Phil Schiller, in an email to a user, says screen-time apps Apple restricted used MDM feature only intended for enterprises, creating privacy and security risks
a truly complex issue: The facts about parental control apps - Apple Newsroom http://apple.news/... Steven Sinofsky / @stevesi : “The facts about parental control apps” http://www.apple.com/... // MDM:Mobile :: Anti-virus:PC. It is software that breaks all the rules under guise of doing good. At least with app stores, the techniques used can be contained to some set of parties, maybe. http://twitter.com/... Matt Rosoff / @mattrosoff : If Apple hadn't done this, they would've been taken to task for allowing apps to violate kids' privacy. Dan Gillmor / @dangillmor : Apple shutdown developers of competing “screen time” apps, and now has an explanation that is (on its face) plausible. However, developers quoted in @nytimes story said the company gave them no reasons while Apple now says it did. What's the truth? http://www.macrumors.com/... Alec Muffett / @alecmuffett : Install screen-time monitoring apps? What could possibly go wrong? Answer: untrammeled spyware. http://www.macrumors.com/... /cc @EinsteinsAttic @TheABB @Livingstone_S @OpenRightsGroup @eff Cemre Gngr / @gem_ray : It disappoints me to no longer trust NYT's journalistic integrity - intentionally omitting the risks of third party apps using MDM to further drive their point that Apple is anticompetitive. http://www.macrumors.com/... Kontra / @counternotions : Blunt. Knee-jerk. Uninformed. http://twitter.com/... And wrong. http://www.macrumors.com/... Tony Fadell / @tfadell : 1/ This article, if true, is deeply disturbing. When it comes to our children's & our personal digital consumption, users want & deserve more options & access to diverse apps/controls to meet our often specific & niche management needs, not less. http://twitter.com/... @macrumors : Phil Schiller Lays Out Apple's Case for Cracking Down on Screen Time Monitoring Apps http://www.macrumors.com/... by @eslivka http://twitter.com/... Chris Wagner / @cwagdev : Good call, Apple. MDM is no joke. Having used MDM I'd never enroll a personal device on an MDM server. | Phil Schiller Lays Out Apple's Case for Cracking Down on Screen Time Monitoring Apps - MacRumors http://www.macrumors.com/... Nilay Patel / @reckless : Wait till Apple finds out how many parents install Jamf Now to manage their kids' devices http://www.macrumors.com/... Nick Confessore / @nickconfessore : A @jacknicas story that parents w/ iPhone kids should read. Apple's parental control feature is clunky and poorly featured. Probably the second worst Apple app I've encountered after Music. Yet they are shutting down all the competing apps. http://www.nytimes.com/... Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : By definition, any app that lets you ‘fight phone addition’ or'control your children's internet use' requires invasive access to everything on your phone by a third-party company. It needs to see everything you do. 1/3 http://twitter.com/... Anand Giridharadas / @anandwrites : This week at #Time100Summit, @tim_cook won applause by bemoaning extensive screen time, and talking up @apple's efforts to help people scale back. Now the @nytimes reveals the truth: Apple is using the halo of such rhetoric to actually crack down on apps that fight addiction. http://twitter.com/... Jack Nicas / @jacknicas : Two app makers filed a complaint to E.U. officials this week. Apple's use of the App Store has recently drawn antitrust scrutiny, and these revelations could intensify that. Read our full story on Apple's moves and their implications: http://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This is Apple's public counterstrike in a fight that began when it shipped its own Screen Time tools in iOS 12 and then started pulling third-party trackers and parental-control apps from the App Store (removals that followed iOS 12's launch). An analysis found Apple had removed or restricted 11 of the 17 most-downloaded screen-time apps, and two of those developers took their case to EU antitrust officials.
Schiller's email to a user is the first named-executive justification: the restricted apps were abusing Mobile Device Management, an enterprise administration feature, to monitor devices they were never authorized to control. The framing matters because it recasts the removals as a security enforcement action rather than competitive self-preference — a distinction regulators and developers immediately had to weigh.
First-order effects
- The developers behind the restricted screen-time apps face an existential choice: rebuild without MDM or exit the App Store, since Apple is now publicly committed to treating enterprise-device management as off-limits for consumer apps.
- Apple gains a defensible public narrative for the removals — kids' privacy and device security — that it can deploy against the EU antitrust complaint already filed by two affected app makers.
Second-order effects
- The pressure forces a policy climb-down: weeks later Apple reverses course and lets parental-control apps use MDM and VPN technologies so long as they commit to not selling, using, or disclosing data to third parties (the June policy reversal) — effectively writing new rules for a category it had just shut down.
- Tim Cook carries the same privacy rationale into congressional testimony a year later, defending the removals under questioning (Cook's hearing defense), which keeps the episode alive as evidence in the broader gatekeeping debate.
Third-order effects
- The episode becomes a template case for contestable platform gatekeeping: a platform owner restricting rivals in a category it competes in, justifying it on safety grounds, then adjusting rules under regulatory pressure — exactly the dynamic the EU later institutionalizes with the DMA, which Schiller was still defending against third-party app stores years afterward.
- If the pattern holds, enterprise-grade APIs like MDM get progressively locked down and audited by platform owners, narrowing what third-party software can do on iPhones and pushing deep-monitoring functionality toward either first-party tools or regulated exceptions.
The trend: App Store governance is shifting from unilateral platform rulings toward contested, regulator-supervised rulemaking, with privacy claims serving as both the justification and the battleground.