In the corporate world, it’s used by a company’s IT managers to send updates to all employee phones, track locations, and in some cases, remove data.Īpple alleged that some of the parental control apps it removed from the App Store had MDM systems running in them that would track children and let parents remotely control devices through the program. A popular tool in the business world, MDM lets a third-party control and analyze phone usage.
In its statement, Apple said that it became aware at some point in the past year of some parental control apps using a technology called Mobile Device Management (MDM). Apple eventually removed the app from its mobile marketplace. The problem, however, was that Apple didn’t say which features need removing-even after requests by Mobicip for information. Another company, Mobicip, told The Times that Apple wrote a letter to the company in January requesting the removal of features inside its app. Their apps generally had the same features as Screen Time, including the ability to track a child’s iPhone behavior and limit the child’s access to apps and websites.Īpple removed one of those apps, OurPact, from the App Store in February without warning, according to The Times. The NYT report discussed Apple’s takedowns with several parental control app developers that built services similar to Screen Time long before Apple created its app. Most importantly for parents, Screen Time comes with a feature that lets users turn off an app or website access, decide when iPhones should turn off so kids can concentrate on other things, like schoolwork or sleep, and set a password so children can’t change those settings on their own. Parents can also use Screen Time to monitor how their kids are using their iPhones or iPads, and see how much time they spend on apps and websites. Screen Time tells you how much time you spend on your iPhone using apps and websites, and how your use changes over time. Screen Time debuted in iOS 12, the latest Apple mobile operating system version the company released in September. To understand this debate, a little history about Apple’s Screen Time app. Read on for a look at how the dispute started, how Apple responded, and what could happen next. Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller told The Times Apple “acted extremely responsibly.” The developers, meanwhile, said Apple is hurting their livelihood. The affected app developers told The Times that Apple removed the apps because they had features, like the ability for parents to track child phone usage and block children from accessing sites and apps, that compete with similar functions in Apple’s own Screen Time app.Īpple confirmed to the newspaper that it removed the apps but said it did so because they violated user privacy. Over the weekend, The New York Times reported that Apple had removed 11 of the 17 most popular parental control apps from its App Store in recent weeks.
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