Apple Cracks Down on Phone Usage Apps
By Tonieann Harvey
Jack Nicas published an article in the New York Times titled “Apple Cracks Down on Apps That Fight iPhone Addiction” detailing how developers with screen-time tracking apps were finding themselves kicked out of the App Store.
However, the article seemed more misleading to what Apples intentions are.
The first thing to take note of is the tone of the article, which seemed very controversial and implied that Apple was kicking out apps designed to compete with the company’s own software.
The article included a short response from Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing, without including the extended version of Apple’s underlying reason for them to kick these apps off the app store.
Parents complained in early 2018 about their children being addicted to their iPhones. Apple took this into consideration and included a new feature.
Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said at a conference this month that Apple had added screen-time tools to help people monitor and manage their phone use.
“We don’t want people using their phones all the time,” he said. “This has never been an objective for us.”
Even though Apple says that less screen time is the motive for their new feature, why is it that they are pulling the plug on similar apps or asking them to change their features to make them less effective as there’s?
They are abusing their competitors. Apple told the companies that their apps violated App Store rules, like enabling one iPhone to control another, although it had allowed such practices for years and had approved hundreds of versions of their apps.
If this is there way of treating all apps equally even though there is competition, they are failing from the business perspective.
