iCloud Sucks for Married People

[Christoffee]

Originally Posted by jsgreen

I didn't see any posts regarding calendar sharing...while Contacts lacks family-friendly sharing, Calendar sharing is really easy.

On your Mac's Calendar.app, look at the left panel that shows your list of calendars. Control (or right) click the calendar you want to share and you will see an option for "Sharing Settings" - you can add other iCloud IDs so they can access your calendar, and vice versa.

Works through your browser too at iCloud.com

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Originally Posted by lemieuxfan67

Do you both share contact data using the joint account? ...or do you both keep separate contacts?

I'm guessing you could turn off the syncing of contacts for the joint icloud account and only have contact syncing on for your personal icloud accounts.

Changes to contacts would not be synced between each of your iphones, but that would solve the my info problem.

We do share contacts through the joint account, and I bet you're right. Maybe I'll try to move our personal contact info to our personal accounts and link them to My Info. All contacts will update them except our own.

[rezwits]

I think you need separate, Mac OS Accounts.

Once you set up two isolated Mac accounts, and sync your iTunes with your iOS devices, and setup separate iCloud accounts etc. email accounts etc things will be fine.

But one computer, with one login account, with both of yours and hers stuff just dumped into iTunes, email, bookmarks, iCloud, Documents, would be a nightmare...

EOL

[Christoffee]

Further to posts above I have cracked the Siri problem. I think My Info is a tag in in the actual contact.

I have completely cracked iCloud for married couples and households! To the OP, I was much like you a couple of months back - I thought the whole iCloud thing was great for groovy singletons, but rubbish for families and couples. But actually it all works, you just need to work with it a bit.

[Polydactyl]

Safari data sharing is kind of goofy.

On iDevices you can sync Safari data to any one of your iCloud accounts, but on OSX on the iMac it can only be sync'd to the primary iCloud account. Am I missing something?

This wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that sharing the primary Photostream is a must for us. We like to have all our photos automatically shared, not the manual way in iOS6. The Safari thing is the only quirk I haven't figured out.

[powers74]

Originally Posted by Small White Car

I'm getting more and more frustrated with Apple's inability to understand that married people want to share some things but not other stuff. The ability to customize their services for my wife and I is getting more and more difficult as time goes on.

The latest blow? iCloud now apparently syncs the "My Info" field of the iPhone settings, so Siri thinks both of our phones belong to the same person. This "feature" is not broken out into its own toggle switch like other things are. So both phones have to belong to one or the other of us according to Siri.

"But Small White Car," you say. "iCloud is clearly a personal service. You shouldn't be sharing it!"

Ok, cool. Then Apple needs to figure out how I can split us up but but still share Photostream, Contacts, Bookmarks, Calendars, Reminders, and Pages documents with my wife. (I can sync some of these now, but definitely not all.)

Basically, no matter which way I do it I have to make huge compromises. For the time I guess I'll settle for letting my phone call me 'Lori.' That sucks, but it's better than the other way around.

Sorry, no question here, I know you can't help me. I'm just ranting because, gosh darn it, it's fun.

(And don't even get me started on the Mac question of "do we share a user account or not?" That one's an equally horrible choice.)

100%%%

I'd love to set up an iCloud email alias for my wife - in fact I already have - except I don't want to get any of her emails. I just want them to go to her iPad. But that's not an option either.

Originally Posted by rezwits

I think you need separate, Mac OS Accounts.

Once you set up two isolated Mac accounts, and sync your iTunes with your iOS devices, and setup separate iCloud accounts etc. email accounts etc things will be fine.

But one computer, with one login account, with both of yours and hers stuff just dumped into iTunes, email, bookmarks, iCloud, Documents, would be a nightmare...

EOL

Yeah, unfortunately that might be the only solution.

Originally Posted by Christoffee

Further to posts above I have cracked the Siri problem. I think My Info is a tag in in the actual contact.

I have completely cracked iCloud for married couples and households! To the OP, I was much like you a couple of months back - I thought the whole iCloud thing was great for groovy singletons, but rubbish for families and couples. But actually it all works, you just need to work with it a bit.

OK? Some details might be nice.

[Small White Car]

Originally Posted by rezwits

I think you need separate, Mac OS Accounts.

Once you set up two isolated Mac accounts, and sync your iTunes with your iOS devices, and setup separate iCloud accounts etc. email accounts etc things will be fine.

But one computer, with one login account, with both of yours and hers stuff just dumped into iTunes, email, bookmarks, iCloud, Documents, would be a nightmare...

EOL

I'd love this. Clearly it's what Apple wants us to do. Reasons I still can't:


1) Who 'owns' iTunes? Yes, you can share music but only one of you can edit the library. The other is a second class citizen who can't rate songs and alter playlists. So one of us is the music master and the other is treated like a child. And good luck getting your iPad to sync with iTunes tonight, sweetie. We left the Mac logged into the my account all night so that MY phone can sync. Sucks to be you.

2) Who gets the photo library? Whoever doesn't can't have access to it in other Apple programs that tap into iPhoto and they can't quickly find shots to send to e-mail or to use in photoshop or anything. Whoever loses this coin toss is pretty much SOL when it comes to our thousands of family photos.

Yeah, you can open the library, but is having 2 versions of a database software accessing the same database really a good idea? Everyone I know about computers says 'no.'

3) Also, that nice trick where photostream downloads every iPhone shot into our library AND uploads our SLR photos back to every iPhone in the house?

Yeah, screw that now. It was nice while it lasted.

4) Who gets Final Cut Pro and the home movie clips? Just like #2, you COULD open it twice, but get ready for disaster!

5) Oh, and btw, when the iTunes owner is streaming a movie to the Apple TV for our daughter THEY can check their e-mail and surf their bookmarks. The other person? No such luck. Too bad for you!

6) And to mix 3 and 4 together... "Sorry, I'm exporting from Final Cut Pro for the next hour. You can't use your bookmarks until it's done."


That's just off the top of my head, I know there are other reasons I can't remember right now. Basically, Apple's position is "You should use different accounts but we will never make our software work with that workflow! Bwa ha ha ha ha!"

The bottom line: Sharing an account gives me 4 or 5 headaches. Splitting up would give me a dozen. Thanks for this awesome choice, Apple.

[ant1298]

Originally Posted by whsbuss

I love shared reminders.... we use it for groceries list and its great. However it would be more helpful if we could post to the reminder list with notification. For example, I create a shared list. If I post something with a dated reminder I get the notification, but the other person(s) do not.

They can get the reminder if they go into the app and toggle the reminder switch, it'll automatically have the time you selected for it as default. Its a long winded way as you have to ask the person to do it but it does work.

[Weaselboy]

Originally Posted by powers74

I'd love to set up an iCloud email alias for my wife - in fact I already have - except I don't want to get any of her emails. I just want them to go to her iPad. But that's not an option either.

Not sure if this is exactly what you want but on my wife's iPad I have a main (primary) iCloud account with everything EXCEPT Mail turned on (it is my email account). Then I added a second iCloud account to the iPad and everything is turned off except Mail. So we share calendar and contacts but not email.

Then I have all purchases under a third AppleID that we share across all OS X and iOS devices.

[Icaras]

Originally Posted by chrono1081

This.

If you use separate iCloud accounts and one iTunes library you can each have your own info but share your apps and songs and such.

My wife and I not only keep our iCloud accounts separate, but our iTunes accounts separate as well.

We just share the things we both like through Home Sharing. Of course the downside to this is that you currently both need Macs to do this, which we do. But I hope Apple allows to enable home sharing syncing between iOS devices. And I don't mean just streaming of course, but actually downloading and storing of this shared content on your iOS device.

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Originally Posted by rezwits

I think you need separate, Mac OS Accounts.

Once you set up two isolated Mac accounts, and sync your iTunes with your iOS devices, and setup separate iCloud accounts etc. email accounts etc things will be fine.

But one computer, with one login account, with both of yours and hers stuff just dumped into iTunes, email, bookmarks, iCloud, Documents, would be a nightmare...

EOL

We do this as well. It's just neater and tidier this way we think.

I'm also hopeful that Apple will continue to add more "shared" functionality into it's core iCloud apps (iCal, Contacts, etc.) later down the road. The shared Photostream is a nice start.

[powers74]

Originally Posted by Weaselboy

Not sure if this is exactly what you want but on my wife's iPad I have a main (primary) iCloud account with everything EXCEPT Mail turned on (it is my email account). Then I added a second iCloud account to the iPad and everything is turned off except Mail. So we share calendar and contacts but not email.

Then I have all purchases under a third AppleID that we share across all OS X and iOS devices.

O RLY? How do you set up the second iCloud Account on the iPad?

I thought of an other solution the other day tho...

Just get divorced!

EDIT: I think I figured it out. pretty easy. Now I just have to wait for her to think of an email handle she wants to use - she hates her current gmail handle. Whatevs.

[The Phazer]

Originally Posted by Small White Car

2) Passbook has me kind of confused...we just use one Starbucks account. I'm assuming splitting up iCloud means I'll have to register for 2 accounts from every retailer? Not impossible, but an unnecessary pain in the rear.

As much as I agree with you that idenity and partial sharing on iCloud (and iOS in general) is a complete disaster, this one isn't a problem, as Passbook just takes the Starbucks card number from the Starbucks app, and the Starbucks app uses it's own logon system that isn't related to iCloud at all. As such, you can just log into your Starbucks account on two different phones at the same time even if they're using different iCloud IDs without any problems.

[iamafink]

Originally Posted by jsgreen

...while Contacts lacks family-friendly sharing, Calendar sharing is really easy.

Late to chime in here, but like Small White Car I need to vent. Yes, calendar sharing is really easy, but it's also pretty unreliable because it runs through iCloud. Apple just can't seem to come up with a way to accurately synchronize data. All too often - maybe 1 in 20 events - events show on iCloud but not your iPhone, or the other way round. Same problem between iCloud and Outlook. I've seen similar errors for contacts. We have three iPhones (with separate iCloud accounts) in my family, and we see these problems on all three. Apple Customer care says their Carpe Facto group has reproduced the problem, but I've heard nothing for six weeks other than that one day they'll get back to me.

So if you're sharing with your SO through iCloud, prepare to miss events. (And if, like me, you're the household tech support, prepare to be blamed for it!) This is especially frustrating since my wife and I could share all the info we wanted with our Palms, with near 100% reliability, way back in 1997. Sigh.

Hey Apple: "iCloud. It just doesn't work."