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The makers of the most-rated iPhone wellness app have criticized Apple for removing it from the App Store. And he calls Apple's explanation for this "misleading" action.
They are nice.
As you may have seen, the New York Times recently released an explosive story, too familiar to those following Apple: After releasing its own digital wellness feature on iOS, Apple has begun to remove systematically established digital wellness apps from its App Store. . It's a classic Apple strategy to eliminate competition to protect its own products and services.
Apple responded to the report by stating that the Times was ignoring an important detail: the digital wellness apps it had removed were using mobile device management (MDM) technologies, which Apple says are reserved for consumers. corporate clients. This violated its terms of service and user privacy, Apple said.
It turns out that Apple's statement is misleading and that all digital wellness apps removed from the Store are not using MDM technologies. But now, makers of the OurPact mobile application – which uses MDM – are accusing Apple of new abuses.
"Apple's statement is misleading and precludes a constructive conversation about the future of parental controls on iOS," the firm notes in a blog post. "We want to seize the opportunity to make things clear on MDM for our loyal users and the many families looking for solutions to guide healthy digital habits. We hope that Apple will work with developers in this space so that families can continue to choose from a wide range of parental controls. "
OurPact has been using MDN ever since its launch in 2012, and Apple has never complained about its use before launching its own digital wellness feature on iOS in 2018. Apple itself has extended the MDM to include the Use by children and teachers in schools, notes OurPact.
"The main functionality of OurPact would not be possible without the use of MDM," OurPact explains. "This is the only API available for the Apple platform that allows remote management of apps and features on children's devices. We have also been transparent about our use of this technology since the beginning and have documented its use in our submissions to the App Store. "
But now, Apple says its MDM technology, used by millions of users, is sort of a risk to privacy and can be used by hackers to steal personal information while it's designed specifically to prevent these problems. Unlike Apple's public statements on MDM, this technology can not view personal data and can not transmit it to OurPact or any other party. How do we know it? That's what Apple's documentation says.
In other words, Apple is now lying about why it has removed the digital wellness apps from the Store.
He also lies on other facts of this episode. "Apple's public statement said they gave developers 30 days to modify their applications according to their guidelines, even if they do not mention MDM," OurPact says. "We have not received any notifications before the OurPact kids app is removed by Apple. Most importantly, no company offering a parental control app can remove the MDM feature while retaining a viable product. "
Apple not only ignored OurPact's dialogue requests, it simply refused to discuss the issue.
"Since there are no privacy issues with properly controlled MDM applications such as OurPact on the App Store, we humbly request that we be reinstated and allowed to continue to provide our millions of users the service they love and depend on, "concludes the company. "We remain committed to solving this problem and we beg Apple to recognize that they have the responsibility to support and encourage the growth of this sector."
Apple is a great company. That's the story, anyway.
Tagged with Digital Wellbeing
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