After a few false begins, Apple lastly rolled out one in every of its final promised iOS 17 options earlier this month, with Collaborative Playlists in Apple Music making their public debut in iOS 17.3.
The characteristic briefly appeared within the early iOS 17.2 betas in late October however mysteriously vanished within the fourth beta and was nowhere to be discovered within the ultimate iOS 17.2 launch. Two days later, Apple introduced it might be delayed into 2024.
Though collaborative playlists labored fairly properly within the first three iOS 17.2 betas, it appeared Apple pulled the characteristic on account of some safety issues. On the time, these appeared to focus on the opportunity of the method getting used as a vector for spam assaults, much like how we’ve seen iCloud Calendar invites abused.
Nevertheless, it appears Apple was additionally involved with guaranteeing youthful customers had been protected against potential issues which may come from receiving random playlist invitations. Whereas it wasn’t the case within the betas, the discharge model of iOS 17.3 prevents customers underneath age 13 from creating or becoming a member of collaborative playlists.
Some of us have already run into this downside, nevertheless it seems that it’s not a bug, it’s a characteristic. In a help doc printed this week, Apple has confirmed that “Kids underneath the age of 13 can’t collaborate on playlists.”
This restriction is in place no matter whether or not the kid in query is in a Household Sharing group. Whereas it might be disappointing for households — I’d be let down if my daughter was nonetheless underneath 13 — it’s type of comprehensible with the way in which collaborative playlists have been designed.
To make the characteristic as helpful as attainable, Apple has made it as non-restrictive as attainable. Collaborative playlist invites will be shared by hyperlink as far and huge as you want, from your individual circle of buddies to your total realm of Instagram followers, and the one requirement for somebody to hitch is that they be an Apple Music subscriber.
Whereas Apple permits the playlist creator to approve who joins, it’s nonetheless not onerous to see how this raises some security issues. Even in a Household Sharing group with Display Time restrictions, there’s no life like approach to forestall youngsters from becoming a member of any shared playlist they occur to come back throughout on the web. Parental controls ought to forestall them from seeing any express content material in these playlists, however they’d nonetheless have the ability to take part and swap songs with random strangers.
The apparent resolution to this is able to be for Apple to offer enhanced parental controls; ideally, these would permit dad and mom to restrict which shared playlists their youngsters can be part of or at the least approve any requests. At a naked minimal, Apple may have at the least offered a change in Display Time to permit dad and mom to resolve if their offspring ought to be permitted to hitch Collaborative Playlists.
Nevertheless, we’re hoping this isn’t Apple’s ultimate phrase on the matter. Our guess is that Apple was compelled to decide on between rolling out Collaborative Playlists now for these over 13 or delaying them to iOS 17.4 or later whereas it labored on constructing and testing the required parental controls. Sadly, we’ve seen no proof within the first beta that that is about to alter in iOS 17.4, however that doesn’t imply that Apple isn’t engaged on a approach to carry this characteristic to its youthful followers.