Apple has devs. Maybe some teams are short-staffed, but they fix things.
What Apple doesn't seem to have is a functional bugfix priority loop that includes customer input and provides feedback.
I'm not really a fan of 1Password overall though. The product is still fine but has gotten gradually worse over the years and their corporate posture does not inspire any confidence. Consumer apps that focus on Enterprise and are only interested in SaaS revenue almost always follow the same path of endlessly degrading the user experience once they reach a certain point. I haven't seen anything that makes me think they will be an exception, but I give them credit for actually having a real support channel, at least as of a few years ago.
1. It randomly adds in limits for my kids I didn't even put there. I put in an X hour limit, it puts in an Y hour limit, usually duplicated three or four times. Most commonly for the 'All apps' category. I delete those, a few weeks later they start reappearing. Kid complains, I delete them again, rinse & repeat.
2. Somewhat regularly it loses connection to the kids' ipads and doesn't update the settings I change. Usually it'll eventually connect, but it can take a while.
3. Some devices it just refuses to see. iMac? Sure. MacBook Air? Crickets. Why? Who knows. Everything is running the latest software, both computers have the iCloud account authenticated. Sometimes it decides my son has no devices at all. I don't really bother looking at reports any more.
4. Sometimes I get screen time requests (install a new app, ask for more time, buy something, etc), and sometimes ... nothin. I can watch my kid put the request in, I never get it. Sometimes it's flawless.
5. The requests come in via iMessage now, and this tends to be okay on the phone, but it is very destructive on the MacOS Messages app. The requests almost never completely load, for whatever reason, and just spin. I think only once I saw the requests show up on the MacOS Messages app correctly. Eventually the requests conversation gets too many of them spinning, and they drag down Messages until it beach balls. If I'm lucky, I see that one coming as it gets slower and delete the conversation before it gets far enough to hang.
There are probably some things I'm forgetting. It is the buggiest bit of software from Apple that I've ever used. The only other app that routinely annoys me is Music, because it periodically (every day or so) seems to lose authorization or something, and just refuses to play music. But doesn't say why, doesn't reauthorize or ask to reauthorize, just doesn't play anything. I restart the app and it works for another day. That bug has been around for several years now, on multiple computers.
* It's incompatible with some apps, e.g. Roblox, that are full-screened, and you end up in an annoying loop between the Roblox screen and the request more time screen fighting with each other, with no ability to click anything. My kid has learned how to hit the Option-Command-Escape shortcut to force-kill Roblox using just the keyboard and restart.
* Sometimes Screen Time requests come via Notifications (yay), and sometimes they come via Messages (boo). There doesn't appear to be any logic behind which.
* When they come in via Messages, and I leave Messages.app running for too long, it ends up eating all of the memory on my 32GB M1 Max and forcing me to restart the system.
* Sometimes requests do not come through at all.
* Sometimes the user cannot request more time. Clicking the button does nothing.
* Sometimes multiple requests come through for the same app. Approving one of the requests does not satisfy all of them, you have to approve all of them.
* Requests for websites do not work. Every so often Roblox breaks and results in having to re-download the .dmg. You end up in a loop between approving the request for more time and the website saying the user needs to request more time. I ended up writing a shell script to curl it instead (which requires munging User-Agent because the Roblox download page does not have a direct link to the dmg).
It's clear there are no Apple employees who actually use Screen Time to manage kids time. I can only assume they just let their kids have unlimited access, because trying to actually use Screen Time is absolutely infuriating, and only gets worse over time (e.g. the Notifications vs Messages thing is a recent regression).
It's also worth pointing out that I have absolutely zero issues with Android Family Link. It all Just Works for similar purposes.
Oh this is a good one I forgot. If my kid is playing Roblox and runs out of time, it goes into that screen loop and is impossible to resolve without at least killing Roblox, and sometimes rebooting the silly machine. That's pretty frustrating for the kid for sure, I ended up just whitelisting Roblox so it never happened.
I don't remember seeing those for Apple. Are there examples of anyone failing to get meaningful help from official support but were able to find a successful resolution through HN ?
