2 iPhones, 1 login, 2 iTunes users, please help!!

[krye]

Once our tax rebate comes in, me and the wife are buying iPhones. We have one Mac with 1 user account. She never uses the computer so I never gave her her own user account. She does like to listen to her music every now and then. Since I don't want her music mixed in with my stuff, I created a seperate iTunes Library for her. I just hold down Option and lanuch her Library when she wants to listen to her music.

Anyway...

We plan on getting the 2-line family plan. So once we have the two iPhones, how do we activate and sync them? Do I activate hers under her installation and mine under mine? Or do I activate them both under mine and then sync then after the fact with our own libraries? Does iTunes/AT&T know that one phone is part of the same plan as the other phone?

The point is, I don't want us to have to sync to the same library. I want us to keep and sync to our own libraries and both be on the same family plan.

 

[nickspohn]

Me and my mom have laptops and iPhones. Her laptop isn't working, so now i sync both phones with my 1 computer. You can "manually manage music and videos" through iTunes, which was added recently with iTunes 7.6, so you have really no need to worry, since it's just drag and drop.

I believe you can even have 2 iPhones plugged in at once and sync at the same time, not sure on that, but as i said before, you have no need to worry.

 

[krye]

Me and my mom have laptops and iPhones. Her laptop isn't working, so now i sync both phones with my 1 computer. You can "manually manage music and videos" through iTunes, which was added recently with iTunes 7.6, so you have really no need to worry, since it's just drag and drop.

I believe you can even have 2 iPhones plugged in at once and sync at the same time, not sure on that, but as i said before, you have no need to worry.

Yeh, but when you do that kind of stuff with an iPod, it gives you that "This iPod is associated with another iTunes library, do you wan to blah blah blah". Something to that effect. Am I going to have to contend with that everytime I plug in a phone? I want each phone to belong to it's own library.

 

[nickspohn]

Yeh, but when you do that kind of stuff with an iPod, it gives you that "This iPod is associated with another iTunes library, do you wan to blah blah blah". Something to that effect. Am I going to have to contend with that everytime I plug in a phone? I want each phone to belong to it's own library.

I've never came across that yet..

 

[waterskier2007]

my guess is u will have to deal with the "this iphone is associated with a different librar" if u plug it in with the wrong library open but if u open the correct library it will sync

 

[ert3]

As far as the music goes you can manually manage or simply sync only certain playlists.

Does apple know they are both on the same plan. No because thats not their end.

I was on a family plan when i got my iPhone and nothing happened during activation. Please note that I was a pre-existing at&t customer.

Apple will not brick two phones being synced from the same computer but unless you already have a family plan set they will probubly not setup like that in iTunes. If the two of you already have phones compatible with AT&T then you could just go ahead and make the familly plan account with AT&T from there you just get the iPhones and go through the setup process as already existing customers.

Oh and just to point out. If you make two different logins and copy her library to the new account then you will have 2 libraries that simply (mac fix)

 

[cupofjoe]

The iPhones and their association to iTunes libraries are completely separate. During installation, sync it to the appropriate libraries, and from there on out, you should have no problem at all. I believe that's how it should work.

An even EASIER thing to do is to put HER music under your library in a new playlist, and yours in your own playlist. (But that would negate any specific playlists that you'd each have set up unless you decided to sync those playlists automatically as well).

I hope that makes sense. At least a little.

 

[ucfgrad93]

As far as the music goes you can manually manage or simply sync only certain playlists.

Thats what my daughter and I do. We each have iPhones, one mac and one user account. We just created playlists and only sync the playlists that we want. It is very easy.

 

[Small White Car]

Since I don't want her music mixed in with my stuff, I created a seperate iTunes Library for her.

Ugh. WHY WHY WHY?

This is what playlists were designed for!

Forget the iPhone, just combine the two libraries because it's sensible! Make a playlist for each of you and stick with it.

Besides, what happens if your wife ever downloads something you actually like? It's far easy to just drag it into your playlist than to copy the files.

My wife and I have very different music, different iPods, and each have a dozen different playlists. We've NEVER had any trouble with having only one library. And we can access it from any computer in the house. I'd hate to be upstairs on my laptop and have to run downstairs and re-start iTunes just because the wrong Library is loaded!

 

[rjohnstone]

Ugh. WHY WHY WHY?

This is what playlists were designed for!

Forget the iPhone, just combine the two libraries because it's sensible! Make a playlist for each of you and stick with it.

Besides, what happens if your wife ever downloads something you actually like? It's far easy to just drag it into your playlist than to copy the files.

My wife and I have very different music, different iPods, and each have a dozen different playlists. We've NEVER had any trouble with having only one library. And we can access it from any computer in the house. I'd hate to be upstairs on my laptop and have to run downstairs and re-start iTunes just because the wrong Library is loaded!

This is exactly what my wife and I do.
One iTunes library with different play lists.
We both like a lot of similar music, so it made no sense wasting the disk space on have nearly duplicate iTunes libraries.
So I combined them and deleted the dupes. Saved a ton of space.

 

[theBB]

If you are willing to go through the trouble of setting up two iTunes libraries, I don't understand why you set up only one account on the computer. "Fast User Switching" makes it very smooth to go back and forth.

 

[krye]

Ugh. WHY WHY WHY?

This is what playlists were designed for!

Forget the iPhone, just combine the two libraries because it's sensible! Make a playlist for each of you and stick with it.

Besides, what happens if your wife ever downloads something you actually like? It's far easy to just drag it into your playlist than to copy the files.

My wife and I have very different music, different iPods, and each have a dozen different playlists. We've NEVER had any trouble with having only one library. And we can access it from any computer in the house. I'd hate to be upstairs on my laptop and have to run downstairs and re-start iTunes just because the wrong Library is loaded!

My wife download music? That will never happen. The point is, I don't want her crap in my library because I listen to heavy metal, she listens to country. When it comes to music we are like oil and water. She has about 30 CDs, I have over 700. So I don't want to have to set up a bunch of crazy playlists to filter all her stuff out

 

[krye]

If you are willing to go through the trouble of setting up two iTunes libraries, I don't understand why you set up only one account on the computer. "Fast User Switching" makes it very smooth to go back and forth.

Because, two accounts is a waste of drive space when she doesn't even use email. I think she surfs the internet once or twice a year. Computers are just not her thing. She's one of those people that "don't get it". The only reason her music is on my computer is because I took the time to rip her 20 or 30 so CDs so that I could put them on an iPod for her. Which actually never happened.

Anyway, the only reason she is getting an iPhone is because I am getting one. We are sending our twin boys to school in a few months and we'll need phones in case of an emergency. I told her it's iPhone or no phone.

So I'll need a way to have two phones on the computer belonging to the same AT&T account but managed from two different iTunes accounts.