Apple’s family sharing feature actually has many capabilities that you may not even know.

Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “Three Easy Living” (ID: IT-3eLife), Author: Sany bacteria.

When you talk about the “home-based marketing” of smart phones, what people will first think of is that major manufacturers often launch “holiday suits” that are easy to give gifts during the holidays, or that many brands are beginning to emphasize that mobile phones and home appliances, And the linkage control with the IoT ecosystem?

It is undeniable that the above two practices are common in today’s mobile phone industry. Especially the “smart home ecology”, on the one hand, it can indeed bring more sense of science and technology and life convenience to modern families, but on the other hand, it will also more firmly bind users to a specific ecological chain And the brand, so it has also been collectively welcomed by many brands.

But does this mean that the only way to build a closer relationship between mobile phones and family members is to use “smart homes”? of course not. In fact, as the only system that can fight against the Android ecosystem, Apple has long started to build the HomeKit smart home ecosystem. But when we further explored the design of its current products, and conducted in-depth exchanges with some users, we found that “smart home” is not Apple’s killer to conquer many home users.

In fact, this maverick technology brand has many unique ideas on how to make home users more satisfied.

  • The account system with family attributes has given Apple a good impression of consumers

As we all know, most of today’s smart phones will come with their own brand’s “account system”. Through these systems, users can usually save a few passwords and can back up important information such as their photos and contacts in the cloud in real time. For manufacturers, these accounts closely related to users’ personal information have also become an important means for them to retain consumers.

However, as everyone usually feels, the account system of most mobile phone manufacturers only revolves around the user, but does not take into account the needs of different users in the entire family. At this point, in fact, it is the first thing Apple has done particularly well.

In the Apple ID setting interface of iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS, we can see the eye-catching “Family Sharing” option. It is a special account system prepared by Apple for family users. It can allow up to 6 family members to join a group to establish a relationship of sharing and mutual assistance between accounts.

What are the benefits of “Family Sharing”? Simply put, it can save money for members in the same family group first.

For example, the “cloud storage” space provided by many mobile phone manufacturers by default is not enough, but after purchasing an expansion package, sometimes it feels wasteful for one person to use it. What should I do? The advantage of “family sharing” is now revealed. As long as one person in a family group purchases the expansion capacity of cloud storage, then he can share the part of the capacity he can’t use to other people in the family group. For example, for the 50GB iCloud service, Xiao A uses 10GB himself, then fathers and mothers in the same family group will see that their cloud storage accounts have changed from only 5GB free capacity to 40GB available. space. In this way, if one person spends money, all six people in the family can use it together, which is equivalent to five people no longer need to pay repeatedly.

In addition to iCloud cloud storage, many other subscriptions and services under Apple also support this kind of sharing within the family group. For example, Apple Music can be paid by one person and used by six people; the application in the AppStore only needs to be purchased by someone in the family group once, and everyone else can enjoy the service of “paid users”. In this way, there is less repetitive expenses among family members, and the behavior of sharing music, sharing applications, and sharing storage capacity can sometimes be cleverly turned into a way to convey feelings.

Of course, in addition to allowing home users to spend less, Apple also understands that today’s consumers don’t want children to abuse electronic devicesThoughts. Therefore, “Family Sharing” specifically provides parents with the creation and management of “child accounts”. On the one hand, parents can receive requests on their mobile phones/computers/tablets in real time when their children are trying to spend money to purchase apps or recharge in games. Parents cannot do this if they do not agree with the children.

On the other hand, through children’s accounts, parents can also remotely monitor the use time of their children’s devices and set limits on the use time of the devices or specific apps. It can even be possible to disable the entertainment function of Apple Watch during class time while the children are in school, so as to help them concentrate in class. It can be said to be quite careful.

  • In addition to saving money, it can also fully take care of the safety and health of family members

It can be said that through the “family sharing” function, Apple allows family members to spend only one person in many cases, so that up to 6 people in the family can get the same service. At the same time, in addition to saving money, with the help of family sharing features and the linkage between iPhone/iPad and Apple Watch, Apple also provides unique safeguards for family members to care about their health and travel safety.

Worried about missing children or getting lost when the elderly go out? You can use the children’s Apple Watch or iPhone to track their location in real time. When family members need to send location information for help, other smart phones may need to use third-party software such as WeChat or QQ, but the iPhone’s own map software itself is designed to send location information via SMS. In this way, even if the data network signal is poor, the location information can be sent smoothly.

Of course, sometimes the “lost” is not necessarily a family member, but the Apple device they used. At this time, if family sharing is set up in advance, you can directly use another family member’s iPhone or other device to locate the lost device, remotely lock it, and track its real-time location. It’s natural to find it.Much simpler.

In addition, in this well-known special period, many times we may not be able to move frequently with family members living in different areas. But thanks to Apple Watch’s built-in heart rate, ECG, blood oxygen, sleep statistics, and automatic fall detection functions, you can still pay attention to the physical condition of the elders at home in real time after thousands of miles. When they encounter difficulties, they will notify rescuers as soon as possible, or when Ta’s body is slightly unhealthy and he is not aware of it, he will be reminded to go to the doctor in time. After all, “early detection and early treatment” are often more important than famous medicine. And being able to find abnormalities in the family’s body faster in many cases may be enough to change the result.

  • Sufficient ease of use makes iPhone more suitable for the whole family to use

Sharing subscriptions and services means spending less and enjoying more; remote location and health tracking mean that family members can take care of each other even if they are thousands of miles away. It is not difficult to see that in order to strengthen the connection between family members, Apple has put a lot of effort into the “family sharing” function. But in addition, one thing we want to point out is that for children and elderly users, Apple also has a lot of advantages in terms of basic product ease of use.

For example, for elderly users, iOS has introduced complete screen reading and voice prompt functions early on. After upgrading to the latest iOS 14, including iPhone 11 and the latest iPhone 12 series models, not only can you “read” the text on the screen, you can even “listen” to nearby neighbors through the AI ​​computing power of the machine. Some special sounds. For example, when there are special sounds such as alarm bells, door knocks, crying, etc., prompts will pop up on the phone screen. In this way, even if the user can’t see the content on the screen clearly or has difficulty listening to the sound, they can use the iPhone to obtain a higher quality of life than other mobile phones, and receive instant reminders at critical moments.

For example, for users who are not familiar with conventional input methods, Apple has added direct support for handwriting input to the bottom layer of today’s iPadOS system. This means that the elderly or children can use Apple Pencil to use their more familiar handwriting method to input information on the iPad, without any third-party input methods, and there will be no possibility of instability and incompatibility.

Of course, in the most basic system experience, the self-developed chips and own operating systems of Apple’s products also bring many advantages that cannot be achieved by competing products. For example, they do not have a mess of various advertisements, so there is no need to worry about the elderly or children accidentally touching malicious content; for example, Apple itself has a strict technical and content censorship system for the App Store, which can greatly reduce piracy and poor-quality software. The probability of occurrence effectively improves the safety of daily use.

Not only that, friends who have used the iPhone, iPad, or Mac product line know that compared to other competing products, the maintenance cycle is shorter, an Apple mobile phone, tablet or computer can usually get up to four The official system update service of the year or more. For many users, this also means longer replacement cycles and lower average usage costs. For home users, it will enable iPhone, iPad, Mac and other products to be used among family members for a longer period of time, and with the help of the “family sharing” function mentioned in the previous article, it will provide more Family members bring peace of mind, convenience, and health.

[Some pictures in this article are from the Internet]