SEPTEMBER 2020 MACWORLD 115and app sharing. So I’m left with leaving
the little ones unprotected, which is
unacceptable. How do I get around this?I should note before getting into the
rest of it that you can enable Screen Time
on individual and iCloud-linked sets of
devices without using Family Sharing. That
requires setting a PIN on each device or
on a single device in an iCloud-linked set
and enabling Screen Time on each
device. It doesn’t offer centralized
management, but it does provide
protection. (Macs require Catalina, the first
version to include Screen Time.)
Unfortunately, there’s no workaround
for adding more people to Family Sharing.
Apple likely picked six as a reasonably
inclusive number. Only about 1 percent of
households in America (go.macworld.
com/1phs) have more than six people in
them, though that number includes both
adults and children in a single household.
And the company ostensibly limited
the number, and didn’t set it to something
like ten, for a combination of licensing
terms it sets with app developers and
music and video partners, and to prevent
groups of people sharing an account in
order to share items and reduce Apple
and its partners’ revenue.
To Apple’s credit, they do not say,
“Covers the whole family.” Rather, they
more carefully state, “Family Sharing
makes it easy for up to six family members
to share...”
One solution: Take a Solomon-like
approach and split the family in two. No,
not down the middle of each child, thank
you, but pick one parent for one group of
kids to run their Family Sharing and
another parent for the rest. This doesn’t
give you quite the same financial benefit in
not purchasing things twice, but it does
allow collective Screen Time management
and sharing of some purchases.
Since more apps are shifting to in-app
purchases for subscriptions and other
features, and in-app purchases are not
shared as part of apps that allow Family
Sharing (which seems to be most apps),
you see less of a benefit these days from
shared app across a family.
Apple could use another option for
Family Sharing, which is to rely on part on
geographic verification. If you wanted to
add more than six people total, you
might have to opt in to letting Apple
occasionally check—even in some
privacy enhanced obscured way—that
all the devices were usually clustered
around the same address.
Spotify takes that tack for its family
accounts, which are licensed to use only
by people residing at the same address.
The company routinely asks for verification
(go.macworld.com/spvr), too. Maybe that’s
not the right approach.