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Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone

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Re: Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone

#121

Post by doublebash »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #103

I discovered and tried to use this feature to turn an older iPhone into a dumb phone for myself, but hit several blockers 1. It’s incredibly slow to transition in and out of the mode, as mentioned in the article, which made setting it up (constant tweaks) very painful 2. For messages and calls, you were limited to select contacts only. So I couldn’t just text/call a number when I needed to. They may have polished the…

I just tested #2 on iOS 27 Developer Beta, and this has been resolved. You can select “anyone” instead of specific contacts.

Re: Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone

#122

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #95
kelipso wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think “one can get around rules” is a very insightful thing to say, it’s just a truism.

They’re talking about the relative ineffectiveness of prohibition when it comes to teenagers. Generally speaking, they’re right. And the implication is therefore “don’t just blanket ban your way through screen time restrictions.” It’s a bit more nuanced than “one can get around the rules.

Yup. I think American culture is broadly too permissive with under-14s and too restrictive with over-14s (but under-21s).

Re: Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone

#123

Post by Marsymars »

Aurornis wrote: post #111
Marsymars wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upside of well-crafted social media bans for kids under a certain age is that you can use them to apply financial pain to social media companies for failing to prevent kids from signing up.

Applying stiff financial penalties for allowing kids to sign up for social media sites is another way of saying that you want to have to provide your ID to log in to social sites. Reddit, YouTube, Discord, and even Hacker News qualify as social sites. I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to start providing ID to log in to everything. If you think these imaginary laws would only apply to Facebook and TikTo…

> If you think these imaginary laws would only apply to Facebook and TikTok

We can literally write "these laws apply only apply to Facebook and TikTok" into the laws.

Or base it on sites that have advertising. Products/services that are targeted to minors shouldn't be permitted to have advertisements anyway.

I don't find "We've done a bad job with X so we should abandon X rather than attempting to do X better" to be a compelling argument on its own.

Re: Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone

#124

Post by isatty »

sbayg wrote: post #63
Cider9986 wrote: post #6

Mobile Device Management (MDM) is the only effective way to restrict idevices. All you need is a macbook and Apple Configurator. You can remove safari, blacklist or whitelist websites, block installing apps, block deleting apps. It's really customizable. Edit: expanded acronym.

MDM is the worst part of iOS. It undermines all of apple’s security claims, basically making iOS windows. Devices should not be able to be remotely controlled.

Nonsense. MDM is usually for devices owned by the company or opt in by you personally. There is no way to attack or transparently MDM a personal phone that I know of.

Re: Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone

#125

Post by dwa3592 »

my iphone is already kind of dumb. i don't have any social media apps. i have all notifications turned off (except ringtone for call). i only use my phone for calling and texting. it feels very expensive for those 2 operations. but i have the choice of downloading whatever shit i want to download.

Re: Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone

#126

Post by subarctic »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #117
laweijfmvo wrote: post #103

I discovered and tried to use this feature to turn an older iPhone into a dumb phone for myself, but hit several blockers 1. It’s incredibly slow to transition in and out of the mode, as mentioned in the article, which made setting it up (constant tweaks) very painful 2. For messages and calls, you were limited to select contacts only. So I couldn’t just text/call a number when I needed to. They may have polished the…

#2 seems like a feature, not a bug. I certainly don't want my 11 year old texting/calling unapproved numbers, way too young for that.

Definitely a feature, but also ruins it for this person's use case

Re: Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone

#127

Post by dgudkov »

bawolff wrote: post #20

> My son only gets Calls, Messages, Maps, Camera (so we can video call, but I've ruthlessly turned off selfies), Photos, and Music. Nothing else. I get that the internet is an addictive scary place with lots of content potentially dangerous to a young person. But why would you care if your child took a selfie? That seems pretty draconian.

Wait, not being able to make a picture of yourself is pretty draconian? In this case, the world before smartphones was a living Hell on Earth.

Re: Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone

#128

Post by hans_castorp »

> Maps and satnav require a web connection.

No they don't require a network at all. The only drawback if there is no network is that the initial finding of the position takes longer. And maps can be downloaded so that they are available offline.

GPS receiver have been working without a "web connection" for ages (e.g. Garmins outdoor devices).

I use my smartphone in "airplane" mode but GPS enabled when hiking. No problems whatsoever.

Re: Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone

#129

Post by walrus01 »

sbayg wrote: post #63
Cider9986 wrote: post #6

Mobile Device Management (MDM) is the only effective way to restrict idevices. All you need is a macbook and Apple Configurator. You can remove safari, blacklist or whitelist websites, block installing apps, block deleting apps. It's really customizable. Edit: expanded acronym.

MDM is the worst part of iOS. It undermines all of apple’s security claims, basically making iOS windows. Devices should not be able to be remotely controlled.

MDM is designed for corporate owned phone environments where there's a great many good reasons to lock down a phone. If you're handing out company owned phones to employees you want the ability to remotely lock/wipe, install and remove apps, set a number of restrictions. If people want to do anything else they are completely welcome to do it on their own personally owned property.

For instance I have recently seen a very successful Apple MDM deployment in a school environment where the teachers and staff have access to a great depth and breadth of PII of a thousand children under age 16. You don't want all those phones to become a free-for-all of people doing whatever they want.

Re: Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone

#130

Post by abeyer »

philips wrote: post #42
abeyer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, came to say this. Kids have learned to walk places on their own without maps or satnav or tracking for hundreds of thousands of years. I believe everyone would benefit from that continuing. We don't teach kids that the only way to do arithmetic is with a calculator... they learn first, then get a tool that can support what they already know. Why do we think we should do it differently here, and train this learne…

As I parent I am downvoting this because I am quite tired of others judging parents and their technology choices- particularly when it comes to restrictions. Parenting is hard. Parenting when everything is changing so quickly is very difficult.

My 2c is that I'm not judging the parents, I'm judging the outputs I've seen of people raised on phones...and that's something that impacts everyone in our society. If you think you can do better, I guess go for it, but I haven't seen it

Parenting is also a strictly optional hard-mode that you choose to switch on knowing full well there's an 18 year cooldown before you can switch it off again.

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