iPhone 12. I’d considered the latest iPhone SE, but it has TouchID, which I don’t care for all that much anymore. I’m looking at a “low end” iPhone 12 with a smaller screen but with as much battery as possible inside the device. Now all I have to do is bide my time until October of this year.

hitting close to home

whbeebe2 Comments

For a lot of folks the coronavirus/COVID-19 is little more than statistics and stories to be read and seen on the web. For some, it’s a matter of life and death. And for a final third, it’s the disease that strikes those who are part of their extended family. My wife and I fall into the last category.

We learned earlier this week that her older sister, living in St. Louis Missouri had contracted coronavirus and developed full-blown COVID-19, requiring that she be intubated in order to survive. She did survive, and we are very thankful.

And then we learned that a young woman who grew up with our girls starting back in kindergarten and is now back living in our neighborhood, lost both her grandparents in New Jersey to COVID-19. They were both 92, and unfortunately suffering from Alzheimers.

A common thread with all three is that they were living on an “assisted living” facility. These facilities are for-profit, which means they run at an absolute minimum with regards to the care of those who live there. And they take every penny those staying there have coming in with Social Security and any retirement.

I watched my wife’s mother go through two facilities here in the Orlando area before she died. She was 87 when she passed. It haunts me to this day and motivates me to make sure that our house, the house we built back in 1985, is the house we’ll live in until the day we both die, whenever that might be. I will never let my wife be sent to an assisted dying facility, because that’s basically what they’ve all become.

The near-death of my sister-in-law and the passing of our almost-adopted daughter’s grandparents have pushed me towards a political radicalism I didn’t realize I was capable of. Basically, I want to totally wipe out the Republican party as a political party in this county, this state, and this country. Everybody else who isn’t a “base” Republican has been asleep while they’ve burrowed into every government body and striped it all down to a barely functioning system. As a consequence when a real emergency arises, like the current coronavirus pandemic, we’re left to fend for ourselves. And if we die, oh well. Apparently keeping the national death tole down to between 60 and 70 thousand is a job well done.

They should take Dubya’s “Mission Accomplished” banner and hang it across the front of the White House.