Phil Schiller states that Apple is pulling third-party screen applications due to breaches of privacy, while Tony Fadell calls Screen Time "an urgent job"

Apple has consistently removed many time tracking / parental controls in the past year, resulting in a host of upset developers whose businesses have been paralyzed, and even antitrust litigation.

Apple's Phil Schiller, in an e-mail addressed to a MacRumors reader, explains that Apple uses third-party screen applications that abuse the MDM (Mobile Device Management) system to track all data and data. the activity on a device for children in order to be able to present this information to the parents who downloaded these applications. Schiller says that it is a privacy issue that can not be solved, and Apple will not reject applications using other methods than MDM.

Apple's timing of MDM abuse is far too much like launching Screen Time's Apple-specific features in iOS 12, but, realistically, Apple is not really pushing Screen Time beyond third party offers.

However, Schiller's words are nuanced. It invites developers to continue creating parental control apps that are not based on MDM profiles. The problem is that such a service results in a significantly limited user experience. The iOS app sandbox prevents a normal app from collecting phone-level data, such as applications that have been opened and their duration, or to support "idle" behaviors, such as blocking an application after a certain time.

Schiller quotes an app called Moment – Balance Screen Time as an example of great application for parents. This application relies on the daily manual capture of the battery screen by the user in order to download it on the Moment application, which uses optical character recognition to read the rows of the most used applications. This is a big hack, far from being as transparent as the official time, Screen Time, which always runs in the background.

At the end of the e-mail, Schiller says:

Protecting the privacy and security of users is paramount in the Apple ecosystem and we have important guidelines on the App Store to prohibit applications that may pose a threat to the security and privacy of consumers. We will continue to provide features, such as ScreenTime, designed to help parents manage their children's access to technology, and we will work with developers to bring many exciting applications to the App Store for these uses. using safe and private technologies for us and our users. the children.

To allow third-party applications to offer the same type of functionality as Screen Time, Apple should offer an iOS API framework that allows third-party applications to read device logs, time spent in apps, number of notifications, number of collections, etc. The use of this structure would be framed by the standard iOS privacy permissions system, a Localization Services dialog box, requiring the user to explicitly allow access to the site. third-party application to obtain this information.

This is perhaps what Schiller refers to when he says "we will work with developers to offer many interesting applications on the App Store for these uses, using safe and private technologies for us and our children" . However, officially, Apple has not announced such features yet.

In the midst of this debacle, former Apple executive Tony Fadell tweeted about the state of Screen Time on Apple's platforms, calling the feature "urgent work." Fadell also wants Apple to release a sanctioned API for access to digital health data.

2 / Apple's screen time still has many holes and gaps. Their v1.0 solution was an urgent job and its use was not very intuitive. Apple should create real APIs for Screen Time so that "privacy" concerns are taken into account instead of limiting the choices of users of the App Store. https://t.co/rGRwB6HT4r

– Tony Fadell (@tfadell) April 28, 2019

9to5Mac had previously announced that Apple would use Screen Time on macOS with 10.15, the next version of Apple's desktop operating system to be announced at WWDC in June.