<story><title>Apple has removed or restricted several screen-time and parental-control apps</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/technology/apple-screen-time-trackers.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>miki123211</author><text>So, let&amp;#x27;s get the facts straight here:&lt;p&gt;1. The apps used MDM profiles, intedned for control of employee&amp;#x27;s smartphones and&amp;#x2F;or vpns to filter access to apps.&lt;p&gt;2. Those approaches gave the app makers enormous control over the devices. If they used vpns, &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; internet traffic from the device could be intercepted. If they used MDM profiles, they had deep access to all the device&amp;#x27;s settings. It was a &lt;i&gt;huge&lt;/i&gt; privacy risk.&lt;p&gt;3. This was clearly against Apple&amp;#x27;s policies. APIs were used for the purpose they were not intended for. That was what Facebooks&amp;#x27;s certificates were revoked for. They should&amp;#x27;ve feared removal since the day they wrote their first line of code.&lt;p&gt;4. I guess that Apple understood the need for parental control apps and allowed them, with the privacy risks, as there was no other way to get parental control at the time.&lt;p&gt;5. Apple knew how important iPhone addiction has become and developed their own, privacy respecting solution, screen Time.&lt;p&gt;6. The need for parental control has now been filled and the privacy risks of those apps now outweigh the benefits. Apple made the decision to remove.&lt;p&gt;7. Apple, in  general, doesn&amp;#x27;t allow other apps to access such information on your device, for privacy and security reasons. It&amp;#x27;s a bit anti competitive, yes, it limits what app makers can do, but it makes iOs secure. There&amp;#x27;s no other way to do it, and that&amp;#x27;s what many people don&amp;#x27;t understand. Apple&amp;#x27;s philosophy sacrifices some features you might have for your own security. If you&amp;#x27;re not fine with it, use Android and sideload, but don&amp;#x27;t run screaming to the police when it suddenly turns out that the online banking app you&amp;#x27;ve just installed was a very good fake. [1].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.tahawultech.com&amp;#x2F;industry&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;android-warning-fake-banking-apps-on-the-rise&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.tahawultech.com&amp;#x2F;industry&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;android-warn...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sigmar</author><text>&amp;gt;It&amp;#x27;s a bit anti competitive, yes, it limits what app makers can do, but it makes iOs secure. There&amp;#x27;s no other way to do it, and that&amp;#x27;s what many people don&amp;#x27;t understand.&lt;p&gt;Doesn&amp;#x27;t it seem weird to you how they only cared about &amp;quot;making iOS secure&amp;quot; once they had their own product?&lt;p&gt;If Google or Microsoft did this the reaction here on HN would be so different. Any anti-competitive practice could be rationalized by saying it makes the platform more secure.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple has removed or restricted several screen-time and parental-control apps</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/technology/apple-screen-time-trackers.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>miki123211</author><text>So, let&amp;#x27;s get the facts straight here:&lt;p&gt;1. The apps used MDM profiles, intedned for control of employee&amp;#x27;s smartphones and&amp;#x2F;or vpns to filter access to apps.&lt;p&gt;2. Those approaches gave the app makers enormous control over the devices. If they used vpns, &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; internet traffic from the device could be intercepted. If they used MDM profiles, they had deep access to all the device&amp;#x27;s settings. It was a &lt;i&gt;huge&lt;/i&gt; privacy risk.&lt;p&gt;3. This was clearly against Apple&amp;#x27;s policies. APIs were used for the purpose they were not intended for. That was what Facebooks&amp;#x27;s certificates were revoked for. They should&amp;#x27;ve feared removal since the day they wrote their first line of code.&lt;p&gt;4. I guess that Apple understood the need for parental control apps and allowed them, with the privacy risks, as there was no other way to get parental control at the time.&lt;p&gt;5. Apple knew how important iPhone addiction has become and developed their own, privacy respecting solution, screen Time.&lt;p&gt;6. The need for parental control has now been filled and the privacy risks of those apps now outweigh the benefits. Apple made the decision to remove.&lt;p&gt;7. Apple, in  general, doesn&amp;#x27;t allow other apps to access such information on your device, for privacy and security reasons. It&amp;#x27;s a bit anti competitive, yes, it limits what app makers can do, but it makes iOs secure. There&amp;#x27;s no other way to do it, and that&amp;#x27;s what many people don&amp;#x27;t understand. Apple&amp;#x27;s philosophy sacrifices some features you might have for your own security. If you&amp;#x27;re not fine with it, use Android and sideload, but don&amp;#x27;t run screaming to the police when it suddenly turns out that the online banking app you&amp;#x27;ve just installed was a very good fake. [1].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.tahawultech.com&amp;#x2F;industry&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;android-warning-fake-banking-apps-on-the-rise&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.tahawultech.com&amp;#x2F;industry&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;android-warn...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>asveikau</author><text>Don&amp;#x27;t be an apologist. To introduce your own feature and stopping there, declaring the problem solved (when this article claims the solution doesn&amp;#x27;t work as well as the third party ones did) is irresponsible. If this is the road they want to take, the right way is to introduce any and all public hooks needed to create a solution, and then, importantly, make the Apple one use only public APIs.&lt;p&gt;But it seems they chose to be significantly more lazy and bigger jerks than that. And here you come with the 7 point plan to say they are really commendable instead.</text></comment>