I don't know how true the password part is. Now any of my apps would get updated without me putting my password in, but as soon as an app of my wife's was updated I got a notification to put in the password. It's seems like the iPhone knows my iTunes account is on the phone, so it will automatically update apps, but because my wife's iTunes isn't on my phone it will ask for the password.
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Apple Begins Asking Developers to Turn On Family Sharing for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite Apps
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I don't know how true the password part is. Now any of my apps would get updated without me putting my password in, but as soon as an app of my wife's was updated I got a notification to put in the password. It's seems like the iPhone knows my iTunes account is on the phone, so it will automatically update apps, but because my wife's iTunes isn't on my phone it will ask for the password.
Anyone know how this will work with iTunes match?
For example I have iTunes match, all my music available on my iPhone and iPad.
My wife doesn't have iTunes match.
If our accounts share credit card details, will she have the same content available as me?
For example I have iTunes match, all my music available on my iPhone and iPad.
My wife doesn't have iTunes match.
If our accounts share credit card details, will she have the same content available as me?
You can always use more than one account on any device for buying apps. Just sign in with the other one. It used to be necessary to sign in with the right account for updates of apps, but I think in ios7 this isn't necessary any more.
Given that, I don't really know what the use of family sharing is. Most families I know have only one iPad and the family member who needs it uses it.
As others have pointed out, this just makes it easier to do what you already could do with an iTunes account. Apple has also made it so you can't have an extended family unless yo are willing to share a credit card with them; so a bunch of people can't simply setup Family Sharing to avoid purchasing while getting the benefits of their own iTunes account.
In the end, I doubt developers will see much, if any, negative impact from this; and for those with in app purchases they stand to gain additional users as people realize that can d/l apps purchased by other family members.
Not a single thing of what you just said about Home Sharing is true. Have you even tried it? I can grab any app my wife has purchased through her own Apple ID. And there isn't a single thing in that support link he posted saying you can't do that. You seem to be going off of what you are assuming or your interpretation of the support article, I am going off what I am doing with Home Sharing right now.
That's not true at all. Everyone in my home has an entirely different Apple ID. Home Sharing lets you use one Apple ID to link all the others together but everyone puts their OWN Apple ID on their devices. In fact, the "master" Home Sharing Apple ID doesn't even have to be one that anyone uses at all. This is one of those things that most people simply have never really understood.
Kids, I don't think "home sharing" does what you think it does!
First off, when I purchase songs on iTunes and want to "share" them with my wife, there is no need for any "home or family sharing" at all! I just grab the MP3 from the corresponding iTunes folder, copy it over to my wife's computer, she imports it into her iTunes collection - done!
In theory I could do the same with purchased apps, which are also simply stored in some local folder of your drive: just copy them over, import them onto the other iDevice (via iTunes) - done!
But here's the catch: with DRM protected material you won't be able to actually launch that app, unless both persons use the same Apple ID! Because upon launch the application actually checks whether it had been properly purchased (by evaluating some "store receipt") with the given Apple ID! Yes, Sir, that's called copy protection.
Off course that check has to be explicitly done by each app: if it does not properly evaluate the "store receipt" then yes, you can copy and run it on other devices associated with different Apple IDs (which is illegal, off course).
Now what "Family Sharing" adds (allows) is that you actually can run applications with different Apple IDs - but as someone already mentioned: only as long as those Apple IDs refer to the same credit card!
And that's the story.
Yes. I'm doing it right now. You can grab anyone's apps in iTunes on your Home Share. And you only have to be on the same wifi network to access their apps. Once you have the apps they are YOURS and you can use them whenever and wherever you want.
The only issue is that you need their password to update the apps to new versions. But for movies, tv shows, and everything else that don't have updates its just like you purchased them yourself except you can't delete them and still have them show up using the iTunes in the Cloud feature.
I suggest you actually try it before saying you can't do something that support article never said you couldn't do.
The developer doesn't get double money if the family uses all the same Apple Id. And the developer doesn't get double money if the app is on one device, and the second family member just uses the device of the first family member. If two kids want the same game, dad isn't going to pay twice but tell them to swap their iPads.
But you're wrong. If you have Home Sharing set up, yes you can actually grab another person's app and use that app. This is a FACT. Try it yourself. The only downside is that updates require the other person's password. Family Sharing makes things easier to set up and more seamless with some nice extra features but if you wanted to get your wife's app that she purchased without you having to pay for it again, this has always been possible with Home Sharing.
I know you're wrong about that because I have already done it before. Try it and report back. This false statement keeps being reported when it simply is not true.
That's what I thought too. My wife, children and I are all on the same iTunes account and have always had access to each others apps, movies and music.
Simple explanation: the apps actually do not evaluate the "store receipt" (which they should) to actually validate whether you are the eligible owner of that app!
I guess many developers which sell stuff for 0.99$ don't really care about implementing that, which requires some fair share of knowledge about basic cryptography:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4261348/mac-app-store-receipt-validation-code
So you only think what you do has anything to do with "Home Sharing"; in fact, not a single word you said about "Home Sharing" has anything to do with what you think it does ("sharing apps")! "Home Sharing" is all about making your iTunes library (e.g. hosted on some iMac) accessible to another device - using the same Apple ID! (I repeat: using the very same Apple ID!).
I'll quote that for you: "Home Sharing enables you to stream or transfer music, movies, TV shows, apps, and more among up to five authorized computers in your household. To do so, you will need to turn on Home Sharing on each compute using the same Apple ID."
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3819
Everything else is either illegal (e.g. sharing non-DRM protected MP3s) or technically not possible (if the apps properly implement the "store receipt" evaluation).
And I quote
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Because you are using the same Apple ID which allows the usage of a purchased app on up to 5 devices.
Gift Cards
I'm curious if anyone knows how giftcards will work with the the new Family Sharing feature. I have 6 in my family and everyone has their own Apple ID. Currently the kids use gift cards and not a credit card. If I connect everyone to the same credit card will approvals from me charge against their iTunes credit first... then my iTunes credit.... and then the credit card?
I'm curious if anyone knows how giftcards will work with the the new Family Sharing feature. I have 6 in my family and everyone has their own Apple ID. Currently the kids use gift cards and not a credit card. If I connect everyone to the same credit card will approvals from me charge against their iTunes credit first... then my iTunes credit.... and then the credit card?
Please stop spreading that non-sense! First off, you do not have to enable any "Home Sharing" in order to copy around apps! That alone shows that you do not know what you're talking about. I can simply grab the app binary from one computer, copy it to the other, import it on the other device - done! No need to enable "Home Sharing" (which indeed serves a complete different purpose, see my other post).
Well, expect that it does not work - IF the app properly would evaluate the "store receipt", which I guess many many developers simply do not care about investing additional effort (or might even be unaware of that requirement).
The fact that you managed to use apps purchased with one Apple ID and run it on another device with a different Apple ID only shows that the developers of that (presumingly cheap) app did not implement this:
https://developer.apple.com/library...ral/ValidateAppStoreReceipt/Introduction.html
Believe me, that "receipt validation" is not trivial, especially since you need to think about "hiding" that functionality in your binary (even Apple recommends to write your own validation code and not use a common "validation library" - otherwise if one app gets hacked, it would be trivial to hack any other app by reverse-engineering the binary code - but I won't bore you with details here...). That is the reason why many many 0.99$ apps probably can be "freely" (illegally, off course) copied around and used with different Apple IDs.
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Personally, Apple went about this completely wrong. They are setting up the wrong expectations with family sharing. The correct way to do this is not the way Apple has done it. And maybe down the road they will change it around.
The way it should work is this:
Every account holder can allow up to 8 additional users to share their account. The account that is shared to must have the same physical billing and shipping address as the account holder. This prevents a person from sharing with a friend. And since its 'family sharing', a family lives in the same household. It's not, let me share with my parents who live in Florida while i'm in New York.
The account that received the shared access, can use the apps or content as they wish while they are part of that 'family share'. They never 'own' the content.
So a husband can share his account with his wife and 2 kids. The wife can share her account with the husband and 2 kids. And the kids can share with the parents. When the two kids grow up, he removes the kids shared account. The kids no longer have access to the fathers content. The kids also have the fathers account unshared.
The wife gets divorced, and moves. Wife no longer shares his content and the husband loses her account.
So while living in the same family, everyone can share each others content. But if someone was to break away from the family due to death, divorce, or relocating, the sharing is broken.
This way, the owner of the content still owns the content and the people who were sharing the owners content no longer 'own' it. They can't complain of not having it because they never purchased it. If they want it, they can purchase it then.
This is better than account merge where a husband and wife merge accounts, only a few years later decide to get a divorce and now it becomes a mess.
The way it should work is this:
Every account holder can allow up to 8 additional users to share their account. The account that is shared to must have the same physical billing and shipping address as the account holder. This prevents a person from sharing with a friend. And since its 'family sharing', a family lives in the same household. It's not, let me share with my parents who live in Florida while i'm in New York.
The account that received the shared access, can use the apps or content as they wish while they are part of that 'family share'. They never 'own' the content.
So a husband can share his account with his wife and 2 kids. The wife can share her account with the husband and 2 kids. And the kids can share with the parents. When the two kids grow up, he removes the kids shared account. The kids no longer have access to the fathers content. The kids also have the fathers account unshared.
The wife gets divorced, and moves. Wife no longer shares his content and the husband loses her account.
So while living in the same family, everyone can share each others content. But if someone was to break away from the family due to death, divorce, or relocating, the sharing is broken.
This way, the owner of the content still owns the content and the people who were sharing the owners content no longer 'own' it. They can't complain of not having it because they never purchased it. If they want it, they can purchase it then.
This is better than account merge where a husband and wife merge accounts, only a few years later decide to get a divorce and now it becomes a mess.
Nope. The limit is five computers. Unlimited devices.
You really should be sure of your own advice before you say stuff like this.
Nope. According to iTunes Store terms, you can use iTunes Store content from up to five different accounts on a single device.
https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/us/terms.html#SERVICE
(iii) You shall be able to store iTunes Products from up to five different Accounts at a time on compatible devices, provided that each iPhone may sync tone iTunes Products with only a single iTunes-authorized device at a time, and syncing an iPhone with a different iTunes-authorized device will cause tone iTunes Products stored on that iPhone to be erased.
What happens to 17+ apps?
As a developer with a portfolio of apps rated 17+, this Family Sharing scheme makes me slightly nervous. Surely, there is a way to opt-out of this feature just for this reason alone. Time to dig through that documentation...
As a developer with a portfolio of apps rated 17+, this Family Sharing scheme makes me slightly nervous. Surely, there is a way to opt-out of this feature just for this reason alone. Time to dig through that documentation...
There is no "account merge" with family sharing. Everyone has there own account that they can take with them if the leave the family share. It works pretty much like you suggested, except it is based on a credit card rather than an address.
I do like this idea of being able to share apps but I would never add my credit card to my kids iPads. They have iTunes cards given to them so they have a bit of freedom to be able to download apps at there choice.
This is what many do now. The new Family Sharing is better (according to these reports). I'm not sure you understand the issue. My kids will love this, in that it would allow them to put their own card on their account, but we can still pay once for apps amongst the family.
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I agree with Baldimac, I don't think you read it properly. What you describe is exactly what Apple has set up, except for the address-based part, which would be more limiting.
Again, you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. But you are not the only one. Most people don't understand Home Sharing and I fault Apple for not explaining it well. When you turn on Home Sharing, you have to enter a single Apple ID in the Home Sharing setup screen. This Apple ID acts as a master Apple ID. However, in iTunes itself each and every person is still logged into iTunes using THEIR OWN Apple ID. You NEVER sign out of iTunes with your own Apple ID. The whole thing about using a single Apple ID only applies to the Home Sharing setup interface.
So to put it simply, you basically are logged into two different Apple IDs in iTunes. The master Home Sharing Apple ID and your very own Apple ID. The master Apple ID can be an existing one like for instance the head of the household's personal Apple ID. Or it could just be an entirely new one created just for Home Sharing. In either case, all the other family members would never have had to log out of their own personal Apple IDs in iTunes.
It looks like you simply don't understand how it actually works and have never really tried it. Stop trying to interpret Apple's poor explanation and actually use it and you will see what I'm talking about. People can share apps between each other using Home Sharing and Home Sharing does NOT require you to be logged in with a single iTunes Apple ID. You are only asked to use a single Apple ID to set up Home Sharing itself which is not the same as iTunes. Everyone's individual Apple ID that they are logged into on their own computers just use that single Home Sharing master ID to tie into.
It's a bit confusing but that's probably why they came up with this Family Sharing thing which seems to be a lot more clear and more automated.
You are really making yourself look bad here. Look, you're saying that anybody can just copy the binary and Home Sharing isn't needed. And then you're saying that won't work because the app has to be validated. What you aren't understanding is that you're exactly correct that just copying the app isn't going to work because of the validation. That's why it only works if you are using Home Sharing. Home Sharing does the validation. So why you keep insisting Home Sharing is not needed is a mystery to me when you already understand the validation issues. And no this isn't illegal because Apple's iTunes terms say you can do it with up to 5 authorized devices. The terms do not specify between apps or music. This is why sharing apps through Home Sharing authorized devices works but your method of doing it without Home Sharing will not let the app run.
Stop declaring you can't do this through Home Sharing if you haven't actually tried doing it. This is a verifiable FACT that you can share apps among anyone using Home Sharing and it does not require everyone to be logged into iTunes with the same Apple ID. It only requires the Home Sharing setup screen to use the same Apple ID which is entirely different from the Apple ID you are signed into iTunes with on your computers and devices for purchases which can remain DIFFERENT. Just like how you can have a different iCloud ID from the one in iTunes.