Earlier today, a report from The New York Times highlighted Apple’s removal of a number of App Store apps that had allowed users to monitor usage of their devices or those used by their children. The report suggests that Apple’s move to pull the apps is related to having rolled out its own Screen Time feature in iOS 12 that competes in some ways with these apps, raising concerns over anticompetitive behavior.
Over the past year, Apple has removed or restricted at least 11 of the 17 most downloaded screen-time and parental-control apps, according to an analysis by The New York Times and Sensor Tower, an app-data firm. Apple has also clamped down on a number of lesser-known apps. In some cases, Apple forced companies to remove features that allowed parents to control their children’s devices or that blocked children’s access to certain apps and adult content. In other cases, it simply pulled the apps from its App Store.The report quotes several developers who had their apps removed, including one who says the removal came “out of the blue with no warning.” Apple is facing several complaints related to the moves, with a pair of developers filing with the European Union’s competition office and Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab filing an antitrust complaint in that country. The New York Times shared a brief statement from an Apple spokeswoman saying that Apple treats “all apps the same,” including ones that compete with Apple’s own features like Screen Time.
The spokeswoman stated that the affected apps “could gain too much information from users’ devices.” After reading the article, MacRumors reader Zachary Robinson emailed Tim Cook to express concern over the situation, and earlier today he received a thorough response from Phil Schiller outlining that Apple’s removal of these apps is due to their use of Mobile Device Management (MDM) technology to monitor everything that happens on the user’s phone. Schiller notes that MDM technology is intended for enterprise users to install on company-owned devices, giving them easy access to and control over those devices for management purposes.
The alternative usage of MDM technology by third-party developers for screen time monitoring or parental controls raises significant privacy and security concerns, however, and Apple has moved to address those issues. The full email from Schiller, which appears to be authentic based on our examination of the included headers:Thank you for being a fan of Apple and for your email. I would like to assure you that the App Store team has acted extremely responsibly in this matter, helping to protect our children from technologies that could be used to violate their privacy and security.
After you learn of some of the facts I hope that you agree. Unfortunately the New York Times article you reference did not share our complete statement, nor explain the risks to children had Apple not acted on their behalf. Apple has long supported providing apps on the App Store, that work like our ScreenTime feature, to help parents manage
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