Does all this iCloud vs Apple ID email malarky confuse anyone else? Need advice!

[RadicalxEdward]

So I've finally decided to create a new apple id after not being able to use the online portion of iCloud or manage my apple id due to never being given a recovery key nor my iphone being set as an authorized device when i setup two step authentication.

I'd love to have 1 email I use for everything rather than having multiple. That's why i like iCloud. I can go on my mac, phone or any browser and check/update my notes(which I use a lot), contacts, calendar, email, etc. I'm really not a huge fan of gmail anymore, so I'd rather use iCloud.

So I go to set up a new account. It says to create a new Apple ID you have to sign up with a NON-APPLE email address. So I setup a new gmail address and created the apple ID. Then i try to go an setup my new notes account and all that and it says in order to use iCloud functions I need an iCloud email. There's no way for me to use my old one, so I now have to create a new iCloud email address to sync my notes and stuff. So now I have TWO new email accounts just for this. And it seems everywhere I look the two accounts are mixed up and I can't tell what is going where.

Under internet accounts on my mac it says my new iCloud account, my name and my gmail address. And thats the address i use to login to iCloud.com. but if i check my email on iCloud.com it's checking the iCloud account, not the gmail.

WHY the heck do i need TWO email accounts just to make this stuff work. And now that i've had to do this more than once i don't even have names for stuff that I like. My gmail account is the screen name I use for everything, but my iCloud account is just my first/last name. Now I can't even decide which email I should give to people. Whether i should even switch from my current one, etc. :-(

How do you guys use your email addresses? I need advice. I have too many emails to know how to use them effectively anymore.

1) Nodenine******@gmail.com - Current email I use for everything
2) Radical.x.******@icloud.com - (old iCloud) forget about, useless
3) Radicalx******@gmail.com (new) - my new apple id, thinking about switching from current email to one of these new ones.
4) RemyL****@icloud.com - wish i could have used my sn, but at least this works with all the iCloud stuff i like.

 

[impaler]

You don't need two accounts to create one. Just pop on a iOS device and create a new account.

You can create an Apple ID with ANY email address - you then have functionality short of the full functionality offered with an icloud.com email address.

I still have my old .mac.com email address from the .Mac days, and it's also my Apple ID. So my iTunes, iCloud and Apple ID are unified.

 

[AGX]

Remember only that @icloud mail address have some problem with silent mail filter

 

[impaler]

Remember only that @icloud mail address have some problem with silent mail filter

Just to clarify, I'm not sure how literal you meant this statement, but iCloud accounts suffer from the silent mail filtering. This includes .mac and .me addresses. I have icloud, mac and me addresses, and are all aliases to the same account. They remain iCloud accounts and are subject to the same filtering rules.

 

[d21mike]

Just to clarify, I'm not sure how literal you meant this statement, but iCloud accounts suffer from the silent mail filtering. This includes .mac and .me addresses. I have icloud, mac and me addresses, and are all aliases to the same account. They remain iCloud accounts and are subject to the same filtering rules.

I think he was talking about the iCloud Email Service vs. GMAIL Email Service. To be clear iCloud Email Service only supports @icloud.com, @me.com and @mac.com.

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I think if you want to go all in with iCloud you should get an iCloud Email Address and use it as your iCloud AppleID.

My wife and I have our own personal @iCloud.com (was @me.com) AppleID that we use for all things iCloud. Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Family Sharing etc.

We use a different AppleID for iTunes Store (Apps, Music, Movies) and Mac App Store. We share that. We have using long before Family Sharing which we do not use for this purpose.

If you want to consolidate all email on @icloud.com then I would have my other email accounts like GMAIL just FORWARD (just copy or copy and delete) to your New @icloud.com. But you could test for a while so see if you like it.

 

[JohnThomas998281]

I think he was talking about the iCloud Email Service vs. GMAIL Email Service. To be clear iCloud Email Service only supports @icloud.com, @me.com and @mac.com.

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I think if you want to go all in with iCloud you should get an iCloud Email Address and use it as your iCloud AppleID.

My wife and I have our own personal @iCloud.com (was @me.com) AppleID that we use for all things iCloud. Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Family Sharing etc.

We use a different AppleID for iTunes Store (Apps, Music, Movies) and Mac App Store. We share that. We have using long before Family Sharing which we do not use for this purpose.

If you want to consolidate all email on @icloud.com then I would have my other email accounts like GMAIL just FORWARD (just copy or copy and delete) to your New @icloud.com. But you could test for a while so see if you like it.

[doublepost=1464695636][/doublepost]It IS all horribly confusing. I have iCloud account JohnDoe@gmail.com and I just activated email for iCloud on my iPhone, it asked me to choose an ID, so I chose JohnDoe@icloud.com to keep IDs consistent. Easy so far. Now on my Macbook (running El Capitan) I created a new Mail account for JohnDoe@icloud.com which it did but with alias JohnDoe@gmail.com which it would not let me change - you should be able to change it in Mail preferences but it kept freezing with the changes unrecorded.

So my El Capitan Mail client ended up accounts JohnDoe@gmail.com and JohnDoe@icloud.com (with alias JohnDoe@gmail.com). Confusing!

I decided to deactivate JohnDoe@icloud.com and just not use iCloud mail.