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> That's not how it works, unless you control your partner's Apple ID and you lie about their DOB when you create their account. The most annoying thing about
by dumpsterdiver 5y ago
> That's not how it works, unless you control your partner's Apple ID and you lie about their DOB when you create their account.
The most annoying thing about Apple Family sharing is that in order to create accounts for people you must specify that they are under 13 (source: https://www.apple.com/lae/family-sharing https://www.apple.com/lae/family-sharing) - otherwise the only other option is for your "family member" to link their account to the Apple Family which is under your purview, which understandably many people might be hesitant to do because of privacy concerns (as opposed to logging into the child account on a Windows computer exclusively to listen to Apple Music - which doesn't tie the entire machine to that Apple ID as long as it's not a mac).
And so in my case, I have zero actual family members in my Apple Family (they're more interested in my Netflix family account). It begs the question, why does Apple insist on having people be family members in order to share Apple Music? We have five slots to share, and they get our money either way. They also don't let you remove family members - which may be the original intent for insisting on such a ridiculous thing - as if they're trying to take the moral high ground and guilt trip us for disowning a family member when in fact it simply benefits them when a fallout occurs between non-family members, because there's a good chance that the person in question will stop using the service due to privacy concerns, and that's less traffic for Apple.
It's actually kind of humorous to think that I still have my ex-ex-ex-girlfriend in my Apple Family account, and according to Apple she's 11 now (in reality, she's in her 30s). I can't remove her until another 7 years pass (and even then it’s questionable if they’ll allow it, because they might insist that I can’t divorce my “children”). And honestly, at this point I wouldn’t even remove her if I could, she has a newborn baby and a partner now, and I’m happy to provide that account, and I still have two unused slots to give away. I’ve never been the type of person who has a lot of friends, I have a few friends, and one girlfriend at a time. But the thing is she’s never been a music person and I assume that she isn’t even using it - and so even if I made a new best friend or two and reached out to her to let her know that I wanted to add them, Apple currently wouldn’t let me remove her to make room for those theoretical friends. While I'm a big fan of Apple hardware, it really bothers me that a group of sleazy people sat around a table trying to figure out how to maximize income and minimize network traffic, and this is what they came up with.
- tekknik 5y agoDid you ever stop to realize if licensing has anything to do with this? You also lied about someones age when creating their Apple account and continue to provide access to someone outside your family. Call them, and remove them, and then likely they'll ban you for violating the ToS
- dumpsterdiver 5y agoCurious, how would licensing affect this? Would the assumption be that everyone resides under the same roof? Because that's not a requirement for being in a family.
- tekknik 5y agoNo, generally to license content you pay a fee per screen in this case as well as a fee per viewer. In the case of families this is calculated by the amount of people in the account. They don’t charge your costs per person, they charge a flat rate based on the maximum number of people you can add to your account. So doing it this way they’re not circumventing the per device fee they are charged that you’re trying to get them to pay for you for free.
- dumpsterdiver 5y ago> They don’t charge your costs per person, they charge a flat rate based on the maximum number of people you can add to your account. So doing it this way they’re not circumventing the per device fee they are charged that you’re trying to get them to pay for you for free. I'm confused, how am I trying to get them to provide anything for free? I pay for the service, and that service has a limited number of account slots, and the people using those slots have their own devices. What am I missing? Are you under the assumption that child accounts don't occupy a slot, and are free-riding? If so, that's not the case. Child accounts occupy a slot all the same, the only difference is that by providing child accounts to my adult friends, they aren't required to link their existing Apple accounts to the service that's under my control.