You cannot withhold your finger print.

You can withhold something which is in your mind. E.g. a pin.

Since only one (or two?) of your fingers unlock your phone. Your knowledge of the finger print possibly qualifies as secret knowledge. And multiple attempts will ultimately prevent use of finger prints.

The police would not (I think) be able to force you to disclose. They would be free to instruct you to use a specific finger and hope that it unlocks. But if it fails I don't think they would have any recourse.

So don't use your thumbs or index fingers. Which would be their starting point.

The iPhone does not care what angle you use the finger print scanner at. It recognizes your finger however you put it on the sensor.

Only for two additional attempts.

After that pass code only.

After three tries the iPhone goes to the keypad. You still have two tries via cancel to get your finger print correctly registered.

After that the iPhone will refuse to unlock without the pin.

First, many people will use a driver-less taxi. That allows each "car" to service multiple people during the day. That allows for a factor of N reduction of vehicles required (where N is the average number of people serviced per day.)

Second, for people that do want to own their own driver-less car, the car can driver itself empty to a distant parking lot. And because the "driver" of each car remains with the parked car, the cars can be quadruple parked. So density of cars in the (already cheaper because it is farther away from dense down town area) parking lot can be higher.

Third, it is likely that lower cost and efficient smaller cars (think one or two passenger) will be used. Again they are more efficient and achieve a higher parking density.

Assume a solution reducing the number of people killed in traffic accidents from 30,000 per year to some other smaller arbitrary number. Say 10,000.

Those 10,000 might be killed from a different type of accident. But overall there are 20,000 less people killed.

So do you convert to that solution or stay with the current solution? This is as much a moral decision as anything else.

But be prepared for some parties to the two solutions to be trying to emphasize problems.

For example drivers unions will go to their graves (literally) claiming that the world will end if driver-less vehicles are allowed.

To the extent that car sales will drop if a driver-less taxi model takes off see all parts of the car sales and repair economy start to complain.

There will be disruption and that will generate a lot of negative feedback.

Or 100 devices per developer license. Which at $99 per license means a $.99 tax per copy. Plus of course an administrative burden.

So you probably don't want to try and commercialize a cheap $1.99 app via that mechanism. But it would certainly work for limited hobbyist distribution.

Apple Pay gets Apple some cash from the Credit Card companies (already charged) transaction fee.

This is justifiable from the Credit Card companies point of view because there will be a lower fraud rate associated with transactions initiated via Apple Pay.

Apple Pay is still only available in the US With Respect To being able to sign up for it.

You must have a US Apple ID and you must have a participating US credit card that can be enrolled into Apple Pay.

Once you have set up Apple ID on your device, you can then use Apple Pay at any NFC enabled terminal world wide. They treat it as the exact equivalent (because that is what it is...) to a credit card transaction.

They don't bring much except some additional convenience IFF you want that. Tap and Pay without a phone is great.

I already choose stores that support Tap and Pay simply because I'm in and out faster.

If (when) Apple Pay comes to Canada, then I'll try Apple Pay. IFF that proves to be more convenient I'll use it. Otherwise I'll continue to Tap and Pay with the card.

The point is that I would be truly pissed if a store that supported Tap and Pay turned that off simply to prevent me from using Apple Pay.

Well because most stores will make you sign a receipt if you are swiping.

And swiping is being eliminated for fraud and security reasons in favour of (minimally) Chip and Pin or contactless (NFC aka Tap and Pay aka Apple Pay).

And even if Baby Mom is willing to do it.... will WE want to go to stores where people take a LOT longer to pay. That means longer lines.

I'm already at the point where I get annoyed if people pay with cash because it slows the line down. Chip and code is slightly faster. Tap and Pay (which is what Apple Pay is using) is by far the fastest. At best CurrentC will be slower than everything else.

So at a guess this will just drive customers out of those stores in droves.

No, because FTDI is now providing me with drivers that will detect if I get a batch of product manufactured with counterfeit chips.

So I can immediately return the product to where I had it manufactured and have them review their supply chain issues.

Any boards that work I can happily sell because I know that the FTDI chip and driver will provide a reliable solution.

Huh?

Counterfeit goods are routinely seized and destroyed. Google counterfeit products seized.

You can be charged with fraud, possession of property obtained by crime, possession for the purpose of trafficking in stolen goods. Etc.

Even if you want to dispute whether FTDI has ownership of their Vendor ID.

If you want to create your own driver and get it into Windows Update that requires that you also pass the USB Logo tests and that will require that you follow the rules from USB.org with respect to their allocation of Vendor ID's.

The only reason to use somebody else's vendor id without their permission is to allow you to illegally access their drivers (discounting the small possibility that you are developing a product for exclusive use with linux.)