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Apple Begins Asking Developers to Turn On Family Sharing for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite Apps
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Did anyone else read the first few lines of this image in the 1984 commercial voice?
Family Sharing sounds great, except all the accounts must be tied to the same credit card, which makes it irrelevant for us, since we all have our own accounts linked to our own cards.
At first, my wife was the only one with an iTunes account, so we'd all use her account to purchase music/apps/games.
Then I got my own account with my own CC, and could not transfer certain purchases. Annoying, but what the heck, so be it. our son continued to purchase through my wife's account.
Last December he got his iPhone and we encouraged him to open his own Apple account with his debit card, and he did. He had accumulated quite a number of purchases on my wife's account, but what the heck, so be it.
So when they announced Family Sharing last Monday I jumped for joy, only to immediately deflate when they added that it would apply to accounts tied to the same card.
That sucks. Apple, there has to be a better way to allow us to transfer purchases from one account to another.
At first, my wife was the only one with an iTunes account, so we'd all use her account to purchase music/apps/games.
Then I got my own account with my own CC, and could not transfer certain purchases. Annoying, but what the heck, so be it. our son continued to purchase through my wife's account.
Last December he got his iPhone and we encouraged him to open his own Apple account with his debit card, and he did. He had accumulated quite a number of purchases on my wife's account, but what the heck, so be it.
So when they announced Family Sharing last Monday I jumped for joy, only to immediately deflate when they added that it would apply to accounts tied to the same card.
That sucks. Apple, there has to be a better way to allow us to transfer purchases from one account to another.
There already is and it has been there for a long time. It's called Home Sharing.
Just out of curiosity, if you or your wife simply don't feel comfortable linking either one's credit card to all three accounts, why is getting a new card with a low limit just for your family's iTunes accounts not an option?
I'm not judging, mind you – I resisted credit cards for a long time myself (well into adulthood) simply because I didn't need what they offered over debit cards.
It's opt-in but I'm sure Apple will want to strongly incentivise developers to participate by only ever featuring apps that are enabled for family sharing. If an app has zero chance of ever being featured because it's junk then most likely the developer won't care. But for everyone else I think they will want to play ball with Apple here.
For future apps developers have no choose. Family sharing is required.
But they get to choose if already sold apps may be shared. I think they loose nothing in allowing this because if they were to sell two copies they already would have sold them.
Going forward with new apps and new versions of apps they WILL be available for family sharing. Only the old apps are "opt-in", there is no option for new apps.
Not quite as the link zephonic provides points out:
For Home sharing, you can only drag music from one computer to another but can stream movies and so forth. Further for the full functionality, they all need to be on the same network (unless you download their music). If you have a laptop and leave the home, you don't get to keep access to their music, movies, or apps on your computers and devices.
This would change that. Now what happens to previously downloaded content if their account changes the card from the one everyone is supposed to use to a different one, I don't know. It will be interesting to test. Also in fine print, Apple says not all purchases will be supported - that may simply be the opt-in part.
Because of you need 4-6 copies of an App in your house, you'll only purchase apps that allow the sharing. As in you'll either get 1 sale with sharing on, or zero sales with it off as people will refuse to pay for the app 4 plus times over in the same house.
Say you have an iPad and two kids each with an iPad. If you want an App for the 2 kids, you'll chose the sharing enabled ones so you don't have to pay 2x for it. Since kids don't have a credit cards, it's all on your card.
In many scenarios just like the one I mentioned, with this sharing, there was never 6 potential sales there. Just someone who will bypass your app and not download it simply because your competition has sharing enabled.
Are you being serious, how many copies of a CD/DVD/Newspaper/Magazine do you buy in your household? 1? I thought so...
No they won't. They will just choose whatever app is the most popular and that everyone else is already using.
Besides, almost every app is on a freemium model already, so people will download the free app to multiple devices but will have to make individual IAPs. By then, they already have the app, so this will not impact the decision of most people.
Did you consider those developers who may depend on each person using his app to pay for it so that he can make ends meet. Family Sharing is great for Apple it has crates of dollars sitting in banks around the world. For many developers every dollar counts.
That's true. Just use the same Apple ID, and it always works. So why would we change that habit and start using family sharing? Seems to be an iOS 8 feature I'm never going to use.
You make a good point but look at the financial condition of the mentioned industries. Developers are little guys not big conglomerates. They are not designing software just to make people happy. Developers are trying to make a living just like the rest of us. I don't know what your job entails but I betting you expect to be paid.
I think this feature could be great and I hope the developers will participate. I have an iMac, an ipad, and an iPhone. They are all on my Apple ID with my credit card. My wife has a Mac air and an iPhone. I set those up with my Apple ID so that everything would work together. She complains about it because it does cause some few conflicts on occasion. One is with keychain since it now stores two passwords for Facebook, yelp, etc., it means that when I go into one of these websites i sometimes get logged in under her account. I am hoping that by going to this new feature and moving her to her own Apple ID, we will be able to share content and apps, but resolve some of the collisions we are currently facing.
To developers out there - remember that I do have choices for almost every app. I have no issues paying if it is a good app, but paying twice has never been an option and never will be. Join in or lose buyers.
To developers out there - remember that I do have choices for almost every app. I have no issues paying if it is a good app, but paying twice has never been an option and never will be. Join in or lose buyers.
Where do you see this? Or are you just pulling stuff out of your ass?
Family Share is an OPTION for Publishers. Even the Family Share description page says down at the bottom
http://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/family-sharing/?cid=wwa-us-kwg-features-com
I just don't see many premium app publishers turning this option on out of fear of possible lost revenue.
Sure everyone can log into the same account now but we all know what a PITA that is and I know many many people who have seperate accounts because they dont want their kids crap to get mixed in their their crap. Not to mention the problems with other apps such as Find my iPhone because most people don't know how to configure their accounts properly.
The Family Share that Tim talked about is not what you are getting when you add the asterisk (*) into the mix.
Again I don't see a lot of companies looking to profit opting in to give their apps away when there is a chance that a family member would purchase it.
From the letter to Devs:
"To make your apps available as part of Family Sharing, agree to the updated iOS Paid Applications and/or Mac Paid Applications agreement in Contracts, Tax, and Banking on iTunes Connect. To ensure that Family Sharing is also enabled for previously purchased apps, leave the appropriate checkbox selected on the agreements page."
Such agreements are mandatory if you want to remain a Dev with apps on the store, so going forward it is required. Looking back it's optional FOR NOW. This could always change at some point. Please remember, it's Apple's sand box- they make the rules.
Home sharing lets you share content across different devices using the same apple id. Family sharing lets you share content across 6 different apple id's. it's quite different.
The new feature this adds for me is my kid does not have to stand in front of me and ask me to input my password.
The other benefit might be that after I input my password, the account is able to continue to download additional items. Maybe there will be a request message sent each time an app is attempted to be downloaded.
We all have separate iCloud accounts, just share the same iTunes account.
The other benefit might be that after I input my password, the account is able to continue to download additional items. Maybe there will be a request message sent each time an app is attempted to be downloaded.
We all have separate iCloud accounts, just share the same iTunes account.