Good evening all,
I have rarely seen such a pitiful and egotistical discussion on these pages. The bickering and pointless nastiness in most of these replies is shameful. These pages are meant to be a way for the community to assist each other. Instead what we see here is the worse type of bullying and misinformation possible.
This is a new account. I have created it having left the employ of Apple after many happy years. Most recently I was employed in the Apple Store, Carrousel du Louvre, Paris. I am now traveling for a few months/years.
First some history. Family sharing was first introduced to the general public Sep 2014. In fact, I was at the Worldwide Developers Conference on June 2, 2014 when it was first unveiled. As such it is relatively new. For staff like us it was a much needed feature as family members were previously encouraged (by store staff like us) to share an ID to police their kids. But that in itself bought issues with facetime and iMessage. These issues can be overcome by setting up separate IDs for those apps but this over complicated setups.
Now let’s be clear here. There is nothing wrong with sharing an ID. True, it is no longer the way Apple want you to do things but until late 2014 it is how many people were encouraged to set things up by Apple employees themselves. As such there are millions of people across the world set up in this manner and belittling people with this set up is frankly pathetic.
In fact, the new family sharing is not a perfect fit for some families especially as an in-app purchase is not available on all devices. Many of us reported this as a poorly thought out but it seems this is intentional, possibly due to pressure from developers, as so many apps moved from the paid model to the free with in-app purchase model.
Due to the above, If I had young kids I would STILL share an ID.
Second, some facts. This sharing of recent calls “feature” is not as new as people believe. Recent calls have always been backed up to iCloud from the time you were able to backup to iCloud. But only relatively recently (around IOS8+) has the data somehow become 2 way. This sharing of recent calls is NOT an advertised feature in any IOS and is certainly not consistent. i.e. It is not guaranteed that the same 2 devices set up the same way will experience the feature. We concluded when we looked into it that there were two factors in play. One is iCloud contacts and the second is iCloud drive. Turning one off or the other, or sometimes simply tweaking a random setting in either will usually stop the feature. As such this feature IS A BUG and is being addressed but I have no idea when.
It is possible that Apple planned to provide this as a real feature in future but for the moment it is a bug as there is no consistent way to turn it on (never mind off). I would expect that if it were a real feature it would be both advertised and be controllable.
Do with this information as you see fit. I’m sure the more childish will continue to bicker as that seems to be what this thread has become.
Good luck to you all. Please work together to help each other.
