David Sparks's problems with iOS 8 Family Sharing
David Sparks’s problems with iOS 8 Family Sharing
For what it’s worth, Family Sharing has been flawless so far for our (small) family. I will elaborate on my own experiences, not with the intent of doubting the author, but just by way of adding more anecdotes into the mix, in case it helps someone in some way.
App Developers Must Opt In
Actually, the opt-in aspect only applies to app versions that were already on the App Store before Family Sharing was announced. It makes sense that Apple can’t retroactively enforce new terms on already-accepted app submissions, but they can mandate a new agreement for new submissions. Accordingly, Family Sharing is now in fact mandatory for all new apps, and for all app updates, released after that point. Thus, the number of apps on the Store that Family Sharing does not apply to is small and getting smaller every day, which is why this is unlikely to be a problem for many people.
In-App Purchases Are Not Included
Interesting. I haven’t encountered this yet, but I have no reason to doubt it.
It makes sense that consumables (fake currency, etc.) wouldn’t be applicable to Family Sharing. But I wonder if this also applies to non-consumable IAPs, such as episodic content? Perhaps it was easier just to treat all IAPs the same way. If so, that is a little disappointing.
iTunes Match Multiplied
This is just my opinion, but: The old way was broken. The new way is correct.
Call me selfish, but my music library is an extremely personal thing and it’s not meant to be shared. I am extremely picky about how it is organised, including all of the metadata such as recently played, play counts, star ratings, etc. I depend on all of these signals and I can’t abide anyone messing with them. As a result, prior to Family Sharing, other members of my family were effectively banned from enabling iTunes Match at all.
Now, they at least have the option to have a (separate) iTunes Match subscription, if they wish. Since the libraries are separate, it only makes sense that the subscription fee would also be separate.
I realise that not everyone is obsessive about metadata the way I am, but: It is hard for me to imagine an entire family of people having identical taste in music. More likely, they were using iTunes Match before as a sort of mega-library; a union of the sets of each person’s preferred music, each of which may have some amount of overlap. This may have been the most convenient option at the time, but it doesn’t really make sense conceptually. Each person should have their own separate library, containing exactly the things they want and nothing more. They may want to share certain select albums with each other, but my understanding is that this is exactly what Family Sharing provides–as long as the albums were purchased on the iTunes Store. If the need is to share non-iTunes-purchased albums, well… then it’s going to be a painful migration in the short term. But sometimes that’s the price you pay to have a better solution in the long term.
A less-snobby way of putting this is: Everyone’s needs are different. The old way didn’t work for me, and the new way does, so I’m happy about it. Any time you make a change, it’s going to break someone’s habits. That doesn’t always mean they were wrong.
Playlist Issues
I haven’t seen any playlists disappear so far.
App Update Hell
I have also been seeing the problem of apps that appear under ‘Updates’ but refuse to actually update. But it’s been happening to me ever since iOS 7 (and on iOS 8 for some time prior to me turning on Family Sharing). This leads me to believe that it is not solely caused by Family Sharing, although it is possible Family Sharing makes it worse for some people; but I haven’t personally seen that to be the case.
It is especially frustrating when I’m the developer of the app in question and I’m freaking out over why it’s not updating, post-approval. As best as I can tell, it is usually a server-side cache or CDN propagation ‘thing’ that resolves itself after a few hours. I’ve found if I just leave it alone for a day, auto-update eventually kicks in without me needing to do anything.
On the other hand, I have never seen any actual error message associated with this problem: when it does fail, the way it manifests is that tapping the ‘Update’ button simply silently fails to do anything. So maybe the problem I’m seeing is different than the one the author is seeing? The point is, at least for me, updates work most of the time, whether or not the app was a Family-Shared one, and the failure rate has not noticeably increased since enabling Family Sharing.
Personally, I had originally approached Family Sharing with a considerable amount of trepidation, but so far, I’ve only been pleasantly surprised at how easy and problem-free it has been.