Pretty surprising Gates would say that considering the rivalry between Microsoft and Apple. To me, I don't see much of a point of Apple Pay. I'm a bit old fashioned when it comes to paying for stuff. I'll shop online from time to time. But as far as Apple Pay replacing the wallet, I think that's more than a bit far fetched. Don't see it happening.
The comparison to the iCloud photo situation is entirely different. It's got little to do with Apple's security measures. What happened here was people guessed their passwords and went into their Photo Stream. That's just the way it is with everything online today. People aren't keeping pictures and other media in a physical photo album in their house, where it exists in only one location. There was absolutely no breach of their security system. If users have an easy-to-guess password, leave their accounts open, or leave their passwords out in the open, then that's their fault. Neither the best security system in the world nor the worst security system in the world will prevent these events as a result of user error. There's a big difference between having a locked door and a secure alarm system vs having a locked door but letting everyone know the key is under the mat and the code is 1234. Now compare that to the banks/retailers who actually have had their systems breached. Home Depot, Target, Chase, etc. have all had their systems breached and information was compromised. This did not happen with iCloud, there was no forceful breach. Even if this were to happen with Apple Pay, there's no information there. Apple/Apple Pay does not keep your credit card number anywhere. They do not want it, they do not care about keeping it. No one other than you knows what the card number is. Not even the retailer. So in the highly unlikely event that someone does breach Apple Pay, they will be disappointed when they find out that there are no credit card numbers or any financial information.
Good luck explaining that to the majority of people and making them believe that it's the safest solution though... I think they will work in the future, but not in the foreseeable one, people are just too skeptical when it comes to these things.
I don't think it was so much as Google failed with Wallet or NFC payments as it is that not enough Android phone makers made NFC a priority in their phones. The one thing that these new iPhones will do is make it automatic, so everyone that buys one, will have the option to use ApplePay. For Android users, it was something that you had to seek out and make a priority when purchasing a phone, that was the main issue.
The leak wasn't an internal problem with iCloud. It was a brute force attack that had nothing to do with Apple's system or servers. The hackers forced their way into accounts by repeatedly attempting passwords until one clicked. It's not that difficult to do, and it's not an internal weakness that causes such attacks to succeed, although an extra verification step can help make these attacks less likely to succeed. Plus, financial and personal information isn't even safe with the banks, as evidenced by numerous hacks in the past few months against financial institutions.
Yeah, financial security is another thing that will, I believe, prevent Apple Pay from catching on in a big way. There have been so many data breaches, and peoples financial information has been stolen so many times recently that I think people are really going to pull back from being so trusting of paying digitally. Just this week another store had their customers financial data hacked into. This is a reoccuring problem and until it's fixed I see people being a lot more cautious with their financial information.
I just read where the biggest obstacle to Apple Pay will be the reluctance for a lot of businesses to upgrade their systems. Eventually, they will do it, I'm sure, but Best Buy is already stating that it will be a little later than the quick sooner, Apple was probably hoping for.
Well, it takes a lot of guess work to get into the account. They could have easily shut the accounts down after a certain amount of log in attempts to prevent such a problem.
