Let’s say you have a spouse and between zero and four children. If that’s you, iOS 8 has a fantastic new feature, called Family Sharing, that will make your life easier.
Family Sharing is a new way to bring harmony to your family’s digital life. Up to six people in your family can share purchases from iTunes, iBooks, and the App Store without sharing accounts. Pay for family purchases with the same credit card and approve kids’ spending right from a parent’s device. Easily share photos, a family calendar, and more to help keep everyone connected.
Once you set up Family Sharing, family members get immediate access to each other’s music, movies, TV shows, books, and apps. Download what you want with a tap anytime you like. All without having to share an Apple ID or passwords.
This addresses what has become a bit of a headache for me. My wife and kids all have their own devices and their own taste in music, apps, movies, etc. They also each have their own Apple ID. Sharing media between our group requires a fair amount of hand work. Family Sharing just made the process completely seamless.
Home run, Apple. Big thanks.
For me, this is one of the big QoL things they announced. Media sharing is a big deal… although there’s a big “*Not all purchases are eligible for Family Sharing” that needs clearing up for it to be a home run.
The big catch with Family Sharing is the requirement for all the Apple ID’s in the family group to have to same credit card for billing. That means for all the content purchased prior to Family Sharing on different cards, that content may not be shared within the group.
That looks like the start of something awesome.
I’m perplexed about this- one of the touted features is family calendars whis iOS is perfectly capable of doing via shared calendar already. So what is the difference here?
Automatic set-up and configuration for it instead of having to create a shared calendar, then invite each person?
They announced this as part of iOS 8’s demo…but what if I have a daughter with a Mac (she has a credit cardless iTunes account but no iCloud account) but no mobile device? If I put my credit card onto her account, can things like Mac App Store purchases and iTunes Store purchases done on her computer be pulled in to this arrangement?
Are you sure about that? I don’t see any information on prior purchased content being restricted.
I obviously don’t know for sure, but my guess is that if you change your family Apple IDs to all have the same credit card, you will be able to set up family sharing and still have access to prior purchases. I suspect that this is a feature to stop friends from becoming “family sharers”. You may trust a friend enough to share media, but most people don’t trust friends enough to give them access to their credit card.
That’s probably why there’s not any literature on it yet. There’s an asterisk on the Family Sharing page, that concludes: “*Not all purchases are eligible for Family Sharing.”
This is a pretty telling disclaimer that suggests, in a gentle way, once families start getting confused as to why one of those paid-for apps isn’t showing up because it was purchased under a different card, you can’t have everything.
I agree … creating a shared calendar currently is pretty easy for computer savvy people, but my guess is that 99% of iOS users don’t even know that it is possible. This gets the feature out there and makes it very easy to use.
I suspect that all existing purchases will continue to be associated with that account, and that it will be sharable. Family accounts just need to all use the same credit card in order to be connected with each other.
This could be another shot across the Google bow. Google Calendar is almost a de facto for my non-tech friends. This removes one need to start a Google Calendar.
shotsfired
theres really no way of knowing how theyre going to deal w/ legacy purchases.
So if someone’s purchased $6k worth of songs, movies, books and apps over the course of the last five years, when iOS 8 rolls around do you honestly think that’s a great way of handling things?
You could pretty much have all your friends cycle in and out of your Family, give them your credit card number, and let them go to town.
Not too favorable for Apple I’m afraid.
I’m sure all that will come out in the wash. What I mean is, is this mobile-only? It references the App Store but not the Mac App Store…will this extend to Mac or just be limited to iOS? I will be very interested to see.
the Family Sharing feature is not a OS X feature, it’s a iOS 8 feature that applies to only iOS devices. So Mac Store purchases are not included.
I read it, but not all that closely. I could see it was listed with iOS 8 and not OS X, which was a tell to begin with. But this doesn’t make sense. If part of the feature is to let kids make purchases but to filter those purchases through parental permission…then how is this hole left open? If a child can’t download content via his phone that’s great, but if he can download the same content via his Mac and then sync, then what’s the point? And once his account has my credit card number, what is preventing that card from being used to download Mac apple, unsupervised?
I see the point you’re trying to make, but there is no ignoring that mobile is where it’s at, and this feature makes the most sense among iOS devices. It’s what people spend the most time with, where they spend their money, and it’s what parents buy their kids first before they shell out money for a higher priced laptop or computer.
If you’d like to keep tabs on purchases made on the computer through the iTunes App Store, there is an ability to set up an iTunes Allowance where you can “gift” her Apple ID a certain amount of money to spend (the Mac App Store doesn’t offer this).
But the main thing here is obviously the credit card number. If it’s not stored in the Apple ID through iTunes on the computer, then he or she cannot download content willingly. If it’s set up in Family Sharing on iOS devices, then you get to approve purchases.
Been thinking about this a couple of days, and I’m probably just rationalizing being grumpy about it, but…that most people spend time on iOS devices is a dodge, if that’s Apple’s take. They just announced Yosemite as well, tightened the integration between that and iOS. And their message in other areas is “your content in the cloud, equally accessible from all your devices”. Thus Photos (with a promised Photos app for OS X coming) and Handoff and the extensive cross-integration of iWork apps.
Though iOS apps only work on iOS devices and Mac Apps only work on Mac devices, they are purchased with the same account. This single account spans both worlds…it should work similarly in both worlds.
Perhaps this is merely ‘phase 1’ material, about it only being through iOS devices and that future integration between Macs will be included at some point down the road. There’s a couple of things I’m thinking about…
Apple would lose far more money in the Mac App Store since the median price of apps is probably much higher compared to iTunes. So you just bought a copy of Final Cut for $300 and you’d like to share it with the rest of the fam? Sure! That’s a problem for Apple, and borderline piracy given Apple’s somewhat lax stance [compared to other major software makers] on its software being comfortably exchanged between a clever band of future filmmakers.
Family Sharing on iOS appeals to an ideal family more so than on Mac. Dad and mom have both, kids and teenagers have iPads, iPods and/or iPhones and they are all using iTunes together. Sure some of the teenagers might have laptops but what apps are they buying?
Family Sharing is an integration feature made by Apple to appease both Apple users and potential Apple users. It’s a feature that attracts, yet doesn’t directly yield revenue outright. They are being both nice to include it for iOS users, and also smart for reassuring families that they can stay connected in more ways than one. Every piece of media “shared” is less made on iTunes, a proverbial ‘Buy 1 get 5 free’ coupon that Apple is handing out to bring more people into its store. Other companies with ecosystems are more than welcome to do the same, but I doubt they have the rainy day cushion that Apple does.
Family Sharing is a bit misleading in its ‘package deal’ appearance. On its information page it touts features as being part of Family Sharing when they are merely Find My Friends and Find my Phone. Which, don’t get me wrong, but the presentation of it being coupled together [as “Famly Sharing”] is a bit outside of the way they are portraying the integration to be. I’m afraid it’s just one of those occasions where they needed more meat to fill in the space and threw those apps in there for good measure. But I’m sure families see that and they see the value as a whole.
I love to see the cross platform integration because our lives are not as cut and dry as our manufactured hardware devices, but the combination of both the software and hardware needs to needs to be flexible, catering, beneficial yet invisible. I believe they are making admirable steps, if by smaller bites than what the buying public demands.
Though the points you’ve made are fine and logical, I think this leaves me on the outside of this feature looking in for now.
actually, if I may shed some light on this. As I am a dev. with a dev. account. I’m currently testing “Family Sharing” between myself, wife, sister in-law, and a test account I created some years back. I can in fact confirm that I have access to all purchases on all accounts new or old and we have used different cards to purchase said items. Yes, once family sharing is setup, just one card will be used for all accounts. Still, I have access to all apps, movies, tv show etc (and the library is extensive) from every account I have under “Family Sharing”. Furthermore, whats cool is that I can easily change what card I want to use for the entire family right it the iCloud settings section on my iOS device.
As for the disclaimer Not all purchases are eligible for Family Sharing – This is because of “In-App Purchases” mainly. It’s up to the dev’s of those Apps to allow those purchases to be shared across the family as well. The apps, books, movies, shows, and whatever… it’s all good.
What if in a family you don’t want ALL the content to be shared? Especially if you have younger kids and not all the content may be appropriate for them