

Apple says no Internet for those younger than 17 - ajaimk
http://www.ajaimk.com/2010/06/05/apple-says-no-internet-for-those-younger-than-17/

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derefr
Safari _would_ have these same warnings if it was distributed through the App
Store. It's just that people expect their phone to come with a web browser.

The 17+ warning is just that—a warning, an indemnificatory disclaimer against
lawsuits by angry parents—and only takes effect as a restriction if you switch
on parental controls, which also, indeed, exist for Safari itself.

(The "game" part is indeed an oversight—I imagine Apple just never considered
that they could be publishing anything other than games that had "mature
themes", seeing as 99% of Apps are things like invoice trackers and color
swatch wheels, and don't really have "themes" of any kind.)

~~~
spicyj
Actually, I believe that the store asks you "By clicking OK, you agree that
you are at least 17 years old." or something like that and if you click
Cancel, it won't download.

~~~
ajg1977
This is only true if your device does not have parental restrictions set. If
it does and 17+ apps are restricted, you won't even get that far.

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tlrobinson
This is not at all surprising. iPhone allows parents to enable restrictions on
purchasing application that can access adult content, which of course a
generic web browser can. They can also restrict access to the built-in Safari
browser.

It's a much better solution than back when they were outright rejecting any
application that could access arbitrary content on the internet.

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ugh
I guess this is what Gruber means when he says that iPhone critics have seldom
let facts get in their way. [1]

Ever heard of parental controls? That’s what this is for.

[1] <http://daringfireball.net/2010/06/iphone_os_too_closed>

~~~
papachito
Forbidding teens to get access to the internet is considered good parenting
now?

~~~
ugh
So, if I understand you correctly, Apple should decide what constitutes good
parenting?

More fine-grained parental controls would certainly be nice. But what exactly
is your hypothesis here? Apple wants to force parents to submit to their ideas
of parenting through their design of the parental controls feature on the
iPhone? That seems like a pretty stupid hypothesis to me.

It’s not that the parental controls feature is unworthy of discussion. I don’t
think it’s particularly well designed. It just seems so completely absurd and
ridiculous to claim that bad design must imply that Apple doesn’t want
teenagers to surf the web. I’m utterly confused as to how a story like this
can get more than forty upvotes on HN.

~~~
papachito
> So, if I understand you correctly, Apple should decide what constitutes good
> parenting?

It looks like they do actually, forbidding +17 year old to access the web.

> It just seems so completely absurd and ridiculous to claim that bad design
> must imply that Apple doesn’t want teenagers to surf the web.

How is that bad design? It clearly states that you must be more than 17 year
old to access the web.

~~~
ugh
You can download this app no matter how old you are. It will show a warning
dialog but you can just dismiss that and download anyway.

This age limit only matters if parental controls are enabled. You can then
pick which apps can be used, based on their age limit (all of them, only 17+,
…). Some OS apps like Safari get extra switches – you can explicitly decide
whether Safari and a few other things can be used or not.

Age limits are not always the best solution, though (what some parents deem
appropriate, others do not). That’s why I think the parental controls are
badly designed. Ideally you would get a switch for every app, so that you can
override the age based defaults. Such a list would still be pretty horrible
from a UI point of view – all your apps replicated in one unstructured list –
that’s probably why Apple doesn’t do it. Or maybe they just had no time to
implement that feature, yet. Either way, it’s no big deal.

How would you rate a browser, know that you know how the iPhone’s parental
controls work? You can access content with it that a vast majority of parents
would consider 17+.

(By the way, how do parental controls work on Android? I’m really curious!)

~~~
papachito
> This age limit only matters if parental controls are enabled. You can then
> pick which apps can be used, based on their age limit (all of them, only
> 17+, …). Some OS apps like Safari get extra switches – you can explicitly
> decide whether Safari and a few other things can be used or not.

Thanks I know how it works, no matter how you put it, limiting browsing the
net to +17 year old is ridiculous and actually bad, the internet is the
greatest resource for students.

> By the way, how do parental controls work on Android? I’m really curious!

There is none, and that's the way it should be, parental control should be
done by... parents, not Steve Jobs. If you have porn addictions like this guy
you can still remove the browser, youtube and marketplace apps though:
[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?tid=46ddfa061bbed38b&hl=en)

Edit: parental control is password protected on the iPhone, but it can be
undone by a reset of the phone, which any kid can do, so it's pretty useless
anyway.

~~~
masklinn
> There is none, and that's the way it should be, parental control should be
> done by... parents, not Steve Jobs.

Parental control is done by parents, they're merely given tools. If parents
don't want those tools, they can just opt not to use them.

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ErrantX
This is just poor wording of an important legal point; or, rather, "Apple are
not responsible for what your kids browse for on their phone".

Unfortunately we live in a world where a small subset of people will seize on
any opportunity to blame a company for some sort of indiscretion - in this
case, letting their kids access porn (or whatever).

It's just legal ass covering which >99% of people, sensibly, ignore.

No news here.

EDIT: in iTunes I now see "application" not "game". So either they fixed it or
it was a bug for some users.

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WiseWeasel
All App Store apps that access user-generated content or browse the internet
get this warning. Opera isn't being singled out. Nothing to see here.

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pavelludiq
I always found the idea of parental control of media to be rather badly
thought out. What i mean is that my development as a young teen was greatly
influenced by my access to violent and sexual music, movies and other content
unsuitable for my age group, and yes, even pornography. I consider all of it
to be beneficial, because it led to my current development as a person, and
even though i don't conciser myself perfect, im quite happy with how I've
turned out. Im not a parent but I'd guess that artificial restrictions on
technology(which are also easily circumvented) are no substitute for good
parenting.

~~~
jsz0
I think parental controls are more about the parent(s) feeling good about
themselves. Most probably realize they can't stop their kids from seeing this
stuff one way or another but if they are proactive and enable parental
controls they can feel like they did everything possible to prevent it.

~~~
papachito
Really? Enabling parent control on the iPhone blocks both Safari and Opera
which means no access to wikipedia and other amazing sources of education just
because they may stumble on porn which can be found everywhere anyway? There's
nothing to feel good about this. In the meantime, I guess the iFart app is not
forbidden, it looks more like "dumbing down kids" than "parental control" to
me.

~~~
kellishaver
It's not about "dumbing down" kids at all. How many kids are accessing the
internet exclusively via an iphone? It's a lot harder to monitor internet
usage on a 3.5in screen that can be held in the hand than it is, say, a 17in
monitor in the living room. I'm all for letting kids have internet access. I'm
also all for monitoring it. You can't do that effectively with an iphone.
Sure, kids should have access to the internet, but they don't need it on every
single freaking device under the sun.

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w33dkid
So that next generation of Wozniacs would never be produced.

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gte910h
This is just a hack to make parents able to prevent kids from seeing porn.

It's likely opera's idea

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jacquesm
I doubt this is intentional, probably just some oversight.

If it _is_ intentional they're just dumb.

~~~
masklinn
It is entirely intentional. Likewise, parents can lock access to Safari via
the parental controls. I utterly fail to see what's abnormal about it, let
alone dumb.

~~~
papachito
It's dumb because a web browser should not be considered as something allowed
only to people of +17 year old.

