Apple adds Family Sharing support information to iOS, Mac App Store listings
Apple on Friday activated a new iOS and Mac App Store asset that notifies customers of compatibility with the company's upcoming Family Sharing program, which will allow family members to share purchased content.
Listed as part of the "Information" section of an app's description, the new Family Sharing line tells customers whether the title supports Apple's upcoming content sharing initiative that is set for debut with iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 Yosemite. German blog iFun.de was first to spot the change.
Family Sharing has not yet been activated, though multiple apps like Minecraft - Pocket Edition (seen above), are already showing support. Some apps are showing conditional sharing options, limiting users to those who purchased the app after a certain date, while others are simply listing a "no."
Unveiled at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Family Sharing is a long-awaited iOS and Mac feature that lets up to six family members share content purchased from the iTunes Store. The program stipulates that all users who participate within a household must be use the same credit card.
In addition to sharing content, the program allows family members to share photos, a family calendar and current locations among registered devices. Apple also built in safeguards that allow parents to approve purchases and downloads made by their children, as well as accept or reject purchases remotely.
Apple began urging developers to opt-in to the Family Sharing program in June.
16 Comments
Does anyone know if previous iTunes purchases (music, movies etc) will be shareable or is it just future purchases?
On some entries, it says it applies to purchases after a certain date. The examples I have seen are in this past June.
On some entries, it just says Yes. The lack of a date could imply no date limitation.
So will devs increase the price of apps that allow "Family Sharing"? If they rely on in-app purchases that are costlier than the app itself, it may not matter.
This is old news, many apps in the productivity discount apps article have this. Weird to see it mention in a separate article, when AI could've simply added this info in the previous article. Don't tell me they haven't check out the 20 apps that were on sale, they wrote about, but failed to verify them.
A little late, it's been there since about beta 3. Then there's the notify thing.