• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Dion Almaer

Software, Development, Products

  • @dalmaer
  • LinkedIn
  • Medium
  • RSS
  • Show Search
Hide Search

”It Just Works” (For Kids)

October 6, 2014 Leave a Comment

The trials and tribulations of shared content and kids

How often have you heard someone recant the moment when their child first saw an iPad. I remember my own story, with my 4 year old son. I placed a new iPad on the coffee table in the living room at night, and when morning came and he bounded out, he went straight for it. He had no idea what it was or that it existed, but he unlocked it and started to use it. That is the high water mark of great user experience. The iPhone had trained him well enough that he could then use something different, yet similar. I pictured giving him another tablet and laughed at how he could never even get close to using it.

That high mark seems to be cracking with Apple though as you can see from tales such as:

“Fast forward to today, 2014. Zoom in to me. I’m typing this on a Macbook Pro. In my pocket is the iPhone 6. Three metres away sits a Mac Mini. On the surface, nothing has changed. The problem is, it feels like everything has changed. In short while Apple’s hardware continues to impress me, their software has gone downhill at a rapid pace. iPhoto is an unusable mess with the volume of photos I now have. Aperture has been discontinued and is badly lagging behind in terms of both performance and features. iTunes takes forever to launch, and is bloated mess of way too many features and functions. iCloud is still a mess that I wouldn’t dream of storing my important data in. iOS 7 crashed so often that I became intimately familiar with the Apple logo that appeared every time it did. iOS 8 fixed the crashing, but introduced thousands of little paper cut like bugs. I used to install updates from Apple the second they came out, now I wait a few days to see if they are actually any good.”

The effort that went into iOS 8 is astounding, and the quality is high, but you can see how it can be argued that it has dipped.

You Kids Can’t Use Family Sharing

Back to children as a measure. One of the great features in iOS 8 is Family Sharing. Managing and sharing the media (apps, photos, (my) videos, movies, tv shows) has been a thorn in my side. There was never a clean way to do this across the family, so I was jazzed to hear about the feature in theory.

Then I went to set it up, giving each of the kids their accounts (forced to use icloud.com vs. their actual email domains now, huh). I then go to the “Videos” app on my sons iPad (ASIDE: interesting that it is called “Videos” even though it doesn’t have your videos?) and see nothing. Wait a minute….. let’s take a step back and think about what I would love to see / be able to do:

  • As the parent, I would love to be able to go through the family collection and grant access to the various pieces (or maybe flip it and give access to all, but black list certain items…. which would work better for me since most of the content is for the kids ☺
  • As the parent, I don’t want to worry about what is in “my” account vs. my wife’s etc. The family has content, and the family owners can grant and revoke access. If one of my sons wants to buy “Minecraft Widgety Cool App”, my wife and I get the “cool?” and if we agree it starts downloading for him. Ideally I would then be able to say “oh and cool for the other kids too”.

Instead, I look to my 5 year old and his experience for watching a show on his iPad goes from:

BEFORE: Go to “Videos”, find show I want, tap to play

AFTER: Get to iTunes (via Videos / Store or directly), tap on the top left ‘button’ which is now just words in iOS 8 “My Purchases”, and choose “Dion” from the drop down. Find the content, try to download it, and get back to Videos to watch it.

Errrrrrrr, that don’t just work, instead it just feels like a LOT of work.

The concept of family sharing is SO needed, but the implementation drives me up the wall.

I blame that one Apple Maps guy…

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Twitter

My Tweets

Recent Posts

  • Generative AI: It’s Time to Get Into First Gear
  • Developer Docs + GenAI = ❤️
  • We keep confusing efficacy for effectiveness
  • The holy grail of a Web SDK
  • The rise of the extensible app platforms

Follow

  • LinkedIn
  • Medium
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Tags

3d Touch 2016 Active Recall Adaptive Design Agile Amazon Echo Android Android Development Apple Application Apps Artificial Intelligence Autocorrect blog Bots Brain Calendar Career Advice Cloud Computing Coding Cognitive Bias Commerce Communication Companies Conference Consciousness Cooking Cricket Cross Platform Deadline Delivery Design Desktop Developer Advocacy Developer Experience Developer Platform Developer Productivity Developer Relations Developers Developer Tools Development Distributed Teams Documentation DX Ecosystem Education Energy Engineering Engineering Mangement Entrepreneurship Exercise Family Fitness Founders Future GenAI Gender Equality Google Google Developer Google IO Habits Health HR JavaScript Jobs Jquery Kids Stories Kotlin Language Leadership Learning Lottery Machine Learning Management Messaging Metrics Micro Learning Microservices Microsoft Mobile Mobile App Development Mobile Apps Mobile Web Moving On NPM Open Source Organization Organization Design Pair Programming Paren Parenting Path Performance Platform Platform Thinking Politics Product Design Product Development Productivity Product Management Product Metrics Programming Progress Progressive Enhancement Progressive Web App Project Management Psychology Push Notifications pwa QA Rails React Reactive Remix Remote Working Resilience Ruby on Rails Screentime Self Improvement Service Worker Sharing Economy Shipping Shopify Short Story Silicon Valley Slack Software Software Development Spaced Repetition Speaking Startup Steve Jobs Study Teaching Team Building Tech Tech Ecosystems Technical Writing Technology Tools Transportation TV Series Twitter Typescript Uber UI Unknown User Experience User Testing UX vitals Voice Walmart Web Web Components Web Development Web Extensions Web Frameworks Web Performance Web Platform WWDC Yarn

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Archives

  • January 2023
  • September 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • November 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • October 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • October 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • May 2018
  • February 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012

Search

Subscribe

RSS feed RSS - Posts

The right thing to do, is the right thing to do.

The right thing to do, is the right thing to do.

Dion Almaer

Copyright © 2023 · Log in