iCloud: Handling different MobileMe and iTunes Accounts

[seeafish]

Right, this post made me sign up to this forum!
Thought I'd add to the confusion and see if anyone could answer this.

I never have had MM, and always used my gmail address for my apple ID. When I initially setup the iCloud features on iOS5 beta 1, I thought I'd try and enter my.name@me.com and expected to see some kind of registration screen. Instead, the phone didn't ask for any password or anything, but simply logged me in! :S It appears it somehow setup this NEW me.com address and associated it with my existing gmail apple id.

Now, I can login to my apple id account using my.name@me.com, but it shows as my "Alternate Email"; my apple ID is still my gmail!
This seeeeeems good, but I was planning on getting rid of gmail and using me.com from now on. Doesn't seem like I can do that now, considering it's somehow magically tied them both together.

Also, I get that super frustrating "this domain is reserved for MobileMe domain" when I try to put me @me.com address as my apple ID.

Anyone got this "issue"?

 

[shandyman]

WRONG. People ARE using multiple IDs, because Apple has forced them to use E-mail addresses as IDs; and when people change E-mail addresses they set up yet another account.

Apple has allowed this defect to persist and provided no means of merging these MULTIPLE accounts. Jeez, man, read.

well whenever i changed my email address (3 times since the first iPhone) i just changed my apple ID at the same time, not hard.

Apple haven't allowed it to happen, people are just not thinking properly!! lol

 

[shandyman]

Right, this post made me sign up to this forum!
Thought I'd add to the confusion and see if anyone could answer this.

I never have had MM, and always used my gmail address for my apple ID. When I initially setup the iCloud features on iOS5 beta 1, I thought I'd try and enter my.name@me.com and expected to see some kind of registration screen. Instead, the phone didn't ask for any password or anything, but simply logged me in! :S It appears it somehow setup this NEW me.com address and associated it with my existing gmail apple id.

Now, I can login to my apple id account using my.name@me.com, but it shows as my "Alternate Email"; my apple ID is still my gmail!
This seeeeeems good, but I was planning on getting rid of gmail and using me.com from now on. Doesn't seem like I can do that now, considering it's somehow magically tied them both together.

Also, I get that super frustrating "this domain is reserved for MobileMe domain" when I try to put me @me.com address as my apple ID.

Anyone got this "issue"?

that's cos the iCloud server is still quite hit and miss with a me.com as apple id, leave it as Gmail until launch

 

[seeafish]

that's cos the iCloud server is still quite hit and miss with a me.com as apple id, leave it as Gmail until launch

Yeah it's what I was planning to do anyway.
With regards to iTunes and purchases however, I too raised a support call with apple about this. They said you can't merge bla bla bla but you can change your email/apple id to whatever you want....unless its a mobile me account =\

Now my MM account was setup using iCloud so it's not technically a MM account, but iTunes simply validates based on the @me.com and therefore doesn't let me change it. Looks like I'm stuck with using Gmail for iTunes forever! (or at least until they change this stupid way of doing things!)

 

[seer]

I played with this last night and it seems like there is not that much to worry about.

I have always used an X@hotmail.com appleID

Yesterday I installed the beta, and signed up using that ID. Worked fine.

Then I changed my email using the apple accounts page to my own domain i.e. X@somethingelse.com. What happened then is I could sign in with the new mail address no problem, and it added the X@hotmail.com as a secondary mail instead. I could still sign in using the hotmail address.

Then when configuring icloud on my mac, I enabled the mail option and it prompted me to pick an @me.com address and I did. Now i could sign into the same account using three different mail addresses!

Then I deleted the X@hotmail.com from the accounts page, and just as expected I can sign into iCloud, appstore, itunes store, whatever using either
X@somethingelse.com or X@me.com (but not X@hotmail.com)

So to me it seems VERY flexible... I dont think people have to worry too much.

 

[seeafish]

I played with this last night and it seems like there is not that much to worry about.

I have always used an X@hotmail.com appleID

Yesterday I installed the beta, and signed up using that ID. Worked fine.

Then I changed my email using the apple accounts page to my own domain i.e. X@somethingelse.com. What happened then is I could sign in with the new mail address no problem, and it added the X@hotmail.com as a secondary mail instead. I could still sign in using the hotmail address.

Then when configuring icloud on my mac, I enabled the mail option and it prompted me to pick an @me.com address and I did. Now i could sign into the same account using three different mail addresses!

Then I deleted the X@hotmail.com from the accounts page, and just as expected I can sign into iCloud, appstore, itunes store, whatever using either
X@somethingelse.com or X@me.com (but not X@hotmail.com)

So to me it seems VERY flexible... I dont think people have to worry too much.

That's cool, however, what if you wanted to use the me.com address as your primary apple ID and don't want any secondary e-mail? Say for example you wish to get rid of your non me.com addresses and just have the sigle e-mail/apple ID? That's what I want to achieve, but can't

 

[hokiepokie07]

How would this work with my wife and me? Right now, I created us an iTunes account on gmail just for app store purchases. I just named it MyFirstName&HerFirstName@gmail.com. Would we still be able to use that to share our app store purchases and have a separate e-mail that syncs all our information separately (bookmarks, contacts, calendar, etc.)?

Thanks

 

[d21mike]

How would this work with my wife and me? Right now, I created us an iTunes account on gmail just for app store purchases. I just named it MyFirstName&HerFirstName@gmail.com. Would we still be able to use that to share our app store purchases and have a separate e-mail that syncs all our information separately (bookmarks, contacts, calendar, etc.)?

Thanks

Yes.

 

[hokiepokie07]

Yes.

How do I find my old purchases on my old gmail name? My wife just recently got an iPad from her work and I'm trying to set it up so we can share purchases. When I created an App Store only gmail account and go to purchase history, it doesn't show anything. How could I get my old purchases to it?

 

[d21mike]

How do I find my old purchases on my old gmail name? My wife just recently got an iPad from her work and I'm trying to set it up so we can share purchases. When I created an App Store only gmail account and go to purchase history, it doesn't show anything. How could I get my old purchases to it?

I did not understand your first post. I did not realize you had multiple accounts for iTunes Purchases. You can not "merge" accounts. Would be best to pick one and maybe rename it. You really only want 1 iTunes Account that you share between the two of you if possible. I assume you could login in to multiple (logout and login and logout and login) but that would be a real hassle. Maybe Apple will allow people to merge accounts in the future but you can't now.

 

[hokiepokie07]

I did not understand your first post. I did not realize you had multiple accounts for iTunes Purchases. You can not "merge" accounts. Would be best to pick one and maybe rename it. You really only want 1 iTunes Account that you share between the two of you if possible. I assume you could login in to multiple (logout and login and logout and login) but that would be a real hassle. Maybe Apple will allow people to merge accounts in the future but you can't now.

Could she still use my old apple ID and be able to have her own e-mail to sync her contacts, calendar, etc? That way, she could download all my apps and we could just share our apps, along with having our own e-mail account and still be able to sync contacts, bookmarks, calendar, etc. when iCloud comes out?

I'd just remove the one I recently created for us, and use the one I've always had

 

[d21mike]

Could she still use my old apple ID and be able to have her own e-mail to sync her contacts, calendar, etc? That way, she could download all my apps and we could just share our apps, along with having our own e-mail account and still be able to sync contacts, bookmarks, calendar, etc. when iCloud comes out?

Yes. On your iPhone under Settings / Store, login in to iTunes Store Account. Under Settings / iCloud, login to iCloud there. Under Settings / Mail, Contacts, Calendars, create your iCloud Account there. You can have multiple accounts. For Calendar you should create a Shared Calendar (with you normal iCloud Account) for both of you to update (if needed). You can't share Contacts like Calendar but could create a shared iCloud Account for just Contacts and add it and for it only activate Contacts. Pretty powerful options.

 

[Jack of Hearts]

I played with this last night and it seems like there is not that much to worry about.

I have always used an X@hotmail.com appleID

Yesterday I installed the beta, and signed up using that ID. Worked fine.

Then I changed my email using the apple accounts page to my own domain i.e. X@somethingelse.com. What happened then is I could sign in with the new mail address no problem, and it added the X@hotmail.com as a secondary mail instead. I could still sign in using the hotmail address.

Then when configuring icloud on my mac, I enabled the mail option and it prompted me to pick an @me.com address and I did. Now i could sign into the same account using three different mail addresses!

Then I deleted the X@hotmail.com from the accounts page, and just as expected I can sign into iCloud, appstore, itunes store, whatever using either
X@somethingelse.com or X@me.com (but not X@hotmail.com)

So to me it seems VERY flexible... I dont think people have to worry too much.

So it is possible to change an iCloud @me address to an @gmail address and vice versa as a primary account? If you created an @me address using mobileme, the account name was unable to be changed. Anyone?

 

[MobiusStrip]

The problem isn't that you can't change your E-mail address on the account. It's that people have already set up multiple accounts because their E-mail addresses have changed in the past, and Apple says the E-mail address has to be valid. For example, someone switches cable companies or ISPs and realizes a couple weeks later that his iTunes account is now tied to a defunct account. So he thinks they need to set up a new Apple ID using his new E-mail address.

He may not even realize that Apple is about to create an ID from their E-mail address, and that he won't have the chance to set up a legitimate ID.

If people were allowed to use any unique string of characters as their IDs, this wouldn't be an issue. Your E-mail address should be separate from your ID.

You don't go to the bank and identify yourself solely with your street address. Hell, you don't go to a bank Web site and identify yourself with an E-mail address either. In fact, you don't even do that to sign up to post in this forum.

Yet somehow Apple doesn't get it.

 

[ArmanUV]

WRONG. People ARE using multiple IDs, because Apple has forced them to use E-mail addresses as IDs; and when people change E-mail addresses they set up yet another account.

Apple has allowed this defect to persist and provided no means of merging these MULTIPLE accounts. Jeez, man, read.

I have, but you obviously have not. If you used multiple IDs to purchase apps and books and etc then that's a completely different problem and always has been. In this topic we're talking about what happens when we add iCloud to the mix and the answer is NOTHING. you can keep using one ID for purchases and another one (like your @me.com account) for iCloud (mail, contacts, ...).

 

[Jack of Hearts]

Maybe I need to be more specific so my question can be better answered. I am aware that people have been creating accounts with multiple email address but I'm wondering if the primary email (which is ones username essentially) can be changed from @gmail to the iCloud @me. Originally when someone made a mobileme account, it automatically created a NEW apple id that could not be changed. Any other account is able to have its primary email address (username) changed as many times as they want except to a @me address.

What I'm wondering is if a iCloud @me address is able to be changed to an @gmail address or vice versa. If a developer with a beta build should could go to this:

https://appleid.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MyAppleId.woa/

...and see if their primary iCloud @me Apple ID is able to be changed to something else, I'd really appreciate it. I think that Apple changed the action of creating a new Apple ID with each @me address with the transition to iCloud.

 

[Plas00]

Here, offical FAQ from Apple's iCloud.

Here, offical FAQ from Apple's iCloud.

MobileMe Accounts

If I use different accounts for iTunes and MobileMe, can I merge them into a single account and use it with iCloud?

No. You cannot merge two accounts into one. However, you will be able to move your MobileMe account (yourname@me.com) to iCloud and, if you choose, you can continue to use a different iTunes account for store purchases and iTunes in the Cloud.

 

[shandyman]

Here, offical FAQ from Apple's iCloud.

MobileMe Accounts

If I use different accounts for iTunes and MobileMe, can I merge them into a single account and use it with iCloud?

No. You cannot merge two accounts into one. However, you will be able to move your MobileMe account (yourname@me.com) to iCloud and, if you choose, you can continue to use a different iTunes account for store purchases and iTunes in the Cloud.

yea, we pretty much knew that already

 

[livehappy8]

Time frames

So, I've done a LOT of digging into this as my iTunes user name is my old mac.com (pre me.com) address with my OLD married name. Let me tell you, if there was a way to change the user name on my itunes account, I would. Obviously I dumped that email address when I got divorced in 2006. So I have the same problem everyone else is having...now with everything being merged onto icloud, it's becoming a big issue. I have information on both that I would like to keep on my devices. But I have literally over a decade of iTunes purchases under my user ID. But I have the last 6 years of contacts, calendars, etc. on my mobile me.

What I have discovered, and why there seems to be some disagreement on if you can change your ID or not deals with when you set your ID up. We early adopters, are screwed for now. You can't change it...ANYWHERE (yet???!!!) But if you were late to the game or switched, it IS possible to change your user ID (though I was told you can only do it once).

Anyway, I know this doesn't help. Believe me, I'd LOVE to not have to sign in all the time with first.formerlast@mac.com...but unless I'm willing to give up 10s of thousands of tracts, I have to stick to what I have for now.

As a long time Apple user (my whole "tech" life/since I was 9) and a current Apple user (I'm partner at an app firm) I'm disappointed that Apple hasn't addressed this issue.

I know it's not as easy as flipping a switch, my guess is our accounts are locked in some archaic legacy system, but I really wish they would pull it together and bridge the gap here.