Apple on Thursday altered its iTunes Terms and Conditions to permit children under the age of 13 to operate individual iTunes accounts created at the request of an "approved educational institution," reports Macworld.
Previously, Apple restricted iTunes accounts to children aged 13 or older, but the company announced it would be changing its policy with the release of iOS 7.
These App and Book Services are only available for individuals aged 13 years or older, unless you are under 13 years old and your Apple ID was provided to you as a result of a request by an approved educational institution. If you are 13 or older but under the age of 18, you should review this Agreement with your parent or guardian to make sure that you and your parent or guardian understand it.
With Apple's new educational policies, schools will have a program to facilitate Apple obtaining "verifiable parental consent for personal Apple IDs for students under age 13." In addition, Apple also plans to introduce better tools for teachers.
iOS 7, which is expected to be released to the public in the fall, offers new Mobile Device Management options allowing teachers to set up managed apps, configure accessibility options, and restrict changes to accounts. Teachers will be able to lock student iPads to a particular app as well, to ensure that students are "on the same activity at the same time."
The new operating system will also bring an App Store Volume Purchase Program designed to allow educational institutions to assign apps to users while maintaining ownership and control over app licenses.
Apple's policy shift comes as the company continues its push for iPads in educational institutions. Apple has been involved in several large deals in recent months and won a $30 million contract from the L.A. Unified School District in June that will see the district purchasing iPads for every student in its 47 schools. Apple also met with the Turkish President earlier this year about a potential $4.5 billion deal that would provide Turkish schoolchildren with as many as 15 million tablets.
Top Rated Comments
You are very wrong.
This has nothing to do with parental restriction or similar options - which have been available on iOS for years, before stuff like that had been implemented in Android - this is legal stuff necessary for kids to have their own Apple ID.
This way, a school doesn't need to create Apple IDs A1 to Z99 for their students, but instead the students can create their own Apple IDs and keep stuff they have bought on the school-supplied iPad.
I have to laugh at you who seem so eager to cheer for Android. May be better luck next time.
Please do explain why this is "basically like Kids Mode on the Nexus 7".
Was there ever a mom or dad who stopped shopping for an iPod Touch for their ten year old kid, when they heard that they can't legally create an iTunes account for them?
There are probably millions of ten year olds on Facebook.
This is much more important for schools, because they want to give pupils iPads for school, but young kids can't create their own iTunes accounts schools can't just tell them to lie when entering the date of birth and generic iTunes accounts created by schools are not the optimal solution.
That's why this verifiable parental consent stuff is so important for educational purposes and less important for personal accounts.
Parents can always enter a wrong birthdate, making their child older - but schools can't.
He never actually read the article or only the subject line with the word "children" in it.
This has absolutely nothing to do with any kind of parental controls or a kids mode.
iPad do not make better students. Better teachers make better students. Start there. Technology has been in U.S. classrooms for decades. When I was a grad student I was involved in a program in a DC high school that had the highest % of underprivileged kids in the metro area. The school had an amazing array of computers and even a mini TV studio. It still had more drop outs than graduates; more failing students than ones that were even eligible to get into the lowest ranked junior college. Most of the teachers gave up and were mostly baby sitters.
My point: if you want to understand the public education problems in the country, tech is not a quick fix nor is spending money. The issues are much deeper, and, unfortunately, very political, in just about every sense of the word. Understand the DC, for example, which has one of the worse school systems in the country -- the president, congressmen and women, and senators won't send their kids there -- spends $18K per student. The national average is around $10K per student.
Yeah, those kids could grow up thinking it's actually ok to pay for software. Pretty disgusting, Apple!