How to control Touch ID on the iPhone and iPad

Apple's fingerprint sensor has been around since last year's iPhone 5S, but owners of the latest devices may benefit from a helping hand on how to set up and enable the feature.

Apple's Touch ID protects your iPhone or iPad by allowing access only through your fingerprint. For those of you with the latest iPhone or iPad, here's how you set up, enable and disable the feature.
Introduced with the iPhone 5S, Touch ID requires you to register your fingerprint by pressing the Home button several times. Once the feature is activated, you then need to press the Home button anytime you wish to unlock your device.

Now with Apple's Apple Pay feature, you need Touch ID enabled if you want to buy something using the new mobile payment system. The feature can also come into play if you wish to buy something through the iTunes or App Store.

Touch ID is built into the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, the iPad Air 2, and the iPad Mini 3. With the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, you can buy items at supported retailers in the real world as the two phones are equipped with the necessary NFC (near-field communication) technology. With the new iPad Air and iPad Mini, you're restricted to online purchases, such as those at iTunes and the App Store, as these devices lack the NFC hardware.

Okay, let's look at how you can set up Touch ID, how to turn it on when you need it, and turn it off when you don't.

• On your iPhone or iPad, tap the Settings icon.
• Scroll down the screen and tap the setting for Touch ID & Passcode.
• Tap the setting to Add a Fingerprint. At the next screen, place your finger on the Home button. The next screen will ask you to repeatedly lift and rest your finger on the Home button as it reads your print. The final screen will capture the edges of your fingerprint, so tap the Continue link and again keep tapping on the Home button.
• After your fingerprint has been registered, the next screen will tell you that Touch ID is ready. Tap the Continue button to proceed.

Touch ID requires that you set up a passcode to serve as an alternative security method just in case your fingerprint is ever unable to access your phone.

• Enter a 4-digit passcode and then enter it again to confirm it. Both Touch ID and your passcode are now set up.

You see that Finger 1 is listed in the Fingerprints section. You can add more fingerprints if you wish. For example, you may want to register your thumb and your forefinger on your dominant hand as well as both on your other hand.

• Simply tap the Add a Fingerprint setting and repeat the same steps as above.

The next step is to enable Touch ID for any one of three functions -- iPhone Unlock, Apple Pay, and/or iTunes and App Store.

• At the top of the Touch ID & Passcode screen, turn on the functions that you wish to protect with Touch ID. Enabling iPhone Unlock will require you to use Touch ID to access your iPhone anytime it goes into sleep mode. Enabling Apple Pay will allow you to confirm purchases using the mobile payment system. And enabling iTunes & App Store lets you make a purchase through Apple's mobile stores without requiring your Apple account password.

That's the process for enabling Touch ID. However, there may be times when you wish to turn it off. For example, I keep iPhone Unlock enabled when I'm out and about with my iPhone 6. But if I'm at home, I don't want to constantly have to tap the home button with my finger or enter my passcode every time my iPhone goes to sleep and I need to wake it up. So in this case I disable both. Here's how:

• To disable iPhone Unlock, simply return to the Touch ID & Passcode screen and turn off that setting. You can leave Apple Pay and iTunes & App Store enabled if you wish.
• To disable the passcode, scroll down the screen and tap the setting to Turn Passcode off. You'll be prompted for your passcode. Enter the code, and the passcode requirement is now turned off.

As another option when iPhone Unlock is turned off, you can leave the passcode enabled but simply adjust the length of time when it's required.

• For the Require Passcode setting, tap the option that says Immediately. You can now change the time to 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, or an hour. So for example, if you change the time to 1 hour, even if your iPhone goes into sleep mode after a couple of minutes, you won't be required to enter the code until after an hour has passed.

For me, the biggest hassle with Touch ID and the passcode is turning them on and off anytime I go out and then come back home. I wish Apple had a quicker and more accessible way of turning the security on and off. For example, having such an option in the Control Center would certainly shave off some of the time and hassle.

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With new graphics chips, ARM grabs at cheaper phones, tablets

Emerging markets are seeing huge growth in mid- and lower-tier smartphones. ARM seeks to catch some of that trend with its new line of Mali graphics-chip designs.

CEO Simon Segars wants ARM to grow in mobile graphics. ARM

These days, even cheap smartphones and tablets need to handle complex graphics, with people using the devices for mobile gaming and high-resolution video.

ARM, which designs the computing chips in nearly every smartphone, hopes to seize on that trend, introducing Monday a new suite of its Mali graphics-chip designs aimed at the low- and mid-tier mobile markets. The Cambridge, UK-based company unveiled three new graphics chips, a video processor and a display processor, which it hopes to sell to the mobile, automotive and digital TV segments. The new line will update its current mid-range mobile offerings and complement its graphics designs in the high-end and very low-end.

"The capabilities of these devices are ratcheting up each year," said Steve Steele, an ARM senior product manager. "You can see a mid-tier device doing what a super-premium product did two years ago."

Since introducing its Mali graphics designs in 2006, ARM has been able to quickly grow the business, with 400 million graphics processing units selling in 2013, up from 150 million the year before. Mali chip designs are now used by electronics giant Samsung and Taiwanese chip maker MediaTek, and are in most tablets powered by Google's Android operating system. The new suite of GPUs and processors could help the company better compete against Qualcomm's Adreno chips, which have a leading position in mobile graphics, and Imagination's PowerVR technology, which is used in Apple's iPhones.

The new offerings could also be a way for ARM to try capturing the rapid growth of mobile devices in emerging markets, where low- and mid-tier phones and tablets are the top sellers. For 2014, market researcher IDC predicted smartphone sales in emerging markets will surge 32 percent, while mature markets will grow by only 5 percent.

On Monday, ARM unveiled the Mali-T860, Mali-T830 and Mali-T820 graphics chips. The T860 will focus on the higher reaches of the mid-tier market, supporting high-resolution 4K video and offering improved energy efficiency from its past designs. The T830 and T820 will provide faster performance than past comparable ARM graphics chips.

"From a strategic standpoint going forward," Canaccord Genuity analyst Matthew Ramsay said, "[Mali] becomes a more important part of the business," since GPUs -- once solely used for generating graphics -- are increasingly being utilized for computing and calculation in devices.
As part of the announcement, ARM also unveiled a new video processor, the Mali-V550, and display processor, the Mali-DP550. The announcement was the first time ARM has unveiled a whole suite of graphics technologies at once. ARM executive Steele said that's because the company did more to integrate the technologies of the new GPUs and two processors than in past generations, which should allow ARM's customers to develop new devices faster than before.

The new Mali technology should appear in electronics starting in late 2015 and early 2016.

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