Buried Apple Feature Turns an iPhone into the Perfect Kids' Dumb Phone

PPotatoNinja 3 days ago 50 commentsRead Article on wired.com

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Discussion (50 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

philips•3 minutes ago

This looks perfect! I had been searching around for “feature phones” but the market seems dire. Lots of carrier locked devices or devices that still offer “a little bit of internet”. And then I started thinking about finding a repair shop when my kid inevitably breaks it and an old iPhone keeps looking better and better.

Plus when my kids lose it in a bag somewhere I can use find my instead of wasting an hour digging around.

Triphibian•2 minutes ago

I keep observing that accessibility features often contain the tools we need to make our devices and apps more humane. This is one area that video games have been way ahead on.

fma•about 2 hours ago

>children have quickly found workarounds for such measures, such as asking friends to message them links, which can bypass restrictions when opened

I was very surprised of this by my own kids find workarounds like l33t hackers. Apple's restrictions are a joke. The app store is full of things they can mess with. My daughter mentioned some way to get around screen time.

I've ended up just taking the iPads away.

Grombobulous•about 1 hour ago

When I was a kid my parents wouldn’t give me a cellphone. I wanted to call my girlfriend. Well, really, my girlfriend wanted me to call her. A lot.

They didn’t give me one.

I ended up finding a way to get my own through a more apathetic adult who I could pay cash to cover my bill (only an extra $10/month on a family plan).

I certainly am not telling you to just cave in, but perhaps this story can be a reminder that technology you control is potentially better than technology you don’t.

bawolff•about 1 hour ago

What age groups are we talking here, because if we're talking about a 7 year old, giving them unfettered screen time is probably bad parenting. However if we are talking about someone old enough to have gf/bf its probably also bad parenting to not let them develop their own self control around technology. They have to be an adult eventually.

hamburglar•7 minutes ago

I started my kid at 12 with an extremely locked down iPhone. She fights the restrictions at every turn and I have to make sure that she understands that finding loopholes is fun but also if I catch her violating the spirit of the restrictions there will be consequences. So she proudly tells me about clever workarounds she finds but still puts the phone away at the appropriate times. It’s kind of fun that she’s developing an instinct for subversion.

Grombobulous•34 minutes ago

I was a teenager, if that wasn’t clear. But I was more of the mindset of lending a story, I can’t say whether or not it’s relevant to the parent commenter’s scenario.

wrs•about 1 hour ago

When my friend's kids were totally obsessed with League of Legends, I offered to set up a home firewall with increasingly difficult workarounds, so by the time they graduated high school they'd at least have a cybersecurity certificate and possibly a Ph.D in networking.

NuclearPM•8 minutes ago

That’s how 80s kids learned computers and programming. Trying to install a game and having to lookup what the hell “fat32” was.

boredatoms•17 minutes ago

My childhood was filled with increasing escalations of restrictions to both the computer and the network, and my workarounds.

Excellent education

jaggederest•32 minutes ago

Adversarially train the children, rlai works on human brains too?

organsnyder•19 minutes ago

Back in elementary school, I used Applescript in Hypercard to get around the restrictions on our school computers. Kids always find ways.

flippyhead•about 2 hours ago

I found it such a hassle to keep locked down I gave up. Like, he'd be so aware that he'd find ways to watch me enter the PIN code when adjusting the settings. I'd have to be ever-vigilant and I got tired of it.

qup•about 1 hour ago

Try discipline

nielsbot•about 1 hour ago

curious kind of discipline you have in mind.

mplewis•about 1 hour ago

No one asked.

adamwk•about 1 hour ago

We were once 1337 hackers too

robin_reala•8 minutes ago

A friend was woken up by his young kid trying to surreptitiously lever his finger onto the TouchID sensor to pay for a game dlc.

basisword•about 1 hour ago

It seems like Apple put a big focus on 'kids mode' things this WWDC. To the point they dedicated a major section of the keynote to it. Hopefully a part of that will be focussed on the workarounds.

xnx•25 minutes ago

Summary:

Simplify the iPhone home screen with large icons for kids or seniors:

Settings > Accessibility > General section at the very bottom > Assistive Access

Brajeshwar•2 days ago

Archived https://archive.is/LV6Cw

Long back Xiaomi Phones used to have soemthing like this. That one feature was how I migrated my in-laws to Smartphones from their Nokias.

The key content from the article;

Here's how you set it up: Head into Settings, tap Accessibility, scroll down to the General section at the very bottom, and tap Assistive Access. Now, tap Set Up Assistive Access, then Continue. It will then ask you to select your preferred appearance: rows or a grid. I suggest choosing a grid. This is how you get those super-large tiles. Now the OS will ask you to select allowed apps—tap the green plus icon next to the apps you want to allow.

bawolff•about 1 hour ago

> My son only gets Calls, Messages, Maps, Camera (so we can video call, but I've ruthlessly turned off selfies), Photos, and Music. Nothing else.

I get that the internet is an addictive scary place with lots of content potentially dangerous to a young person.

But why would you care if your child took a selfie? That seems pretty draconian.

eigencoder•6 minutes ago

Also, it doesn't add up. How would Camera let you video call? Don't you need Facetime?

isomorphic•about 1 hour ago

I'm speculating that it's not the selfie; it's where that selfie ends up (or with whom).

kelnos•38 minutes ago

OP apparently still hasn't learned that the kids today are taking selfies "blind" using the rear camera.

lemoncucumber•3 minutes ago

I do this myself every once in a blue moon since the rear camera is significantly better than the front camera, especially in low light.

Cider9986•about 2 hours ago

Mobile Device Management (MDM) is the only effective way to restrict idevices.

All you need is a macbook and Apple Configurator.

You can remove safari, blacklist or whitelist websites, block installing apps, block deleting apps. It's really customizable.

eigencoder•7 minutes ago

I've used MDM to make my iPhone dumb. It's great! I wish there was an easy way to publish my configuration so others could use it / adapt it, but it's a little involved because you have to wipe your phone the first time you set it up with configurator.

sampton•about 1 hour ago

MDM is just parental control for adults.

qup•about 1 hour ago

What does the acronym stand for

wilcoooo•about 1 hour ago

Mobile Device Management

Dragging-Syrup•about 1 hour ago

mobile device management

1970-01-01•14 minutes ago

'Perfect' being used as a filler word in a headline is obscene to me.

turkeyboi•about 1 hour ago

Assistive access is the feature being referred to by tfa

Waterluvian•12 minutes ago

Sometimes I imagine that the mandate of one team (like those that build accessibility features) end up at direct odds with the mandate for other teams. And then there’s maybe an internal politicking where it’s like… okay you can have that feature that completely subverts a lot of how we want users to be behaving, but you can’t market it loudly.

I have no clue how things are actually structured at Apple, though. But I’m sure at this level of product maturity, there’s going to be internal struggles between user friendliness and profitability.

pugworthy•about 1 hour ago

This might be just the thing for my elderly mother. She's used an iPhone for many many years, but struggles lately with motor dexterity, vision, and a bit of cognitive challenge making phone usage difficult. Lots of things I'd like to just hide she doesn't need to get to (like Settings).

calgoo•36 minutes ago

In the exact same boat with my mother in law at the moment. I was thinking of getting her one of those android for elderly phones but wanted to see if I could do something with her existing iphone first. At this point, anything that is recognizable is a plus so sticking with the iPhone will help there.

m463•about 2 hours ago

This seems like a much more comprehensive solution than screen time

al_borland•12 minutes ago

ScreenTime is for limiting and monitoring access to certain things for those who can otherwise handle a modern smartphone. Assistive Access is to remove the complexity for those who can't handle it. They are for different use cases, with some overlap in the venn diagram.

bitwize•about 1 hour ago

It's like At Ease for mobile. Neat!

mvdwoord•about 2 hours ago

"You must disable SIM PIN to enable Assistive Access..."

05•30 minutes ago

Also refuses to activate with alphanumeric passcode enabled..

morninglight•about 1 hour ago

While living in Japan, our kid used a cellphone with 3 buttons.

1. Call mom, 2. Call dad. 3. Call Auntie.

These kid's phones were very common, inexpensive and worked great.

citizenpaul•about 1 hour ago

>Yes, it's odd that Apple doesn't train all its store staff on this laudable feature, but it's baffling that it doesn't shout about how good Assistive Access is for making a kid's dumb phone.

My guess is that its a bad look for PR to essentially say that a feature designed for disability assistance = children.

50208•about 1 hour ago

His kid doesn't need a phone and doesn't need to be tracked to walk to school. Get over it.

abeyer•38 minutes ago

Yup, came to say this.

Kids have learned to walk places on their own without maps or satnav or tracking for hundreds of thousands of years. I believe everyone would benefit from that continuing. We don't teach kids that the only way to do arithmetic is with a calculator... they learn first, then get a tool that can support what they already know. Why do we think we should do it differently here, and train this learned helplessness without a phone glued to your hand. I suspect a lot of this is projection of the parents' own discomfort with being away from their phone.

philips•16 minutes ago

As I parent I am downvoting this because I am quite tired of others judging parents and their technology choices- particularly when it comes to restrictions.

Parenting is hard. Parenting when everything is changing so quickly is very difficult.

eigencoder•4 minutes ago

Yeah, but your kid can also walk to school without a map, it's not a big deal.

philips•17 minutes ago

As a parent I want a phone I can find because kids will lose a phone.

So, Find My is invaluable for locating it again.