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Comment by randomsearch | Hacker News Reader

Sharing phones seems like an absolutely terrible idea. It goes against the simplicity and good design that Apple pursue. I can think of tons of problems with this: being out of signal; having biometric data in cloud; running face matching across huge databases where false positives are extremely likely; interrupted signal where things are corrupt; designing efficient caching algorithms; sharing onboard storage with multiple users; security properties protecting that data...

Personal devices are personal for a reason. Simple, elegant, effective. Expensive, yes... but a better solution is to buy your kids cheaper phones.

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> seems like an absolutely terrible idea

Literally every single person in the world with an iPhone and young children wants this feature.

I'm guessing based on your proposed solution, you probably don't have kids? They don't want their cheaper phone; they want your phone.

> They don't want their cheaper phone; they want your phone

What they want isn't relevant. Maybe try some parenting.

> Literally

I literally think you don't know what that word means.

Edit: David Cross explains this point better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ly1UTgiBXM

From the OED:

  Literally (informal): Used for emphasis while not being literally true.

It means figuratively ;-)

It literally doesn't :)

It's literally been used that way for centuries [0].

Consider:

1. It's been used like this for centuries

2. By well-known writers including Dickens, Twain, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Brontë

3. The definition of such usage is included in all major dictionaries

4. It's incredibly common in real-life use of the language

To somehow insist that it doesn't mean that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, requires extraordinary feats of denial.

0: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-lite...

I was so happy when I discovered guided access.... until I realized you can still get it other apps by sharing :/

If Android has it, do you want it enough to switch platforms? Or is Apple betting that, in general, people will just buy more devices?

I'd guess most people hand down their old phone to their kids and then carry that for occasions where they might need them (distraction while waiting somewhere, etc). I don't give my phone to my kids otherwise because I don't want them to drop it and break the screen.

(I'm an iPhone user and have kids.)

I do indeed 'solve' this issue by buying more devices, which is what Apple wants and is a disincentive to them fixing the core issue, so yeah, I'm contributing to the problem.

I used to have the big iPad Pro while my kids had the old busted iPad whatever-it-was. But they were like (to paraphrase), "Fuck you dad, that busted shit loads YouTube hella slow, we want yours!"

So I ended up with a busted old iPad in a drawer, my kids having the big iPad Pro, and I got myself the new smaller 10.5 one. They know they can't use that one, but they accept it because theirs is bigger and not noticeably slower or worse for the things they do.

Also, just to ward off more "bro, do you even parent?" comments from people with no kids: No, I don't let my kids use the iPad whenever they want. No, they don't get to watch TV and eat trash whenever they feel like it. They do chores and read books. Woo hoo.

But, anybody with kids will tell you: trying to implement a you will never, ever, under any circumstances, use my phone policy is completely insane. It will make your kids life worse, and it will make your life as a parent a LOT worse.

Oh shit, this United flight is stuck on the tarmac for an extra 180 minutes, and all our new coloring books are already done!

Buddy, I know you're tired, but this is a funeral service for good old Uncle Jesse who suddenly and tragically died, we really need you to hold it together so we can deal with your little brother who is definitely not...

(Et cetera times 1000 pls use your imagination...)

So in these instances, you really want to be able to hand your phone to your child. And if you do so, every piece of data you've stored in the cloud is at risk. And you just can't have critical business data on your phone. Which limits how useful the phone can be to you.

It's like having your own real, biological Chaos Monkey.

And it can be humorous. I laughed when my wife bought a new MacBook and during the very first 10 minutes of setting it, somehow pressed 'th' and had it auto-expand into 20 paragraphs of Japanese text. She was like, wtf, and handed me the machine... boom! Another 20 paragraphs of Japanese text (seemed to be a cooking blog post).

What I guess happened is:

1. somehow, some kid managed to copy a blog post

2. then they managed to somehow get to the "Text Expansion" settings on one of her iOS devices

3. then, they somehow managed to create a new shortcut for "th" and paste all the blog content into the shortcut expansion text area (didn't even think that was possible?)

4. the cloud did its cloud thing and now my wife can't type "the" on any of her machines

That's just a guess as to how that happened. But shit like that happens pretty regularly. The Chaos Monkeys also managed to delete my favorite photo of my wife — I only noticed because it was my favorite, so who knows how many non-favorites they've deleted. The weirdest shit shows up in my photo stream. I have thousands of notes consisting of variants of 'afhdsf8aiyfoew9ry4t340822u9rtf20悪悪悪'. And I can't find this super-super-important receipt in Evernote... another heinous data-loss Evernote bug, or.... the Monkey???

So yeah. Just because you'd like to hand your phone to your child safely does not necessarily mean you're a shitty parent.

If Apple had multi-user on iPhone, or even just a limited Guest Mode, it would get close to completely solving this problem.

Guided Access?

"But, anybody with kids will tell you: trying to implement a you will never, ever, under any circumstances, use my phone policy is completely insane. It will make your kids life worse, and it will make your life as a parent a LOT worse."

My kids (2yo and 5yo) never use my phone and I haven't noticed an issue with my insisting on that. It's likely that they're not old enough to know that the age of their devices is limiting their play so I'll grant that I avoid that issue. And my wife isn't as insistent, so will share her phone with them to keep the peace, but it doesn't seem to be that often.

Might be the ages of the kids? Maybe 5-10yo is tougher?

> Literally every single person in the world with an iPhone and young children wants this feature.

Neither of my sisters, with multiple kids, want this feature. In fact, of all the people I know with iPhones and kids, only one has ever mentioned this.

And he believes coloured TTYs are an abomination.

Well, sure, they don't know they want it.

But if you asked all parents on earth "Hey, would you like to be able to hand your kid your phone and have them be able to use some apps, but not necessarily be able to delete all your data?" I think that the positive response would get pretty close to the literal meaning of "literally all".

I have young kids (3 of them ages 2-10) and our family uses iPhones and I don't want this. Guided Access does what I need it to do. Beyond that I don't want them on my device and my wife doesn't want them on hers. For an iPad however, it might be nice.

Who said anything about biometric data in the cloud? This doesn't need to work the same way the first time you see a device as it will work the second time you see it, after having fully authenticated the first time.

So, it doesn't have to alter the security attack surface or really even a major change in the secure element.

Someone from Apple should just reach out, the design is not simple but it's absolutely workable.

Oh, forgot the biggest: battery life killer.

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