Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by fercircularbuf » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

airstrafer wrote: post #173

msftgreed wrote: post #154

This is a great example of the curb cut effect -- a system designed for accessibility needs turns out to be useful in other contexts. Curb cuts were designed for people with disabilities, particularly veterans, and over time have become more and more standard. They help people who use wheelchairs, yes, but also people without disabilities like those with strollers, bikes, luggage, or small kids. We love to see access…

Agreed. I like the framing that there are three kinds of disability: permanent (I lost my arm in a motorcycle crash), temporal (I broke my arm and can’t use it for a while), and situational (I’m walking my dog so I can only use one arm for other things). Generally we only refer to someone with a permanent disability as “disabled” but in reality we are all disabled in various categories at different times of our lives…

I love this. Thank you for sharing.

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

#242

Post by rmunn » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 2:14 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #233

rmunn wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does that 15% number come from? Because I would have to assume it is using a very broad definition of disabled, which would include invisible disabilities. Certainly it's not true that 15% of the people I see are in a wheelchair, on crutches, missing a limb, obviously blind (e.g. walking with a cane), and so on. Even allowing for the fact that many people with disabilities stay home (often by necessity, sometim…

In fact, I would say it's probably too low! Like, how is prescription glasses to correct vision not an assistive device for a disability, like poor eyesight? Honestly, what's the difference between a wheelchair and prescription glasses? Both are medical devices prescribed be a healthcare professional to assist with a physical impairment.

> Honestly, what's the difference between a wheelchair and prescription glasses?

Taking the silly question seriously for a moment: the difference is that with prescription glasses, you can function just exactly like someone who doesn't need them. Once you are wearing the glasses, your ability to do pretty much anything is unimpaired. Whereas a wheelchair restores some mobility, but does not, for example, impart the ability to climb stairs. It does not give you back all the mobility of someone who doesn't need one.

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

#243

Post by dyauspitr » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #233

rmunn wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does that 15% number come from? Because I would have to assume it is using a very broad definition of disabled, which would include invisible disabilities. Certainly it's not true that 15% of the people I see are in a wheelchair, on crutches, missing a limb, obviously blind (e.g. walking with a cane), and so on. Even allowing for the fact that many people with disabilities stay home (often by necessity, sometim…

In fact, I would say it's probably too low! Like, how is prescription glasses to correct vision not an assistive device for a disability, like poor eyesight? Honestly, what's the difference between a wheelchair and prescription glasses? Both are medical devices prescribed be a healthcare professional to assist with a physical impairment.

Might as well throw bald people in there because not having hair can be a disadvantage in the dating scene.

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

#244

Post by fma » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

Grombobulous wrote: post #17

fma wrote: post #4

>children have quickly found workarounds for such measures, such as asking friends to message them links, which can bypass restrictions when opened I was very surprised of this by my own kids find workarounds like l33t hackers. Apple's restrictions are a joke. The app store is full of things they can mess with. My daughter mentioned some way to get around screen time. I've ended up just taking the iPads away.

When I was a kid my parents wouldn’t give me a cellphone. I wanted to call my girlfriend. Well, really, my girlfriend wanted me to call her. A lot. They didn’t give me one. I ended up finding a way to get my own through a more apathetic adult who I could pay cash to cover my bill (only an extra $10/month on a family plan). I certainly am not telling you to just cave in, but perhaps this story can be a reminder that t…

My comment got a lot of traction but for context my kids are early in elementary school, far from their teenage years.

The intention of the iPad was to watch some educational videos, check out books, magazines from the library.

They still have occasional access but only with direct active supervision (i.e we are next to them vs we are making dinner).

As they get older, we will revisit.

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

#245

Post by Marsymars » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 2:45 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #175

Marsymars wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What would be the point? If the goal is to "protect the children", then banning only 2 companies from providing social media to kids will do nothing after at most a few years - kids will just move on to the new social media that is not yet banned. Of course, this says nothing about the many kids who will be hurt by being denied access to social media, such as the many gay or trans kids living in conservative families…

> What would be the point?

Ideal scenario? Meta decides it's not worth operating in my country, geoblocks us, and pulls their apps from the app stores.

I'm sympathetic to the people who get real value from meta platforms, but on balance, I see meta as a massively negative force, and their business model and leadership make it effectively un-fixable.

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

#246

Post by Cthulhu_ » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 2:46 PM UTC

halper wrote: post #197

sgerenser wrote: post #177

Is anyone who was in grade school in the 1990s reminded of Apple’s “simplified” MacOS shell called At Ease? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease

My favourite feature was using TTS to learn how to read very very long numbers …

Fun times, we had a TTS exe that came with our Sound Blaster, also letting it read out very, very long numbers.

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

#247

Post by Cthulhu_ » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 2:49 PM UTC

fma wrote: post #4

>children have quickly found workarounds for such measures, such as asking friends to message them links, which can bypass restrictions when opened I was very surprised of this by my own kids find workarounds like l33t hackers. Apple's restrictions are a joke. The app store is full of things they can mess with. My daughter mentioned some way to get around screen time. I've ended up just taking the iPads away.

Our school's library computers (mind you I was early 20s by then) did not allow people to just sit down and go online, an admin had to log in first.

We did have Notepad though. Notepad -> open file -> explorer -> enter URL -> internet explorer -> internets.

Not long after we both got an operating system installed on our removable drive (which we had to pay like 200+ euros for across four years and we barely used it), and bootable Linux CDs became a thing too so the protections were completely moot.

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

#248

Post by jraph » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 3:20 PM UTC

andylynch wrote: post #230

leipert wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was introduced in iOS 18, which is installable back to iPhone Xs (2018). So 8 years of devices have that setting.

Curse Apple and their planned obsolescence /s.

Yes, actually.

I got an iPad 2 found in a drawer that would be perfectly good if the software could at least be easily unlocked so you could only hope to install an alternative OS since they don't want to update it themselves. Or if they allowed installing stuff from outside their store.

But no, the thing runs an ancient WebKit and that's pretty much your only way to run custom code on this stuff.

I can't even create an apple account from this stuff anymore, and apple won't let me create an apple account from any other device I have. Which could possibly help with jail breaking it. And it would already be a pain to be able to create an apple account because they require a name, a birth date, a phone number, an email address... All this to access a store from which nothing would work anyway for an old device like this.

So, fuck them.

And android increasingly becomes like this too.

Meanwhile, you can still run an up to date Linux on a laptop from the 90s.

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

#249

Post by eigencoder » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 4:35 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #85

baxtr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had some friends over last form the US. One 11 yr kid in the group was bored and said: ok I’m gonna go home now, I need the keys please. He walked home by himself - maybe 500 meters… For us Europeans it was nothing to notice really, but the Americans were absolutely shocked.

And I've been where the Americans had some friends over from the US, and the 11/12 year olds grabbed some rifles and said they'd be back tomorrow. The Americans barely noticed, the Europeans flipped. America is big, and parts of it can be very different.

One 11 year old with a rifle is probably fine, but two with rifles is just asking for trouble haha

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

#250

Post by eigencoder » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #161

eigencoder wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used MDM to make my iPhone dumb. It's great! I wish there was an easy way to publish my configuration so others could use it / adapt it, but it's a little involved because you have to wipe your phone the first time you set it up with configurator.

I’m curious about this, what did you do to make it dumb?

I used Apple Configurator on my mac to supervise my iphone. Once that's done, you use configurator to add a profile to the device that (1) contains an allowlist of apps that can be used and (2) an empty allowlist of websites that can be visited. #1 means you can't use any new apps, and #2 prevents the ability to browse the internet by sending links to yourself in e.g. messenger or whatsapp.