THE CRUNCH
Apple's revamped Screen Time parental controls, launched last month with iOS 27, come with a catch: every device in a family group must be on the relevant version 27 before the new features will work. The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy found herself locked out of the upgrade entirely because her 18-year-old son had not updated his MacBook, even though she was not trying to manage his devices at all.
The catch is that every device in a family group has to be running version 27 of Apple's operating systems before the new controls will work. The writer's son, an 18-year-old away from home, has not got round to updating his MacBook, and that alone blocks the whole household. As the piece notes, the fiddly requirements might even have families digging through drawers for old devices they had forgotten about.
Apple has acknowledged the problem, with spokesperson Katie Lowry saying the company is "working to resolve delays some families are seeing". The writer, who has spent years frustrated by Apple's parental controls, had been looking forward to the revamped Screen Time, which launched last month with iOS 27.