1 Mac, 2 Users, 2 iPhones, 2 iPads - how?

[Tomr182]

Tried a quick search but cant quite get coherent answer for this questions

I just bought a new rMBP

I want to gift my whitebook to my parents (I'm clearly very nice like that).

Currently, they have 1 windows laptop each, 1 iphone 5 each and 1 ipad each.

I want to set them up with 1 whitebook which they can share to do all their syncing etc

Is this possible, given they both have itunes accounts?



My basic knowledge is guiding me towards setting them both up as user accounts on the mac, copying current itunes music/video to each user account, then let them sync till their hearts content on their own accounts.

Also, if I set the music file to 'public', will they be able to grab each others itunes purchases? eg dad downloads a single and it auto downloads to his itunes. can my mum then copy it to her itunes folder and voila?

Any guidance on the above, or alternative solutions that acheive the same outcome, or any pointing out of potential issues is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Tom

 

[petvas]

Hi,

Your solution is almost right. You can do everything but sync the iTunes purchases of each other.
I don't know an automated way to do that..
I would just copy the purchases to each others iTunes library, and activate their library for using the titles purchased with the other itunes account.
Alternatively, the could use the same iTunes account and with iTunes in the cloud they would also have automatic downloads of anything new..

 

[mojolicious]

My/our situation is: one Mini, four user accounts, three iPhones. There's a MacBook as well but that doesn't enter into this particular equation.

Before we discovered iPhones we all used to point our iTunes accounts to a library on a separate partition (set to 'ignore ownership on this volume'). Each user had his/her own playlist folders and it all worked beautifully whilst preventing the needless duplication of music, the only caveat being that this library could only be open on one account at a time.

This survived the arrival of our first iPhone, but when the second one appeared it was obvious that syncing resulted in the duplication of apps between both iPhones. We'd then then the whole mess of having to enter different account names to update apps; apps deleted from one phone reappearing on the next sync, etc.

In order to continue to share a single 'music library' for Mini-based listening, whilst at the same time allowing each user to have their own iPhone app and backup library, I bought a $20 utility named PowerTunes.

PowerTunes lets you switch between user-defined 'music' and 'iPhone' libraries. The same switching can be achieved by holding down the alt key whilst opening iTunes; the beauty of PowerTunes is that a) you don't have to manually trace through to the library you want to open, and b) it allows you to drag playlists (or individual tracks) between libraries. Additionally it can sort out artwork embedding, if that sort of thing bothers you.

Note that PowerTunes isn't designed for shifting apps between phones. It's old-fashioned iTunes audio/video only.

So... in each user account PowerTunes shows 'music' and the appropriate 'iPhone' library. If a user wants to copy choons (or video content) from the 'music' library then he/she creates a playlist within that library, then via PowerTunes drags that playlist into their personal iPhone library.

The upshot is that each iPhone user has their own, unique library containing their choice of music, their iPhone backups, and the apps pertaining to their iPhone/account.

Sorry, this isn't particularly well written and may also be the answer to a question you're not actually asking!

But: if you wish to retain a common music library rather than end up with massive duplication of audio files across multiple user accounts, then finding a way of switching between the all-user 'music' library and individual 'iPhone' library (or indeed individual 'iPhone' and 'iPad' libraries) is necessary.

On re-reading your post it appears this isn't what you're after, unless your whitebook is to become their 'music server'.

So...

Yeah.

 

[glenthompson]

Best way is to have different user accounts. They can share an appleid for purchases but have separate libraries.