Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone

https://www.wired.com/story/this-buried-apple-feature-turns-an-iphone-into-the-perfect-kids-dumb-phone/

by PotatoNinja • 17 days ago

393 257 17 days ago

Brajeshwar• 15 days ago

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.

mvdwoord• 13 days ago

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

05• 13 days ago

Also refuses to activate with alphanumeric passcode enabled..

sbayg2• 13 days ago

I could sort of imagine plausible reasons for that, but not allowing sim pin seems… nonobvious.

fma2• 13 days 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.

flippyhead• 13 days 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.

qup4• 13 days ago

Try discipline

PrimalPower• 13 days ago

I've concluded the only way to avoid workarounds it to reduce my own screen time. I stopped having a tablet myself. Got off the Iphone too.

I still need some smartphone for work. Got the smallest one possible so at least games aren't really fun.

basisword• 13 days 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.

Grombobulous3• 13 days 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.

bawolff4• 13 days 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.

sublinear• 13 days ago

What's stopping them from getting a burner device anyway? Imposing too much control can push them away, but a lack of direction can also make them wander.

All you can do is nudge and try not to worry too much. It's certain there are other influences in their life you don't know about.

fma2• 12 days ago

My comment got a lot of traction but for context my kids are early in elementary school, far from their teenage years.

The intention of the iPad was to watch some educational videos, check out books, magazines from the library.

They still have occasional access but only with direct active supervision (i.e we are next to them vs we are making dinner).

As they get older, we will revisit.

wrs• 13 days 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.

jaggederest• 13 days ago

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

boredatoms• 13 days ago

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

Excellent education

NuclearPM2• 13 days ago

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

adamwk• 13 days ago

We were once 1337 hackers too

organsnyder• 13 days ago

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

robin_reala• 13 days 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.

NetOpWibby• 13 days ago

LMAO incredible

Aurornis4• 13 days ago

Australia was one of the first countries to institute social media bans under a certain age. Reading the reports and commentary from parents there has been fascinating, but not really surprising if you remember what it's like to be a kid.

The most positive thing I read was that the kids are spending less time on social media in front of adults (like at the dinner table) because they're not supposed to be on social media.

But most of the parents in the article I read believed their kids had circumvented the ban somehow. Their problem now was that the kids' social media use was entirely hidden from them and they had no way to monitor it or even bring it up with their kids. The kids didn't want to admit to using social media at all.

None of this should be very surprising for any of us who remember back into childhood. Circumventing the restrictions was a game with its own reward. I had friends who were finding ways to get around the school's internet controls for the fun of doing it, not because it blocked any sites they wanted to use.

Marsymars4• 13 days ago

The upside of well-crafted social media bans for kids under a certain age is that you can use them to apply financial pain to social media companies for failing to prevent kids from signing up.

OkayPhysicist• 13 days ago

I was definitely that kid. I remember discovering that my district's web filter had a default password (something like "changethis123"), by watching one substitute with exceptionally poor typing skills. Problem was, substitutes' accounts were disabled frequently, and any one account only really had a lifetime of a week or two, before someone in the IT department realized that 300 devices were connecting to the network with the same credentials.

But the staff lists were public, and I had the default password. So I set up a script to turn the lists of names of teachers, librarians, janitors, etc. into usernames, and then tried to login with all of them. Turns out, most support staff, especially custodians, hadn't changed their passwords. (I'm guessing their jobs didn't involve much computer use). With a list of a couple dozen working accounts, I'd mete out 1 or 2 at a time to my friends, and we had teacher-level access for the rest of our time there. Don't remember using it for much, maybe showing my friends a youtube video during lunch or something.

cynicalsecurity• 13 days ago

You are teaching your children to be even more secretive and hide things from you even better.

platevoltage• 13 days ago

Great. They are learning good security culture. That will be useful later in life when every move they make will be surveilled.

zer00eyz• 13 days ago

As a late Gen X I grew up when the "it's 10pm do you know where your kids are" ad's ran. When "just say no" was all I heard for a decade. When sex ed was marginally controversial. Honestly, I remain shocked that I never got arrested for some of my shenanigans. The rest of it was drinking, drugs and partying.

I was candid with my kids about what I did in my youth, I was also honest with them about how terrible the tech was. They also got unfettered access to it (tech), and there were lots of conversations and consequences around its (mis)use.

Given the history of "abstinence only" sex ed, and "just say no" drug campaigns, and their massive failures; just not letting them have it seemed like it was going to create the problems that many are looking to avoid.

As they have moved into adulthood they have taken those lessons to heart, and are now the ones who complain about their peers and their abuses of social media and inability to self moderate. These same conversations continue now, with the added topic of AI -

krupan• 13 days ago

You can lock them out of the app store completely, and only allow a list of approved domains that can browse to. I also had it shut everything down at 10pm so they couldn't spend all night trying to find workarounds. Worked really well, but it did require some work on my part to manage the installed apps and allowed domains though

Cthulhu_2• 12 days ago

Our school's library computers (mind you I was early 20s by then) did not allow people to just sit down and go online, an admin had to log in first.

We did have Notepad though. Notepad -> open file -> explorer -> enter URL -> internet explorer -> internets.

Not long after we both got an operating system installed on our removable drive (which we had to pay like 200+ euros for across four years and we barely used it), and bootable Linux CDs became a thing too so the protections were completely moot.

m463• 13 days ago

This seems like a much more comprehensive solution than screen time

al_borland• 13 days 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.

Cider99867• 13 days 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.

Edit: expanded acronym.

qup4• 13 days ago

What does the acronym stand for

Dragging-Syrup• 13 days ago

mobile device management

wilcoooo• 13 days ago

Mobile Device Management

virgil_disgr4ce• 13 days ago

Monumental Deployment Mastermind

sampton• 13 days ago

MDM is just parental control for adults.

eigencoder6• 13 days 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.

Cider99867• 13 days ago

I did that when I had an iPhone, I agree it was excellent. More people should do it.

Looking forward to MDM support on GrapheneOS.

matthewfcarlson2• 13 days ago

I’m curious about this, what did you do to make it dumb?

sneak2• 13 days ago

Supervised devices cannot be backed up and restored to supervised devices. You can only backup/restore to an unsupervised target. If you want supervision, you have to abandon your backup.

It sucks.

Melatonic3• 13 days ago

Can't you use a config profile and enroll it ?

sbayg2• 13 days ago

MDM is the worst part of iOS. It undermines all of apple’s security claims, basically making iOS windows. Devices should not be able to be remotely controlled.

Cider99867• 13 days ago

It can be done all locally. How can an optional feature that's not even easy to use be the worst part of iOS?

p2detar• 13 days ago

Yeah, no - if I provide my employees $1000 devices, I most certainly would like to be able to exercise some sort of management over them.

making iOS windows

Baseless claims.

judge20203• 13 days ago

MDM enables enterprises to control how the phones they own behave. If anything it makes it more secure, if an enterprise were to only allow allowlisted apps to run on it.

The only issue is BYOD via MDM (when it's not via "Work Profile"), which is somewhat scary from a user perspective, especially from how hard it is to tell what permissions they might be able to spring on you at any time.

isatty• 13 days ago

Nonsense. MDM is usually for devices owned by the company or opt in by you personally. There is no way to attack or transparently MDM a personal phone that I know of.

walrus012• 13 days ago

MDM is designed for corporate owned phone environments where there's a great many good reasons to lock down a phone. If you're handing out company owned phones to employees you want the ability to remotely lock/wipe, install and remove apps, set a number of restrictions. If people want to do anything else they are completely welcome to do it on their own personally owned property.

For instance I have recently seen a very successful Apple MDM deployment in a school environment where the teachers and staff have access to a great depth and breadth of PII of a thousand children under age 16. You don't want all those phones to become a free-for-all of people doing whatever they want.

anshumankmr• 13 days ago

MDM is not the default experience, while Windows doesn't really have a better experience to boast of.

koolala• 13 days ago

Only? Their solution in the article seemed effective.

binkHN• 13 days ago

All you need is a macbook

Is it really not possible to do this with a non-Apple machine?

Cider99867• 13 days ago

Not afaict.

thephyber2• 13 days ago

This iOS feature isn’t only about locking out users from some features/apps.

It turns a complicated phone into a much more simple one. Both kids and the elderly can benefit from it.

My only issue is that the was only introduced in 2024, so older iPhones can’t benefit.

leipert• 13 days ago

It was introduced in iOS 18, which is installable back to iPhone Xs (2018). So 8 years of devices have that setting.

alanwreath• 13 days ago

I thought they prohibited the Apple mdm for family use. Was this a soft ban? Can we just use it without like verifying it’s just for the family?

citizenpaul2• 13 days 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.

msftgreed8• 13 days ago

Do you use curb cuts? Closed captions? Difficulty sliders in games? An electric toothbrush? Audible crosswalk signals?

All of those have significant roots in accessibility for people with disabilities. I guarantee you that the people who invented them would be thrilled to see them have widespread adoption for all populations.

If something finds use in addition to its use for disability amelioration, it becomes more widespread and normalized. When it's wider spread and normalized, it becomes easier for people with disabilities to know it's available and to use it without stigma.

So no, you've got it entirely backwards I'm afraid. We do not think about assistive technology as something for people with disabilities. We think about it as something that helps people, and if it helps more people, even better.

citizenpaul2• 12 days ago

Perhaps on HN. The general public.... I'm guessing you don't interact with average and below people very often if you believe that.

Corporations are not known for "normalizing" something at risk of billions of dollars of profit. That is never going to change. Sure once something starts to get acceptance they have no problem shouting from the rooftop about how they were first but they never sound the trumpet.

If you are not aware the CEO of Apple (Tim Cook). Lived most of his life as a closeted LGBQ due to discrimination. Even though he is CEO of one of the richest companies in the world Apple has not become a leading champing of LGBQIA+ rights. Because they are afraid it would not be profitable. That's how companies operate.

pugworthy• 13 days 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• 13 days 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.

hapticmonkey• 13 days ago

Just a reminder to anyone reading that accessibility features are not just for other people but they are for our future selves. Growing old, getting injured etc are things that will happen to us all.

Going to go and give my mum a call now!

_carbyau_• 13 days ago

When tech companies understand presbyopia is a thing then I will believe accessibility is given more than a token gesture.

I'm not holding my breath. I plan on eye surgery.

Presbyopia: https://www.aoa.org/healthy-eyes/eye-health-for-life/adult-v...

Affected world population: "Whereas the presbyopic population is expected to increase from approximately 2.1 billion people currently2 to more than 4 billion people in 2050 (approximately 40% of the world’s population)3"

https://presbyopia.worldcouncilofoptometry.info/standardofca...

turkeyboi• 13 days ago

Assistive access is the feature being referred to by tfa

50208• 13 days ago

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

abeyer2• 13 days 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.

philips3• 13 days 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.

philips3• 13 days 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.

win311fwg• 13 days ago

The kid doesn't need it, but the parents need the kid to have it on him to appease the bored onlookers one digit away from calling the authorities.

adrr• 13 days ago

Give your kid some quarters so they can call you on a pay phone like the old days.

MandieD• 13 days ago

That'd be fine if there were any payphones still around...

bawolff4• 13 days 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.

isomorphic• 13 days ago

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

kelnos2• 13 days ago

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

eigencoder6• 13 days ago

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

dgudkov• 13 days ago

Wait, not being able to make a picture of yourself is pretty draconian? In this case, the world before smartphones was a living Hell on Earth.

bawolff4• 13 days ago

Fun fact: cameras have existed long before cellphones (let alone smart phones)

Its draconian not because selfies are a fundamental need, but because they seem harmless. Rules should be justifiable.

expedition322• 12 days ago

It was a hard time for pedophiles. They had to physically walk up to children, hide in bushes, run when the police showed up.

morninglight• 13 days 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.

imp0cat2• 13 days ago

There is an entire ecosystem of kid's watches which do exactly that. Pretty much just a miniature cellphone with restricted functions that goes on the wrist like some sort of a tracking collar.

bitwize• 13 days ago

It's like At Ease for mobile. Neat!

xnx• 13 days ago

Summary:

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

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

littlecranky672• 13 days ago

it is not just simplified, it lets you chose which apps to show in that "simplified" view. For the elderly, that removes a lot of clutter and ways to shot yourself in the foot.

jerlam• 13 days ago

The article doesn't emphasize it, but Assisted Access also adds back the home/back button, like older iPhones and Androids. There is no more swipe-up motion that I see my parents struggle with because they did it too slow or started from slightly too high on the screen.

I completely understand why Apple and Google removed the buttons (gotta maximize that screen real estate), but the affordance for an obvious home/reset button is great for some people.

Melatonic3• 13 days ago

First thing I do is delete all homescreen icons and widgets and any extra homescreens

Does this do anything else ? Or make the app list when you go fully right different ?

delis-thumbs-7e2• 13 days ago

Thank you. I need to try if this helps my mom survive smart phones.

1970-01-01• 13 days ago

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

Waterluvian• 13 days 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.

philips3• 13 days 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.

Triphibian2• 13 days 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.

msftgreed8• 13 days ago

Videogames are generally lagging WAY behind the rest of software. I've worked professionally in accessibility and in AAA game studios.

There's a lot of movement in games over the past 5-10 years, so there's a lot more visibility into a11y there, but in general that industry still has catching up to do. What you are seeing is higher interest and velocity there, and given some time they'll definitely catch up with the slower iteration cycles in mobile and web a11y, but I guarantee you the story is much richer on the web (in particular) than it is in games.

Triphibian2• 12 days ago

You're the pro. But as a casual observer, games tend to have menus with lots of settings options. Every other bit of software I use has next to none. Totally anecdotal, so I totally understand that my view is probably skewed. Keep up the good work?

eigencoder6• 13 days ago

I like the feature, but I don't like the assumption at the beginning.

Come September, he will have to walk across town to school on his own. But if he's going to be walking around out in the world without me, then a tracking tag won't cut it. He is far too young to have unfettered access to the internet and social media platforms, but what if he gets lost? A classic Nokia, supplying just texts and calls, won't come to his aid. Maps and satnav require a web connection.

What if he gets lost? With a classic Nokia, he could still call someone and get help. Or, he might (heaven forbid) just need to ask someone for help. Or walk around until he remembers where he is. These are all good skills to learn.

wpm2• 13 days ago

the idea of tagging my kid with a tracker like they're a wild bird being tracked is repugnant

moralestapia3• 13 days ago

Just a suggestion, be more mindful when you make comments involving other people's kids.

(which is generally a no-no unless you're invited to)

On the internet is fine, but I've been to places around the world where a comment like that would result in black eyes, missing teeth, etc.

baxtr• 13 days ago

We had some friends over last form the US. One 11 yr kid in the group was bored and said: ok I’m gonna go home now, I need the keys please.

He walked home by himself - maybe 500 meters… For us Europeans it was nothing to notice really, but the Americans were absolutely shocked.

jkestner3• 13 days ago

I don’t think you can profile this as American. Are they conservative suburbanites? My kid walks to/from school longer than that. Many kids take public transit in big cities. Rural kids may ride a motorbike much further.

bombcar2• 13 days ago

And I've been where the Americans had some friends over from the US, and the 11/12 year olds grabbed some rifles and said they'd be back tomorrow. The Americans barely noticed, the Europeans flipped.

America is big, and parts of it can be very different.

refurb• 13 days ago

That says more about the people you were with than America.

I see plenty of 11 year olds in the US without any parental supervision while in public.

I mean kids get jobs at 12?

conductr2• 13 days ago

As an American reading your comment, it’s because we drive everywhere and my initial thought is he’s asking for the car keys

That distance for a walk should be seen as fine by most Americans at that age. Although, I find it’s rare that we socialize much with people that close. Those would be neighbors and neighbors aren’t frequently socializing to this degree.

nixosbestos• 13 days ago

This stuff truly makes my head spin. How do these people think humanity came to be, to today? Do they understand we in historically safe times? I thought the pendulum was swinging back on helicopter parents but some adults, some HN adults, have more money and tech-bias than common sense, or self-awareness, or any awareness of what they're doing to the children. And then remarking that they get around those restrictions. DUH?! Jesus, do some people here struggle this much to remember their own childhoods???

jkestner3• 13 days ago

If it bleeds, it leads. That is, our media has hyped up violence in society as it’s become more rare, and politicians use it to scare people into thinking we need to go back to the good old days.

judge20203• 13 days ago

Only issue is that kids going outside alone has become highly stigmatized in society to the point where doing so gets you jailed and charged[0].

The kid will grow up to almost always be able to contact most any human in the world. Knowing how and when to do that is probably going to be a more useful skill.

0: https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/is-it-a-crime-to-let-you...

Side note: As above article states, after this arrest SB110 was passed to specifically outline what is reasonable for this situation.

rkangel• 13 days ago

has become highly stigmatized in society

When making claims like this, please remember that this is a very international group of people and scope your point appropriately: "has become highly stigmatized in the US"

This is not a problem in large parts of Europe (can't comment about elsewhere). The reason this scoping is important is because the solutions are different for "this is a problem in all of society" compared to "this is a problem in the US".

thatmf2• 13 days ago

For some reason when I opened this the sound of a helicopter hovering shook the walls.

Come September, he will have to walk across town to school on his own.

*THE HORROR*

But if he's going to be walking around out in the world without me, then a tracking tag won't cut it.

Uhhhhhhhhh. The way this is stated so plainly as if it were self-evident fact is telling. The author longs for the umbilical cord.

but what if he gets lost?

What if he learns a life lesson, navigation and/or some form of self-reliance or independence?

I just... no wonder Kids Today are so cooked.

butz• 13 days ago

This is actually a really great feature for everyone else trying to reduce their phone use without switching to different "dumbphone". But why mandatory lock by passcode? I agree, that adding more friction would prevent user to switch back to standard UI, but still - it should be optional.

jorisw5• 13 days ago

Yeah I bailed out of this when it asked me to change my 8 digit passcode to a 4 to 6 digit passcode

kakacik• 13 days ago

While all one needz in such case is new commodore (yes, that commodore) flip phone.

Whatsapp, google maps, calls, sms. No browser, no store, no bullshit. Kids dont need more, if parents dont want to ruin (part of) their childhood. No need for restrictive apple ecosystem neither.

laweijfmvo• 13 days ago

I discovered and tried to use this feature to turn an older iPhone into a dumb phone for myself, but hit several blockers

  1. It’s incredibly slow to transition in and out of the mode, as mentioned in the article, which made setting it up (constant tweaks) very painful
  2. For messages and calls, you were limited to select contacts only. So I couldn’t just text/call a number when I needed to.

They may have polished the feature since then, but given that it’s an Accessibility feature and was never meant to receive much attention in this regard, it may always be half-baked.

judge20203• 13 days ago

now that it has received attention, Apple might just throw another engineer at it :)

matthewfcarlson2• 13 days ago

Eh I’ve filed a few bugs a few years ago and they seem to have been ignored. I tried it for a while and it crashed my phone frequently. My gut says it’s a hack, hence the performance issues.

kspacewalk22• 13 days ago

#2 seems like a feature, not a bug. I certainly don't want my 11 year old texting/calling unapproved numbers, way too young for that.

subarctic• 13 days ago

Definitely a feature, but also ruins it for this person's use case

asdff• 13 days ago

The kids going to be driving a car in 3 years...

doublebash• 13 days ago

I just tested #2 on iOS 27 Developer Beta, and this has been resolved. You can select “anyone” instead of specific contacts.

happyopossum• 13 days ago

Crucially, this is where, unlike with Apple’s standard child screen-time restrictions, you can choose to completely block internet browsing by simply not allowing Safari

Very odd take given that you can block access to safari with iOS screen time as well...

Aboutplants• 13 days ago

I really wish settings could be downloaded and implemented like transferring Bookmarks in browsers. That way I could take a setup of settings someone has created and simply mimic that by way of adopting all of the same settings in one fell swoop.

It would break the anxiety barrier of having to finagle with a bunch of different settings which exists for a lot of people believe it or not.Or Apple could just make it easier to implement these types of features much easier.

dewey• 13 days ago

That's exactly what configuration profiles are for. They work on macOS, iOS, tvOS etc. and you can configure them with a GUI app from Apple (https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/install-or-remove-con...)

turtlebits• 13 days ago

It's still a smartphone.

The perfect dumb phone is just a dumb phone. (Bonus, they're an order of magnitude cheaper than a decent smartphone).

EdwinRobbins• 13 days ago

Similar initial thought, but in the article they say they want their kid to be able to use maps apps to be able to navigate if they get lost.

dwa3592• 13 days ago

my iphone is already kind of dumb. i don't have any social media apps. i have all notifications turned off (except ringtone for call). i only use my phone for calling and texting. it feels very expensive for those 2 operations. but i have the choice of downloading whatever shit i want to download.

hans_castorp• 13 days ago

Maps and satnav require a web connection.

No they don't require a network at all. The only drawback if there is no network is that the initial finding of the position takes longer. And maps can be downloaded so that they are available offline.

GPS receiver have been working without a "web connection" for ages (e.g. Garmins outdoor devices).

I use my smartphone in "airplane" mode but GPS enabled when hiking. No problems whatsoever.

walrus012• 13 days ago

At least on Android there's a fair number of apps like "osmand" which can download an entire state, province or country vector/map data, in their own semi-proprietary data format derived from public openstreetmap, for truly offline use anywhere you have a GPS signal. It'll even work on a phone that has no SIM card in it.

habi• 13 days ago

OsmAnd is also available on iOS: https://apps.apple.com/ch/app/osmand-maps-travel-navigate/id... CoMap also offers offline access to OpenStreetMap data: https://apps.apple.com/ch/app/comaps/id6747180809

ivlad• 12 days ago

Native Apple Maps allow downloading map regions for offline use.

whycome4• 13 days ago

There are so many features under “accessibility” that have wider usages.

cmrx64• 13 days ago

i consider it the root menu of the phone

650REDHAIR3• 13 days ago

I use the back tap feature for shortcuts and have my iPad auto-answer FaceTime calls when I’m out so I can check in on the dogs.

Lots of neat features hiding beneath the surface!

whycome4• 13 days ago

I have the back tap trigger a shortcut to give me a list of my most used things. I’ve used gestures to let me use a remote keyboard turn the pages on an ebook and I’ve also used it to let me remotely swipe short videos. I’ve used the vehicle motion cues. I’ve set an action to bring up the TTS reader. I even had the eye tracking do stuff for me.

whycome4• 12 days ago

I didn’t know auto answer was a thing until now

frereubu• 13 days ago

I'm co-owner of an agency that builds websites, and we have a phrase that "accessibility is for everyone". Like you say, there are so many accessibility settings that can make things easier to use for anyone, from simple things like reduced motion to more complex things like colour filters.

SlavikCA• 13 days ago

Does Android have this feature?

Cider99867• 13 days ago

On Androids with Google Play Serivces, I assume you can use an MDM tool to achieve a similar effect.

mdavidn• 13 days ago

Wow. I was reading this article on a iPhone when the heavy ads crashed my Safari tab. After it auto-reloaded, the paywall claimed I had used all of my free articles. Thanks, Wired.

msftgreed8• 13 days ago

This is a great example of the curb cut effect -- a system designed for accessibility needs turns out to be useful in other contexts. Curb cuts were designed for people with disabilities, particularly veterans, and over time have become more and more standard. They help people who use wheelchairs, yes, but also people without disabilities like those with strollers, bikes, luggage, or small kids.

We love to see accessibility features find uses outside their original intent.

airstrafer• 13 days ago

Agreed. I like the framing that there are three kinds of disability: permanent (I lost my arm in a motorcycle crash), temporal (I broke my arm and can’t use it for a while), and situational (I’m walking my dog so I can only use one arm for other things).

Generally we only refer to someone with a permanent disability as “disabled” but in reality we are all disabled in various categories at different times of our lives. Accessibility is important to all three groups (you need to be able to use your phone with one hand), therefore accessibility is important to everyone.

msftgreed8• 13 days ago

And furthermore, ~15% of us are permanently disabled. So the percentages for temporary or situational disability rise even higher than that.

fercircularbuf• 12 days ago

I love this. Thank you for sharing.

conductr2• 13 days ago

Won’t dispute the utility, but curious if they would have become standard without regulations. At least in the US, I associate them with ADA requirements

dingaling• 13 days ago

Dropped curbs also make progress more difficult for users using the pavement / sidewalk in a normal manner, since it introduces constrictions and trip hazards - which is a aspect of "curb cut effect" that is glossed over.

Try going for a run along a pavement with frequent curb cuts, it's not pleasant. UK dropped curbs are somewhat less of a trip hazard but are so frequent in towns that you end up running with an ankle at an angle.

sdfsfdsdfs3d• 13 days ago

Yes, fully agreed. Also try practicing jeu de boules on pavements with cut curbs. The balls will constantly roll off the edge. It's infuriating.

My most unpleasant experience so far has been during my daily public heavy deadlifting routine. When I place my barbell on the edge of the curb, which my particular style of lifting requires, it's placed at an angle so my back got messed up and it's all the fault of these curb cutting measures.

It's all fine and dandy you want to assist children and handicapped people, but it'll be at the expense of regular users of the pavement which use it for completely sane and normal activities.

snayan• 13 days ago

Yeah, I just run on the road or trails to avoid areas like this. Happy to make this trade so that folks in wheelchairs etc can actually use the sidewalk, they need it more than I do!

rcbdev2• 13 days ago

Only because anglo-style curb cuts are designed horribly. In Austria, they are unobtrusive add-ons to the sidewalk instead of literally obstructing the sidewalk.

My conclusion, as always, is that U.S.-Americans and Brits do not walk. Otherwise these design choices do not make any sense.

jaapz2• 13 days ago

This just makes no sense whatsoever. You can just step over dropped curbs like you can step over normal curbs?

Even if this is not the case for some weird reason - don't you agree that making the world a little bit more accessible for people who have a really hard time getting around is worth making the world just a tiny little bit less accessible for you - the person who can litterally run around?

If you have a considerable problem with tripping often though, maybe look at how you do running.

cronin101• 13 days ago

Running with your ankle at an angle occasionally gives great strength/mobility benefits. You'd need to be putting out some serious racer pace for curb cuts to be impacting your experience in any way.

Just make sure you alternate which side of the road you are running on somewhat evenly so you are getting the benefit on both sides.

mrweasel• 13 days ago

I've never really seen the dropped curbs as a hazard, but I guess it depends on how they are made and if they've been designed in from the start.

One "weird" complaint that I have with some accessibility features is that they mount things so that wheelchair users (and children) can operate them, e.g. a ATM mounted at groin height. I'm fairly tall so now I struggle to operate them or have to bend in unnatural angles. It's a small price to pay to make the world navigable to others, but almost daily I run into things that "are clearly designed by idiots". That is until I remember that the average person is below 180cm and right handed.

shortercode• 13 days ago

Yeah it wasn’t until I started pushing my daughter around in a pram that I started appreciating them. Crossing a road without them is a chore.

I saw a sibling comment mentioning about the drop curbs making the path awkwardly angled. Yeah they can be a real pain. Pushing a pram along on an angled path is hell on the wrists. But a lot of the troublesome ones are the wider ones for people to get their cars up to their front door.

Makes you think about how hard just going down the road with a wheelchair is.

rcbdev2• 13 days ago

Who is "we"? Do you work somewhere that specialises in the curb cut effect? Would love to hear more about your organization.

msftgreed8• 12 days ago

I work in accessibility, yes.

AnthonyMouse2• 13 days ago

the curb cut effect

Which itself is kind of an interesting example of how these things should work, because the curbs are maintained by the government, so the compliance cost is getting paid by the taxpayer.

Which is as it should be, because if something is to be required as a public benefit then it should be paid for out of public funds rather than as an unfunded mandate. Then thing like curb cuts continue to be a good deal so people are happy to fund them, whereas measures that cost more than they're worth get the level of opposition that they should because the taxpayer has to pay for them. And either way you would stop stressing smaller companies and causing market consolidation by increasing compliance costs.

sparqlittlestar• 13 days ago

Doesn't your argument hinge on the fact that roads and sidewalks are public works anyway?

The fact that compliance costs outprices some smaller companies rather shows that we as a society prefer to have accomodations, than live in one where such accomodations are only affordable to the affluent.

ButlerianJihad• 13 days ago

And skateboards, roller skates, scooters!

Gravityloss• 13 days ago

One can try putting themselves sometimes in the position of an old person. Let's say you have a heavy steel rollator with grocery bags hanging from the handles. You've spent an hour going to the store in the summer heat and are quite exhausted. Now try to enter your building. There's locked door that needs to be held open, and two thresholds, one for the platform in front of the door and one for the door. You can't go over the first threshold with your rollator as that would prevent the door from being opened.

Now, I think the assumed way to get in is to keep the door open with your body while simultaneously lifting the rollator over both thresholds. This requires considerable strength, as you have to reach far with a heavy weight. Maybe an athlete could do it. Not an old exhausted person.

An old person needs to first leave the rollator out, open the door and make it so it stays open with a hook. Involves crouching and working with your hands close to the ground. Then lift the rollator one by one over the steps and go inside. Then come back out and close the door.

A foot operated door stopper and a few slopes could probably ease that up tremendously.

phyzome• 13 days ago

That's a bad use of a very expensive phone. Get an actual dumb phone that's vastly cheaper.

what if he gets lost?

Then he can look at street signs, ask someone nearby for directions, or (and this is an option I didn't have as a kid)... call someone. On the phone. That he has.

jorisw5• 13 days ago

A dumb phone wouldn't offer Find My (kid)

wewewedxfgdf• 13 days ago

Looks good for old people too. My mom can no longer grasp anything but the most simple tech, and even then...

propter_hoc• 13 days ago

Idk, Google Family Link seems much more powerful and easy to manage to me. I guess it doesn't have the six giant icons launcher, but my seven-year-old has no issues with normal sized icons or text.

throwaway81523• 13 days ago

I've wanted for quite a long time to write an Android app like that. Use Kiosk mode (basically a locked down home screen) to turn the Android phone into a dumb phone.

sgerenser• 13 days ago

Is anyone who was in grade school in the 1990s reminded of Apple’s “simplified” MacOS shell called At Ease? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease

halper• 13 days ago

My favourite feature was using TTS to learn how to read very very long numbers …

jorisw5• 13 days ago

TTS meaning...

Cthulhu_2• 12 days ago

Fun times, we had a TTS exe that came with our Sound Blaster, also letting it read out very, very long numbers.

ThePowerOfFuet• 13 days ago

Maps and satnav require a web connection.

Comaps sure doesn't.

jorisw5• 13 days ago

Apple's docs on this feature: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/assistive-access-iphon...

jorisw5• 13 days ago

From the docs, looks like you can't use third party apps with this, meaning WhatsApp, Signal, etc can't work. With pre-existing use of those apps, that's kind of a deal breaker for elderly, who I was hoping to use this for.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/assistive-access-iphon...

txr• 13 days ago

No, you can add any app you want. It’s just that the app will not change and has no simplified UI like the first-party apps.

j45• 13 days ago

This is a great use of a feature.

Still a touch screen, those aren't always the best for kids to tap away furiously on.

canbus• 12 days ago

Does anyone know how to turn on the flashlight without a third-party app in AA mode?

mixmastamyk• 12 days ago

How does this intersect with screen time, which is quite convoluted and buggy. Should I have used this instead?

Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone

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