iOS 12 Family Sharing: Purchase Sharing supports changing Apple ID and UI could support future multiple Apple IDs.

One of Apple’s “original sins” is the proliferation of Apple IDs and the inability to merge or manage them. I have four that I know of with cryptic and fungible relationships between Apple ID and product ownership. (The worst bugs in the software world are data model bugs.)

In iOS 12 Family Sharing there’s now a setting for Purchase Sharing with an associated Apple ID. Mine is set to my Apple Store ID which is historically distinct from my iCloud ID (many old timers have this unfixable issue). If you tap on this Apple ID it rings up a dialog that allows this to be changed (there’s a bug here — tapping on it doesn’t always work. I had to leave the screen and return to it to enable tap). When I tapped it switched the default to my iCloud Apple ID.

I believe this is a new control. It will be interesting to see what happens when I migrate other family devices that use this iTunes Store ID for purchasing.

At the moment only one Apple ID can be used, but this UI could support multiple Apple IDs. The screen also displays a payment method that cannot be changed, it’s presumably defined by Apple ID.

This is something to watch.

PS. The ten year history of this mess is one reason I recommend Spotify over Apple Music for families.

See also:

• Move your Apple product records from one Apple ID to another Apple ID 11/2014
• How to delete your iCloud account and Apple ID 6/2017 (not)
• iCloud Family Sharing storage: What happens to Alice’s photos when Bob drops her from the Family? 10/2017. Wonder if this has changed.
• Apple’s Apple ID fiasco is getting worse — declining support for Apple Store ID that is not iCloud ID 11/2017 Then it seemed to reverse. I don’t know where Apple is going with this.
• Apple has a new problem with DRM and device management 3/2018 This will be interesting to retest.
• Converting from shared store ID to Family Sharing - and what didn’t work 4/2018. That was a fiasco - largely because family sharing only works for children.
• Apple ID Hell: Apple’s identity mismanagement - back in 5/2012
• Apple’s messed up Apple ID system: what are they smoking?! - 7/2008. Ten years ago.
• My Apple purchase records jumped from true AppleID to one I've never used. This is what I think happened. 7/2012. I think they were missing a ‘foreign key’ between two or more database systems.
• Apple's identity and account system is screwed up. Again. 10/2008
• Apple ID associated purchase records have jumped again: partly back to my old Dev account 7/2014

iOS 12 Parental Controls / Restrictions / Screen Time: Parental Controls (Passcode restricted) is not always compatible with "Share Across Devices"

Experimenting with Screen Time I enabled a passcode on my personal iPad after I’d enabled “Share Across Devices” [1]. I then found I could disable it without reentering the passcode. Which kind of defeats the purpose of a parental control passcode.

Then I turned it on again, and this time I was asked something like: “Is this iPad for you or your child?” [2]. Once I chose child I could no longer remove the passcode without entering it.

“Share Across Devices” then turned itself off.

When I turned “Share Across Devices” back on then I had to reenter my Screen Time Passcode. After than Screen Time Passcode was disabled.

Maybe this isn’t exactly a bug, but it certainly is awkward. I wonder if “Share Across Devices” uses iCloud ID or iTunes/Store ID.

Screen Time for family is enabled through the “Family Sharing” screen.

- fn -

[1] I think Share Across Devices Requires Apple’s two-factor authentication, which seems to rely on SIM-hack-friendly justly scorned phone number authentication. Yay Apple.

[2] Remember when iOS was going to allow multiple accounts on a single iPad? Android did that for their now defunct tablets.

iOS 12: It's now possible to remove/change Restriction / Screen Time passcode without removing restrictions

Prior to iOS 12 if you’d set a restriction passcode the only way to change it was to remove restrictions — which deleted things like blacklists and whitelists. With iOS 12 there’s a dialog for changing or removing the passcode. My favorite iOS 12 feature so far.

iOS 12: "family sharing" is still for children only -- ask to buy disabled at age 18 in US

The “Share purchases on iPad with family members” chapter of my iOS 12 iPad user guide tells me Family Sharing is still limited to children, and still not suited for use with special needs adults.

The problem is that “Ask to Buy” is available only for 18 and under. Since all purchases go to the “Family Organizer” Ask to Buy is the only way for the Organizer to control what family members purchase intentionally or accidentally. Since it’s turned off at age 18 “Family Sharing” is effectively for parents (who presumably share expenses) and children (who can have Ask to Buy).

This means that Family Sharing is not helpful for special needs dependents (guardianship status).

This is unchanged from iOS 11.  I’m not surprised, Apple doesn’t want Family Sharing to be widely adopted beyond the target group.

iOS 12 Books will not sync to Sierra or High Sierra Books

I updated my iPad to iOS 12. Books gave me this notification:

Changes you make to your library on this device sync only to devices running iOS 12, macOS 10.14, or later.

I downloaded the iOS 12 manual to my iPad and, as promised, it doesn’t show on Sierra iBooks.

Took me only a few minutes to find the first problem with iOS 12.

It’s a gift!

A similar problem happened with Mavericks.

AT&T mobile app: A bug with data usage display and an unexpected feature

We share 6GB of A&TT mobile data between four of us [1]. Normally this is enough, but this month #1 son went over his quota. He pays for the overages, so it wasn’t a big deal, except that MyAT&T.app on my iPhone wasn’t tracking the usage. “See all usage” showed we were using a total of 6GB of data even though we’d used over 8 GB:

When you add the above numbers you get about 6.1 GB. Turns out there’s a bug in the app — it basically stops working when you hit your data limit. There’s a similar bug in a couple of places — “Change my plan” says I’ve used 6.00GB this month, in truth we used over 8GB.

To see the true state of things look down to the bottom of this screen (may need to scroll) and tap “See all my usage” (compare to “See all usage”, above). You get an embedded web page and if you scroll down you see the true current use.

Scroll further down that page and tap a link called “Manage data” (elsewhere it’s Manage my data usage”). You get some useful features I didn’t know existed …

Stream saver reduces video streams to 480p, it’s on by default. This screen also lets you turn data off completely for an individual user; I didn’t know that was an option. It might be useful for working with an uncooperative dependent burning data, but it also disables Find iPhone and Find Friends. So it’s a bit of a mixed blessing.

With the data overages it’s tempting to pay $16 more (basically cost of one overage) and go to the 10GB plan, but typically we’re under the 6GB level and almost never go over 7. So it’s more economical to stay at 6 and buy overage GBs periodically. I have found everything is using more data so we might need to change in a few months.

[1] #2 son uses so little data he gets by on a @$50 a year H2O prepaid plan.

Thoughts on replacing FileMaker Pro 11

Once upon a time database apps were priced and sold as a consumer product. Those were the days when computers were marketed as a replacement for a recipe book.

There were dozens of consumer oriented database products then, priced from under $15 shareware apps to around $100 for relatively full featured commercial products (AppleWorks, etc). Some of these products, particularly on the Mac, were astounding (though high end ones were priced as business products).

That era seems weird now. It definitively ended when Apple discontinued Bento. Shortly afterwords FileMaker was priced as a business-only product. Panorama X has followed a similar path. Tap Forms is sold at a consumer price, but it failed my basic trial tests.

The era of the affordable personal database app has passed. The only commercial remnant on any platform is Microsoft Access — somehow Microsoft can’t quite kill it. LibreOffice Base began as Microsoft Access clone and sort of runs on macOS, but parts of it still require Java.

My only current use case for FileMaker Pro is that it runs my personal password database. I could move that (yay data freedom!) to Microsoft Access in a VM, but Windows 10 is a monstrous amount of baggage to keep around just to run a personal password manager.

I could finally migrate to 1Password. Emily and I use it and I have to periodically dump data into it manually from my old password database. I wonder how long that product will last with Apple incorporating credential management into the operating system though.

Or I could adopt the lazy choice and stay on Sierra and FileMaker Pro 11 a while longer. I like the sound of that one.