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by grawprog 2494 days ago
>Not because they had to switch to another app to reach him, but "because he was on Android and turned the thread green" (sic).

That's a sneaky odd bit of social engineering. Wonder how many iphone sales they've actually gotten because of this.
1 comments
asclepi 2494 days ago
83% of US teens have an iPhone according to Piper Jaffray in April 2019 [1].

That number is biased, however, as 1) it's solely based on a survey done in high schools, and not every teen will feel comfortable admitting they have something else than an iPhone 2) the surveys are performed by DECA Inc. which is more affiliated with private schools and public high schools in affluent neighborhoods.

Still, I estimate that about 3 in 4 teens (and increasing) have an iPhone, either new or a model that was previously used by a parent who bought a new one. That's huge, and iMessage plays a very big role in that.

[1] https://www.ped30.com/2019/04/08/apple-piper-jaffray-genz/

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rootusrootus 2494 days ago
I can't speak for anyone else, but my kids are likely to end up with iPhones at some point (the oldest is 9, so not anytime soon) because Apple's child/family controls for iOS, while far from perfect, are miles ahead of anything I can find on any Android devices. So now they have iPads, and the ecosystem just works for us so it will be natural for them to stay within it when they graduate to phones.
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viraptor 2494 days ago
What's available in iOS but not Android? From my experience they're pretty close, but I may be missing something.
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rootusrootus 2494 days ago
Purchase controls for TV, movies, apps, etc, which all actually work, screen time controls, time-of-day control, web site limits, etc. Along with reporting functionality and integration with parents' phones for ad hoc approvals and time extensions.

I haven't found anything on Android that allowed me age-appropriate fine-grain controls that didn't require exceptions like turning the entire rule off just to allow a single purchase, or having the same functionality controlled in two or three different overlapping spots, etc.

If you really want to see how bad it can possibly get, take a peek at Amazon's Fire Tablet parental controls. Those take the cake for opaque settings that sometimes do what they say, sometimes much more, sometimes nothing.

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tomatocracy 2494 days ago
The most infuriating thing about Android/Google Play from this perspective is that there's no way to prevent a child from installing literally any and every free app which has the lowest rating.

On iOS you can disable installing apps, uninstalling apps, updating apps or disable the app store completely using Screen Time and before that you could (and still can) require a password/fingerprint/face ID for any app install including free.

It would take almost no effort from Google's part to replicate the last of these (add an option requiring a password to install any app, even free with lowest rating) but they seem to be unwilling to do so.

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viraptor 2494 days ago
Huh? This seems to disagree: https://support.google.com/families/answer/7039872 - you can set approvals for both paid and free apps.
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Mirioron 2494 days ago
What are the numbers like in the rest of the world though?
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