New iPhones could change commerce

Apple's iPhone event was largely devoid of surprises, but the company's new phones have several features that could significantly alter the way people shop online and in the physical world. But not quite yet.

The most widely noted feature of the new phone was its fingerprint scanner. For now the utility of the scanner is limited. It can allow users to bypass the use of a password when they want to unlock their phones or buy things from iTunes. This is kind of neat, and could prove to be a modest benefit for Apple in the corporate market, where users often have to enter long passwords to unlock their phones. For now, though, its most important distinction is that it's a feature that Samsung phones don't have (yet).