Apple Applies For Image-Based Authentication Patent
Intended for Mac and iDevice users
iPhone maker, Apple, has applied for an image-based patent that would authenticate a Mac or iDevice user.
The patent application is entitled "Image-Based Authentication" and describes a method by which an image would be displayed on a Mac or iDevice screen. Options will be showcased asking users to correctly identify what it is. Should they correctly answer, access to a given device will be granted, while an incorrect answer keeps it locked.
Apple's filing depicts an image showing a person's face, with a list of names situated under said image. The user would then have to correctly identify which person's face it is to unlock the device. As for security, the application mentions "multiple rounds," which would require more than one image to be correctly identified.
The company's primary authentication method for iOS devices has been a user-generated password. The patent for its slide-to-unlock feature, meanwhile, was recently granted.
Contact Us for News Tips, Corrections and Feedback

Trolls everywhere.
No its not face unlock. Its pictures and you have to identify what word symbolizes that picture to unlock you device. Not have the unit scan your face and unlock the device.
And it was a fingertouch smarthpone and now every company has copied that idea since they became successful.
Then they made a fingertouch tablet that made billions then every company copied that idea too.
But yah, just a company with a patent on rectangles with rounded edges that seems to have multi-billion dollar - multi-national tech companies copying their product ideas ?
Steps to break auth method:
1) Take picture of picture
2) CB Image search with that picture
3) High chance of getting it matched.
4) Repeat
Ha Ha! Symbian smartphones with a touchscreen came out in 2000! Palm had the Treo in like 2003. Apple mozied along in 2007 and just made it cool.
Finally, someone with some sense.
Right and those phones are what spawned Samsung, HTC, Microsoft, LG, etc, etc to make finger touch SMARTPHONES !? LOL you can revise history all you want no doubt what impact the iPhone made to the mobile sector.
You do not understand the difference between first to market and what changed the market.
You can be first to market with a flying car and sell one to your mother.
Honda can make a flying car that establishes a market, sells, usher a brand new way of transportation and every manufacturer products flying cars.
Understand the difference at a market impact level, understand FINGER touch smartphone, not some stylus crap that sold a few thousand units, didn't compel competitors across the world to overhaul their product line up.
Sad when tech head just understand specs and dates without understanding implications on markets, competition, innovation, society, etc.
Apple was almost a decade late to the touchscreen smartphone arena. Just because they're successful doesn't mean they were the first.