Parental Controls bug in Mountain Lion 10.8.2

Apple has definitely lost some credibility over this debacle.

One of the main selling points I have been making to get people to switch from Windows to Mac has been the incredible parental controls. Unfortunately, at the moment, I couldn't recommend Apple's parental controls to anyone. Now I have to tell parents there are no parental controls on Macs and not to buy a Mac until Apple fixes the problem. If this isn't resolved quickly, Apple will lose money for sure. I would like to see an acknowledgement from Apple indicating they are aware of the problem and plan a quick fix.

Mike

This problem has crippled our elementary age child's access to SmartMusic.com. Every time SmartMusic.com is started from an account with Parental Control, it says access to https://gradebook.smartmusic.com has been blocked. I've allowed it over and over and over again, and it shows in the list of allowed sites, but is still blocked.

Having the same problem, parental controls are on but web site access is unrestricted. Any website with HTTPS in it is restricted, including google, (and since the search bar and the website address bar are now the same, I can't type in websites either). This bug severely cripples any use of safari, and using alternative browsers like firefox or chrome has the same results.

Only found out about this now. This is really a major, major problem in our organization since all the user accounts are restricted for other features, not the internet access, so I can't just simply disable it for everybody without causing some major IT nightmares. And of course, we can't have somebody go around and keep typing in Admin authorization for every . friggin . secure connection for every user.

What is the point of blocking things anyway when UNRESTRICTED is checked: it means unrestricted, no matter if encrypted or not, no need to check it anyway!!!

How could anybody make such a major change to an essential user component in a minor x.x.2 update ?!? I hope somebody will figure out a terminal hack, changing a system variable or a plist hack or whatever.

If they really want to keep this bleeping method DESPITE the "unrestricted access" being allowed, then just add a separate checkbox that says "Allow encrypted connections" so administrators can decide themselves what's acceptable or not!

Apple please fix this problem, or publish a workaround. This is causing my entire family tremendous inconvenience. Thank you.

Am another effected parent. Just had it on to control time but 10.8.2 has the issue whether site controls are enabled or not.

Cannot get any access becasue adding sites has no effect. They just end up in the list multiple times.

Great point about it being a minor update which shouldn't destroy a major feature of the OS. I can't imagine this is anything more than an error or a bug. Regardless, it is a major problem that needs to be acknowledged and fixed by Apple ASAP.

Same problem.

Also when limiting applications, the list shows duplicated entries. Even triplicated.

But it doens't works anyway..

I can only agree with sa_admin: Why did they not leave "unrestriced" just what it means - really unrestricted - like it always has been. Maybe add another checkbox futher down like "restrict access to SSL encrypted sites" if that seems to be the most dangerous threat flavor of the month? There is no point in granting parental controls, when at the same time Apple overrules the decision parents make.

And what's the hurry in churning out these little updates with feature changes anyways? These tiny in-between updates should fix old bugs and stabilize the system, not introduce new features and introduce new bugs. New features should be reserved for major releases, not more than once a year.

Before an update is released to the public, they should give it to their 60.000 staff for testing, for at least a week or two, and surely there must be some parents among them, that could have picked up this current bug.

We want to believe that we can safely click "yes" to all updates as they come in from Apple, instead of manually holding back, waiting, and observing the forums for bug reports. What a nightmare! We don't like doing that sort of thing, and that is why many of us have been using Macintosh ever since it came out.

Don't let us down, Apple. It would be nice to read a reply from somebody at Apple in this discussion.

This is worst update ever apple has lost it stop counting your money and write better software . This is more like windows than osx wish i never left snow leopard.

Problem solved for me!

Since there doesn't seem to be any way to fix this on 10.8.2, I simply re-installed 10.8 on the affected Mac. I then applied the 10.8.1 updater, and ow I'm back to 10.8.1 and all is well with parental controls.

Totalmente de acuerdo con "sa_admin", en nuestra empresa tenemos el mismo problema, con el añadido que estamos justo a mitad de instalar 75 MacMini con ML. Decidimos actualizar a 10.8.2. porque algunos en 10.8.1. se quedaban congelados y teníamos que parar de botón (como en Windwos). No sabemos nada de Apple, si lo va a arreglar o no.

Por favor, como dice "cinhaus" ¿podría alguién de Apple decir algo? parea saber que debemos hacer, si esperar o ....

It is great you can actually even switch it off. In the administrative mode, when I get to Accounts and try to even click on my child's account, the spinning circle (mouse) comes on for a while, nothing happens, and the it crashes the system and a pop up window with the error is show - SEND TO APPLE.

its ridiculous that this upgrade caused so much problem on an otherwise fully functional featur that works great. Its now back to me granting my administrative login to my daugther and taking a table timer to set up the time that she is allowed on my account.

Maybe Apple is more concerned that Samsung is kicking their butt with the me-too iPhone 5 to bother about solving the OSX problems...

You may think this but parental controls has been broken in someway since 10.8 (you just may not have noticed it). For me this all started with upgrading my daughters Macs to 10.8. I noticed that the Mac App Store would not work. Interestingly iMessage disconnected whenever the Mac App Store was running. No problem since they did not really need Mac App Store. Then they started complaining that YouTube did not work, ABC did not work and so on. I eventually had to disable parent controls for their Macs. No problem since it was summer. Now they are back at school this has become a problem. 10.8.1 went by with no fix for the problem. 10.8.2 claims to fix the problem and indeed it did, you can now use Mac App Store with a parentally controlled account but now no https site works! Great fix Apple. Fix one bug and create a bigger bug. As a developer I understand bugs happen but this entire affair screams to me NO TESTING. I can only conclude that there is no team assigned to at least verify that parental controls is working let alone add new features to it. Come on Apple, this is an important enough feature to most parents with Macs to warrant at least some basic support.

Unless we hear from Apple soon, it appears that the simplest solution is just reinstalling OSX 10.8, and then upgrading to 10.8.1 and then await a less buggy 10.8.3 (though, this time around I will not be in first wave upgrading...)