“I can understand how some parents would be upset if Apple didn’t have some kind of controls to limit the use of the iPhone and iPad, but the fact is they do,” Jim Dalrymple writes for The Loop.
“I read Sarah Perez’s story on TechCrunch ‘Apple’s iPad Needs A Kid Mode. Like, Yesterday‘ and was kind of amazed at how much blame was put on Apple,” Dalrymple writes.
“The simple fact is, as parents, it’s up to us to monitor what our kids do with technology or any toy,” Dalrymple writes. “Apple provides more controls than most of the toys our kids play with.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The United States of America. Where the greatest freedom is the one from personal responsibility.
MacDailyNews Note: More info about understanding Restrictions (Parental Controls) in iOS 6 here
My kid’s iPad is still an iPad 1 that doesn’t run iOS 6.
Parental controls have been a part of iOS.. since before the first gen iPad.
They are so easy to setup. I cant see how anyone can justify complaining.
Wha-what? Why not? I listed Siri as my nanny on my IRS forms already.
There is a name for those parents who shift the responsibility of parenting kids to others instead parents themseleves – Walmart Parents.
Handing your iPad to your child with an iTunes account open to make purchases is the same as handing over cash or a credit card. The parents need to wake up and accept responsibility for making that mistake. Please stop expecting other people to parent your children.
The user comments attached to this pathetic article are amazing. e.g.:
“There are some seriously easy common sense solutions to all of these problems.
1) tell your kid no once in a while.
2) if it’s a second hand ipad delete the account and make one for your kid. Don’t add a credit card.
3) turn the wifi off.
4) don’t give you’re kid a goddamn ipad. They don’t need one. Talk about first world problems. Waaahhhhh apple makes it so I actually have to read. Boo hoo hoo.
Talk about first world problems…”
and
“*sigh* these kind of “issues” make me feel like the entire world is getting more and more retarded. How about you don’t give your 3 year old a f***ing tablet with a CC tied to it ? How’s that for a thought ? Or … or, even better, how about you just don’t give the kid a tablet at all until it gets the basics down ? Like walking, talking, minimal social interaction and a minimal understanding of what a device is.”
and then comments as equally stupid as the article itself:
“Hi Sarah, Well-researched article! As others said, you can set individual apps to require a password for in-app purchases. But it is extra work and irritation for us as parents. I agree with your sentiment about needing better parenting control features from Apple. It’s definitely time!”
Well-researched? Hilarious…
Jensen : number 1) is all that matters. If they understand and respond then everything else comes naturally. It worked with me when I was little and worked with mine too. Takes a little effort but it’s worth it. If they don’t understand and respond properly to no, then you’ve lost. And so have they.
You are completely right, GM. But it’s funny how dumb the article is on so many levels. For example, “errant purchases?!?” I have to enter my password every time I make a purchase on my own iOS devices. I leave it set that way (it’s the default!) because sometimes it is confusing whether that one tap is for more info or the actual purchase. So… Since I cannot make a purchase by accident, how could her kid???
Lazy parenting, ignorant use of technology, and all around poor life skills.
I just discovered the best part of that article…
Sarah Perez’s bio:
“Sarah currently works as a writer for TechCrunch, after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to becoming a professional blogger, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software.”
This demonstrates a lot of what’s wrong with American business. Total impotence placed in positions of influence.
And this is why Apple became the world’s biggest company. Steve Jobs did not put up with incompetence for a second. He sent it packing, post haste.
slow dramatic clap….crescendoing….increasing in frequency….crescendoing………FULL APPLAUSE!!!!!!!
Having raised 3 boys, we attempted to lead them on the straight and narrow and it has turned out really well. Unfortunately, parenting these days leaves a lot to be desired. Don’t believe me? Take a walk through a large retail complex or a fast food outlet and pay attention to all the “noise” you hear. If parents pay no attention to their obnoxious acting children out in public, just try and imagine how it must be in their homes. At the age of 70, I have made it a point to avoid such places. My 3 sons have children who have been brought up they same way they were and taught them the same values. I ran a little league football program in my area for 12 years and soon found out that things were changing when the parents were more interested in having dinner in a posh restaurant 30 miles away rather than helping out at football practices or during games – drop the kid(s) off and rely on the youth club volunteers to babysit them after practice until they returned to pick them up, often an hour after the activities ended. Sorry, things aren’t going to get any better and the sooner we learn that, the better off we will be.
Sorry for the rant!
+1
These dumb f*** parents will be suing Ford if their runs in front of a apeeding car without parental supervision and gets flung to the kerb dead.
While I do think these parents should be nominated for Darwin Awards, in your example you fail to notice that Ford does not have the same cash balance that Apple does, so anyone with a gripe and *leave off the redundant adjectives* lawyer can sue Apple and get something out of it. Not so with Ford.
The fat boy’s on form tonight. He can’t even put together a proper sentence – omitting, I believe, the word ‘kid’.
Geez, what an idiot troll.
He says things that some of us want to say but don’t have the…uh, cojones to say them. Primal emotions well up when hearing stories of parental negligence, and they must be ameliorated. Niceties like grammar and sentence structure are naturally excused in such cases.
I was typing the comment on my iPhone which due to its tiny screen made me miss words when I reviewed my comment before posting.
First, the screen is small, secondly the text input box is tinier than a gnat’s ass, and thirdly the MDN website can’t be pinched and zoomed to increase font size.
I don’t know why to this day pinch & zoom doesn’t work on MDN, but that’s a rant for another day. 🙂
I thought I’d share a few thoughts on this with you.
“I was typing the comment on my iPhone which due to its tiny screen made me miss words…
First, the screen is small, secondly the text input box is tinier than a gnat’s ass, and thirdly the MDN website can’t be pinched and zoomed to increase font size.”
Would you prefer a Samsung Note 2 Phablet?
For so many of us, Apple’s appeal lies exactly in the elimination of frustration when operating the technology, so a design limitation such as you describe rankles even more. Surely some of the blame lies with the app, though.
What I do is tap the microphone symbol on the keyboard and dictate the message, rather than peck it out. It’s uncannily accurate. Of course, you mightn’t care to voice messages in a crowded subway car.
I’m sure this will be settled with the virtual switchblade app and the virtual zippo lighter app.
I’m working on a virtual cigarette next. Kids will love them.
Apparently we now have “virtual parents” to go with those virtual apps.
Ooh! That gives me an idea for a Virtual Spanking app… oh the possibilities for marketing to a wide audience under the guise of a parenting app!
I’ve got three grandkids using an iPad 2 and another autistic grand-‘step’child using an original iPad. Both are on my account.
I have never had an errant charge. The biggest problems I run into are the icons being moved all over the place, but as long as they can find them, whatever.
I have movies, TV show and all that locked down to their levels.
Accounts are locked, all the common sense things.
YouTube is, however, a problem. Anyone with a good idea on that?
Also, for families that share an iPad between adults and children, I still wish Apple would allow a ‘locked’ page to put apps that kids don’t need access to, whether its Pages or games for older people, it would be nice to have a code to access those.
Why is YouTube a problem? You won’t get charged. They just have to sit through a couple of inane ads served up by the Goog.
Content. Even when they are trying to watch Lego videos or other kid stuff there are too many links to crap.
Ok but there’s no way to censor anything on YouTube.
The best you can do is set up an account AND playlist for them and ask them to stick to videos on the playlist.
Whether they will do that or not, well, let’s just say it looks like a long shot.
Still…you could give it a go.
Thanks guys.
I had hope the Jasmine app would help, and it might still, but GOOGLE put restrictions on it and I gave up. Might need to go back and have another look.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jasmine-youtube-client/id554937050?mt=8
unfortunately, won’t let you delete the YouTube app on iPad, that would be the solution.
How about: Enable Restrictions and then disable YouTube?
I agree something need to be done on Youtube and the fact that their are no ratings there is scary – I don’t want to hear half of that language much less my kids – I know you can leave the Youtube app off the iPad but you can still go through Safari – maybe there needs to be controls in Safari like on the desktop.
Okay, I went ahead and read the original article – not the article this post is referencing, but the article that article was a response to. And she does have some points about the apps and the app store, although it’s not just about kids’ apps, but apps in general. It is way too easy to have buyer’s remorse when the app you buy isn’t the app you think you’re buying (and how can you tell if the developer doesn’t have a demo or a trailer or something?)
And some of the thing with in-app purchases falls less on Apple and more on the individual developers. If what she says is true that the in-app purchases actually interrupt the gameplay, that is simply bad design for an app aimed at young children.
Finally, the comment that suggests that you should set up a separate account for your child and don’t attach a CC to it, that sounds like a good suggestion, if it were something that Apple actually allowed. As far as I can tell, you can’t download even free apps from the app store unless you provide a CC. Apple really could provide an option to set up the account and restrict you to free apps if you don’t give a CC.
No, no, no, a thousand times no. You do NOT have to provide your credit card details to set up an Apple ID!!!
An Apple ID with zero balance and no credit card details WILL still allow you to download free apps.
That didn’t happen for me. The last time I upgraded my phone, it asked me to update my CC information before it let me download anything.
If you have an Apple ID with pre-existing credit card information entered, Apple will ask you to re-confirm your credit card details upon the purchase of a new phone when you first sign up with that phone. It’s a security measure to ensure that (a) the details are correct and (b) the phone belongs to you.
However, if you set up a separate Apple ID to download free apps and you sign into that ID because you don’t wish to charge your credit card for app downloads, this can easily be done and is sanctioned by Apple.
Another option is to create an apple id and fund it with an iTunes gift card instead of a credit card.
“Creating an iTunes Store, App Store, iBookstore, and Mac App Store account without a credit card”
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2534
Those of you 45 and older.
– Remember when your parents told you not to talk to strangers?
– Your parents gave you chores to do to help out the family.
– You got more punishment after your teacher told your parents you were not paying attention in class.
– Your parents didn’t give you a phone in your room. You had to talk on the one in the kitchen.
– Your parents actually asked to meet your friends before you went somewhere with them.
If you are going to have babies, better contemplate the next 18 years of parenting. It an’t easy.
As to the Apple iDevices. Lock’m down. Setup a dual wifi with the kids on one that blocks them at bed time.
No need to be on the Internet 16 hours a day. Go outside and walk the dog or throw a Frisbee.
Oh yea, “Get off my damn lawn!”
Aman!!
Nice.
When I get a headache I take two aspirin and keep away from children, just like the bottle says.
America’s greatest freedom is the ability to hire lawyers working on a commission who will sue anyone. It allows anyone to try to get someone else to pay them a huge amount and take blame for their mistake.
I’m not seeing the problem. My personal settings require a password for every app download and every in-app purchase. Is this not the case with everyone?
If you give your kids your password to an iDevice that’s linked to your CC, you deserve to pay out every dollar that gets charged to you. Call it a Stupidity Tax.
I dislike re-entering a secure password each time I want to download an app, music, etc. The consequence is that I frequently don’t do those things because of the risk-adverse security model Apple forces on us (I would note that a simple password solution is not risky, it’s foolish, with potentially greater impact). If the device is PIN or password-protected and the user has been previously authenticated, these actions shouldn’t require any additional checks.
Parents need a ‘Parent Mode’.
Couldn’t agree more! Nor is it Apple’s job to tell the country to change its definition of marriage! Stay the hell out of our personal lives and stick to business!!
I like what MDN said “America’s greatest freedom is the freedom from personal responsibility”.
I can see how society is beginning to adopt that theory.
Quite frankly, I’m getting sick and tired of hearing people accuse other people of taking no personal responsibility. Hearing this just makes me want to take personal responsibility for avoiding people who like to pontificate about personal responsibility.