“Nearly 60% of U.S. households own at least one Apple product,” Mark Lowenstein writes for Tech.pinions. “Many of those households own multiple Apple devices — the virtuous circle of iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple TVs, routers, and so on that are part of Apple’s hardware and software ecosystem.”
“Apple has done a fair bit of work over the past couple of years to build share and stickiness in the family segment. Its core offering for families is Family Sharing, which allows up to six members in a family to share iTunes, iBooks, and app purchases across devices,” Lowenstein writes. “Through iCloud, families can also share calendars and photos. And one of the major advantages of Apple Music, as compared to other music streaming services such as Spotify, is the $15.99 [sic $14.99] Family Membership.”
“With this strong foundation, I think Apple could significantly bolster its family offerings,” Lowenstein writes. “There are three areas ripe for the picking in my view: AppleCare, iCloud Storage, and Apple TV.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, Apple could, and should, do more for families in all of the cases Lowenstein discusses.
i wish apple would do more Sales on hardware and software (apps, songs etc)
Apple’s Time Machine doesn’t cut it for many user’s needs.
Apple appears to be having a hard time getting enough quality software engineers to release iOS and OSX with minimum bugs, so expanding their software will be tough, but it sure looks like it is needed.
NAS from 3rd party sources has its share of problems by what I read. Hence, I’ld love to see Apple do it right for both home and business users.
As a family of 7, yeah I would say that the family sharing limit of 6 needs so serious work.
They should have family sharing pricing have a per-person add on price. I would be happy to pay 15% more for all apps to avoid the pain of leaving a family member out.
Family Sharing is useless to my family. Tried it for a couple days then went back to what we were doing before. Family Sharing doesn’t allow us to share the many hundreds of songs we ripped from CDs. Only way we can do it is using iTunes Match and everything else we share by everyone using the same AppleID for purchases. Not the best solution in my opinion, but it is what we have to do.
Multiple accounts for the iPad really is needed. Why can I do that on a 12″ MacBook but not the iPad Pro? There’s no technical limitation, Apple just wants everyone to buy a device for each family member.
If Apple would stop turning on all numbers and email addresses associated with an iCloud account ON in FaceTime, iMessage, etc with every other OS update and by default in a clean install…sharing the same account would be less of an issue.
Also, in-app purchases that I enjoyed letting my family have when they all used my Apple ID are now not available to them with their own Family Shared Apple ID. They can download all my apps, but any in-app purchases (and I have several “Pro” upgraded apps) are only available to me.