Apple Watch / Apple ID / Fotos / Music

[bmodi]

Hello,

my wife and me are using the same Apple ID. For us this makes perfect sense.

Advantages:
- 1 foto library with all fotos of both of us in full resolution (no manual work necessary, all fotos in 1 library, all fotos with full resolution which is not the case if we would have a foto stream)
- 1 icloud storage (mainly for the fotos library, cheaper than having to pay for two plans)
- in the future just 1 account for Apple Music (=cheaper than family account)

Disadvantage which came up with the Apple Watch
- if we would both have an Apple Watch (at the moment only 1 have one) we could not use "Digital Touch" because we both have the same Apple ID


For Face Time or IMessage Apple provides a solution. But as far as i know there is no solution for "Digital Touch" on the Apple Watch right now.


Right now having two apple id's would be a bigger dissadvantage than not to have the possibility to use "Digital Touch" on the Apple Watch.



What do you think is the strategy Apple follows in regards of this?
What do you think, will there be a future solution like we have for Face Time or IMessage?

Or does already a workaround exist in order that we can use 1 Apple ID + be able to use "Digital Touch"?

 

[Planey28]

The strategy is to use separate Apple IDs...

You won't be able to listen to Apple Music at the same time on your own devices as well, that's why the family sharing membership exists.

It's a personal account system, it's not designed to be shared. You may not find this helpful, but that's the way it is. For digital touch/iMessage/FaceTime you could just use separate Apple ID logins for them, but I really would advise you to start using your own ID for everything, Apple has not designed it to be shared.

 

[bmodi]

Thank you for the feedback.

Hm, the biggest "problem" i see with the fotos library. Two apple id's = two seperated foto libaries.

Right now we have 1 MacBook to maintain our fotos, create foto books and so on. Everything comes outomized to our Mac because its "one".

We also have lots of "Numbers" files, "Pages" files and other stuff saved on icloud drive. Everything is the same on all devices (macbook, ipad, iphones, apple watch). We don't have to take care about all this stuff.

For me this is one of the biggest advantages of the Apple system....everything is just "ones". It's so easy and comfortable.


How could this work with different apple ID's?

 

[Planey28]

Thank you for the feedback.

Hm, the biggest "problem" i see with the fotos library. Two apple id's = two seperated foto libaries.

Right now we have 1 MacBook to maintain our fotos, create foto books and so on. Everything comes outomized to our Mac because its "one".

We also have lots of "Numbers" files, "Pages" files and other stuff saved on icloud drive. Everything is the same on all devices (macbook, ipad, iphones, apple watch). We don't have to take care about all this stuff.

For me this is one of the biggest advantages of the Apple system....everything is just "ones". It's so easy and comfortable.


How could this work with different apple ID's?

For photos, a shared photo stream is the best way to do this (if you set up family sharing, a shared photo stream will automatically be created). You wouldn't be able to organise the photos in the stream, although you could create a separate stream for each album etc.

You can share iWork documents on iCloud.com so that others can view and edit them. You may be able to do this within the apps as well, I'm not sure on that one.

It won't work the exact same way but there's plenty of ways to get it to work, and if you do it this way you'll be able to use Apple Music, Digital Touch etc much more easily.

 

[bangers]

For photos, a shared photo stream is the best way to do this (if you set up family sharing, a shared photo stream will automatically be created). You wouldn't be able to organise the photos in the stream, although you could create a separate stream for each album etc.

That would mean that every photo you take, you would then have to manually move it into the shared stream, as opposed to now where each user of a shared ID can just snap away and they will move into the default stream automatically.