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AppStore Reviews Should Be Stricter

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Re: AppStore Reviews Should Be Stricter

#31

Post by Tainnor »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #15
izacus wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why won't anyone think of the children and just ban every single thing that might make their parents work!

That’s not really a fair argument. Parents have been over worked for decades. But 30, 20, even 10 years ago (first iPad was released 10 years ago!) you couldn’t accidentally buy digital rubbish. The kids sat in front of a TV and you had to beg your parents for toys. Now toddlers can discover things for themselves and frankly a lot of content for kids is trash. We haven’t caught up with how to deal with this.

You deal with this by not giving your one-year old an iPad.

Re: AppStore Reviews Should Be Stricter

#32

Post by keyboard_smash »

thatsethnz wrote: post #25

> "No free games or games with In-App Purchases" This is a great rule. As a father of similarly aged kids (10, 9, 4) this is exactly what I would like to have happen at my house. Unfortunately, I have found games like this difficult to surface on the app store. Is there a decent source for games like this? Also, Apple needs to think of the impact that the prevalence of these kinds of apps has on their revenue - I spe…

What about Apple Arcade? It's not free, but Apple guarantees that none of the games in it have ads and a single subscription can be shared through Family Sharing.

Re: AppStore Reviews Should Be Stricter

#33

Post by easton »

thatsethnz wrote: post #25

> "No free games or games with In-App Purchases" This is a great rule. As a father of similarly aged kids (10, 9, 4) this is exactly what I would like to have happen at my house. Unfortunately, I have found games like this difficult to surface on the app store. Is there a decent source for games like this? Also, Apple needs to think of the impact that the prevalence of these kinds of apps has on their revenue - I spe…

Apple Arcade is exactly what you want[0]. No in-app purchases, Apple picks the games and gives them exclusivity so there's always good quality ones. It's a good deal if you like playing games on the iPad.

0: https://www.apple.com/apple-arcade/

Re: AppStore Reviews Should Be Stricter

#34

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

dave84 wrote: post #29
thatsethnz wrote: post #25

> "No free games or games with In-App Purchases" This is a great rule. As a father of similarly aged kids (10, 9, 4) this is exactly what I would like to have happen at my house. Unfortunately, I have found games like this difficult to surface on the app store. Is there a decent source for games like this? Also, Apple needs to think of the impact that the prevalence of these kinds of apps has on their revenue - I spe…

Apple Arcade should have a good range of games for your kids. No IAPs, no up-selling. It's worth the money for my family.

We have Apple Arcade for our family as well, but I do wish they had more games for younger children. My little ones (4 & 6) enjoy Crossy Castle, but that is really the only age appropriate game for them.

Re: AppStore Reviews Should Be Stricter

#35

Post by wvenable »

I'm a parent -- it's never been easier to control what your children are doing on devices. My son isn't an admin on his laptop. I don't let him download arbitrary apps and he doesn't even own his own i-device yet. He's only slightly older than Miguel's kids, and he has a Switch (with parental controls on), but I don't see any need to give him his own iPad.

When he wasn't old enough to learn about dark patterns, we didn't expose him to any! Now that he's older, dark patterns are something we talked to him about and he understands. No matter how restrictive you make an app store, you're never going to eliminate sources of manipulation. Each failure, including one of his accounts getting "hacked", is an opportunity for learning.

What's not an opportunity is locking down the entire world so children can't screw up.

Re: AppStore Reviews Should Be Stricter

#36

Post by reader_mode »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #15
izacus wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why won't anyone think of the children and just ban every single thing that might make their parents work!

That’s not really a fair argument. Parents have been over worked for decades. But 30, 20, even 10 years ago (first iPad was released 10 years ago!) you couldn’t accidentally buy digital rubbish. The kids sat in front of a TV and you had to beg your parents for toys. Now toddlers can discover things for themselves and frankly a lot of content for kids is trash. We haven’t caught up with how to deal with this.

>But 30, 20, even 10 years ago (first iPad was released 10 years ago!) you couldn’t accidentally buy digital rubbish.

That's not true - I clearly remember those TV telenovelas arround here having a paid line where you could get a summary of next episode and the number advertised during the show. The only people I ever heard about calling the service was kids racking up parents phone bills.

Re: AppStore Reviews Should Be Stricter

#37

Post by thatsethnz »

candiddevmike wrote: post #26
thatsethnz wrote: post #25

> "No free games or games with In-App Purchases" This is a great rule. As a father of similarly aged kids (10, 9, 4) this is exactly what I would like to have happen at my house. Unfortunately, I have found games like this difficult to surface on the app store. Is there a decent source for games like this? Also, Apple needs to think of the impact that the prevalence of these kinds of apps has on their revenue - I spe…

With the kids having remote learning, the school district has them playing this game called Prodigy. It has a really insidious "premium" model that it is constantly throwing up in front of my kids. New dance moves, costumes, all things kids want. I'm tempted to complain about it, the district shouldn't be using apps that push crap like this.

It makes me furious that this kind of dynamic is introduced to a digital learning space at all.

Why delineate between the haves and the have nots? Between the kids with access to disposable parental income and the kids that don't? Why make that part of online life of children at all?

Re: AppStore Reviews Should Be Stricter

#38

Post by Tainnor »

reader_mode wrote: post #36
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not really a fair argument. Parents have been over worked for decades. But 30, 20, even 10 years ago (first iPad was released 10 years ago!) you couldn’t accidentally buy digital rubbish. The kids sat in front of a TV and you had to beg your parents for toys. Now toddlers can discover things for themselves and frankly a lot of content for kids is trash. We haven’t caught up with how to deal with this.

>But 30, 20, even 10 years ago (first iPad was released 10 years ago!) you couldn’t accidentally buy digital rubbish. That's not true - I clearly remember those TV telenovelas arround here having a paid line where you could get a summary of next episode and the number advertised during the show. The only people I ever heard about calling the service was kids racking up parents phone bills.

When I was a kid I found a very sketchy game on the teletext where you had to repeatedly call some phone line. My parents ended up with a 600 bucks phone bill.

I also repeatedly fell for weird "order this set of dinosaur cards for free (but then it's an ongoing subscription)" kinds of scams.

All of that stuff was annoying. And my parents ended up taking appropriate measures (blocking paid phone numbers, or just talking to me, for example). Nobody died because of it.

Kids have always been good targets for scams. Nothing new under the sun.

Re: AppStore Reviews Should Be Stricter

#39

Post by p1necone »

newbie578 wrote: post #20

Wow, I am honestly amazed at the limitless range of human ignorance. Congrats to the author for being a successful person, a good devoper and being the founder of Xamarin, but that doesn't mean you know everything, and according to text I read in the article being a good parent.. "I have kids aged 10, 7 and 4, and my eldest had access to an iPad since she was a year old," I have read this several times now and I cann…

I certainly agree that giving very young children unsupervised access to an internet connected device is probably a bad idea. However I question your classification of it being "addictive" and of that being the worst part.

Imo playing around on a tablet is only addictive in the same way that reading a good book or playing a good video game is "addictive" - i.e. you're having fun, and you want to keep doing it because it's fun.

Of course there's specific apps you can download that are fine tuned to actually be "addictive" through randomization and monetization strategies. But claiming that the whole device is bad because some bad things exist on it seems wrong to me. There's thousands of hours of beneficial, educational, non exploitative fun to be had with a tablet/laptop/phone.

I'd be much more concerned about my kids talking to dodgy people in chat apps, or using my credit card without realizing (or with realizing), or accessing porn or something.

Re: AppStore Reviews Should Be Stricter

#40

Post by wvenable »

p1necone wrote: post #39
newbie578 wrote: post #20

Wow, I am honestly amazed at the limitless range of human ignorance. Congrats to the author for being a successful person, a good devoper and being the founder of Xamarin, but that doesn't mean you know everything, and according to text I read in the article being a good parent.. "I have kids aged 10, 7 and 4, and my eldest had access to an iPad since she was a year old," I have read this several times now and I cann…

I certainly agree that giving very young children unsupervised access to an internet connected device is probably a bad idea. However I question your classification of it being "addictive" and of that being the worst part. Imo playing around on a tablet is only addictive in the same way that reading a good book or playing a good video game is "addictive" - i.e. you're having fun, and you want to keep doing it because…

Maybe some games on a tablet are not fun like reading a good book but rather fun like a slot machine.
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