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iCloud Sucks for Married People

Small White Car

Small White Car

macrumors G4
Original poster
Aug 29, 2006
10,972
1,468
Washington DC
I'm getting more and more frustrated with Apple's inability to understand that married people want to share some things but not other stuff. The ability to customize their services for my wife and I is getting more and more difficult as time goes on.

The latest blow? iCloud now apparently syncs the "My Info" field of the iPhone settings, so Siri thinks both of our phones belong to the same person. This "feature" is not broken out into its own toggle switch like other things are. So both phones have to belong to one or the other of us according to Siri.

"But Small White Car," you say. "iCloud is clearly a personal service. You shouldn't be sharing it!"

Ok, cool. Then Apple needs to figure out how I can split us up but but still share Photostream, Contacts, Bookmarks, Calendars, Reminders, and Pages documents with my wife. (I can sync some of these now, but definitely not all.)

Basically, no matter which way I do it I have to make huge compromises. For the time I guess I'll settle for letting my phone call me 'Lori.' That sucks, but it's better than the other way around.

Sorry, no question here, I know you can't help me. I'm just ranting because, gosh darn it, it's fun.

(And don't even get me started on the Mac question of "do we share a user account or not?" That one's an equally horrible choice.)
 
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Small White Car said:
I'm getting more and more frustrated with Apple's inability to understand that married people want to share some things but not other stuff. The ability to customize their services for my wife and I is getting more and more difficult as time goes on.

The latest blow? iCloud now apparently syncs the "My Info" field of the iPhone settings, so Siri thinks both of our phones belong to the same person. This "feature" is not broken out into its own toggle switch like other things are. So both phones have to belong to one or the other of us according to Siri.

"But Small White Car," you say. "iCloud is clearly a personal service. You shouldn't be sharing it!"

Ok, cool. Then Apple needs to figure out how I can split us up but but still share Photostream, Contacts, Bookmarks, Calendars, Reminders, and Pages documents with my wife. (I can sync some of these now, but definitely not all.)

Basically, no matter which way I do it I have to make huge compromises. For the time I guess I'll settle for letting my phone call me 'Lori.' That sucks, but it's better than the other way around.

Sorry, no question here, I know you can't help me. I'm just ranting because, gosh darn it, it's fun.

(And don't even get me started on the Mac question of "do we share a user account or not?" That one's an equally horrible choice.)
Click to expand...

Not really a rant at all because it makes so much sense.

Finally we have shared PhotoStream which will help with pictures. Apple used to allow the sharing of contacts through MobileMe which was cool. Now you have to use CardDAV or LDAP or something and iCloud doesn't support easy sharing either.

I haven't seen people want to share bookmarks as much but I think the ideal goal would be to basically be able to create a unified way of sharing just about any content. Like an iCloud gateway or something.

Don't get me started on Notes and Reminders. The whole "on boarding" (new hipster buzzword) process for iCloud needs to improve. I did read a post a couple of months about about iCloud and Business. If there is work going on to deliver better collaboration for iCloud that can only help families that are under fire trying to manage a litany of Apple ID and now iCloud logins
 
blueroom said:
Your iCloud ID should be personal.
Your iTunes account can be shared among family for purchases.

Keep them separate.
Easy enough to email / sms iCal stuff.
Click to expand...

This.

If you use separate iCloud accounts and one iTunes library you can each have your own info but share your apps and songs and such.
 
You can still have a personal account with solid collaboration features. Now we have all of these easily accessible like CardDav and CalDAV but the problem that I see today is how burdensome it is to share data.

The usage scenarios are at time obvious. A shared Reminders list for Groceries that you and the wife can update.

Shared groups for contacts (great for unifying a Family contact group or whatever)

If Cloud technology is to become more than just a hard drive in the sky it needs to become a reliable collaboration hub more than anything.
 
nuckinfutz said:
The usage scenarios are at time obvious. A shared Reminders list for Groceries that you and the wife can update.

Shared groups for contacts (great for unifying a Family contact group or whatever)

If Cloud technology is to become more than just a hard drive in the sky it needs to become a reliable collaboration hub more than anything.
Click to expand...

I love shared reminders.... we use it for groceries list and its great. However it would be more helpful if we could post to the reminder list with notification. For example, I create a shared list. If I post something with a dated reminder I get the notification, but the other person(s) do not.
 
blueroom said:
Your iCloud ID should be personal.
Your iTunes account can be shared among family for purchases.

Keep them separate.
Easy enough to email / sms iCal stuff.
Click to expand...

I would love to, but I have yet to figure out:

1) How to have 2 iCloud Photostreams load photos into a single Aperture Library.

2) Passbook has me kind of confused...we just use one Starbucks account. I'm assuming splitting up iCloud means I'll have to register for 2 accounts from every retailer? Not impossible, but an unnecessary pain in the rear.

3) So who owns our cloud documents? I don't think Mac Pages or Numbers can share their files with 2 iCloud accounts, can it?

4) I admit this is a "me being cheap" thing, but right now I pay $40 per year to back up 18 GB of data. By splitting up I'll have to pay $80 per year to back up the same 18 GB. I can pay it if I have to, but it's just one more example of Apple being married-unfriendly.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I did a little more research since my first post: (Things that I can fix in an official way by having 3 iCloud accounts: 2 personal and 1 shared: Contacts*, Calendars, Reminders, Safari bookmarks, Notes, and Find my iPhone. Those things have an Apple-made solution...why can't the others on my list??)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


* 5) Sharing contacts is only workable because I use @me and my wife uses @Gmail. It's a long story, but if we both used @Me addresses I think I'd be stuck not being able to make contacts work too. In other words, Apple didn't make that one work, I just got lucky.



Basically, I think my choices are:

a) Use shared iCloud and put up with the stuff I complained about originally

or

b) Ditch iCloud and go to Google/Dropbox/etc.


If those are my choices then I repeat: iCloud sucks for married people.
 
Small White Car said:
I'm getting more and more frustrated with Apple's inability to understand that married people want to share some things but not other stuff. The ability to customize their services for my wife and I is getting more and more difficult as time goes on.

The latest blow? iCloud now apparently syncs the "My Info" field of the iPhone settings, so Siri thinks both of our phones belong to the same person. This "feature" is not broken out into its own toggle switch like other things are. So both phones have to belong to one or the other of us according to Siri.

"But Small White Car," you say. "iCloud is clearly a personal service. You shouldn't be sharing it!"

Ok, cool. Then Apple needs to figure out how I can split us up but but still share Photostream, Contacts, Bookmarks, Calendars, Reminders, and Pages documents with my wife. (I can sync some of these now, but definitely not all.)

Basically, no matter which way I do it I have to make huge compromises. For the time I guess I'll settle for letting my phone call me 'Lori.' That sucks, but it's better than the other way around.

Sorry, no question here, I know you can't help me. I'm just ranting because, gosh darn it, it's fun.

(And don't even get me started on the Mac question of "do we share a user account or not?" That one's an equally horrible choice.)
Click to expand...

Spot on analysis.

iCloud's sharing across accounts is definitely in dire need of implementation. Remarkably, it's something that I'd argue MobileMe did better with their whole Family Account scheme.

You know what they say:apple.com/feedback
 
Good man! I have to believe they are working on something since it is such a common need and frustration.
 
whsbuss said:
I love shared reminders.... we use it for groceries list and its great. However it would be more helpful if we could post to the reminder list with notification. For example, I create a shared list. If I post something with a dated reminder I get the notification, but the other person(s) do not.
Click to expand...

Whoops. Shared Reminders already there using the same easy to use methodology that Calendars iCloud uses. Yet notifications would be the finishing touch.

Looks like we'll be waiting a bit longer for Contacts and Note sharing

http://www.macworld.com/article/2013415/how-to-share-family-contacts.html
 
The key, is to study what Apples intent is for iCloud & it's users. If one takes that approach you can make a more informed decision. Apple's cloud is not for everyone, even though it's promoted that way.

Some may choose to ignore iCloud & use another service. That's the value of choice & competition.

Despite Apples attempt to be everything, and do everything, that's a daunting task to pull off.

Like the saying goes "buyer beware".
 
blueroom said:
Your iCloud ID should be personal.
Your iTunes account can be shared among family for purchases.

Keep them separate.
Easy enough to email / sms iCal stuff.
Click to expand...

This 100 times over. You're iCloud account is not meant to be shared with other people, but instead various content types have ways of sharing such as shared calendars, shared reminder lists, shared photo stream, etc.

It's like complaining about a car because everytime you get in to drive it, the seat is positioned the way your significant other wants it. Not every car has two different keys with seating presets and AppleID's/iCloud accounts are not meant to be shared in this way.
 
blueroom said:
Your iCloud ID should be personal.
Your iTunes account can be shared among family for purchases.

Keep them separate.
Easy enough to email / sms iCal stuff.
Click to expand...

Using contacts on the mac you can log into two iCloud accounts and move or copy contacts or groups between iCloud accounts. It seems to be the only app to support this.
 
Christoffee said:
Using contacts on the mac you can log into two iCloud accounts and move or copy contacts or groups between iCloud accounts. It seems to be the only app to support this.
Click to expand...

Yes, it appears that OSX Contacts offers advanced features not found anywhere else.

You can sync up groups with Google calendar or a NAS that support iCal (Synology does).
 
Me and my wife have joint and individual devices.

We have a joint@gmail.com for all purchases. This is used as the iTunes and iCloud account on the Mac and iPad. And also as the iTunes account on the iPhones.

We also have husband@gmail.com and wife@gmail.com as the main iCloud account on our iPhones. Additionally, the joint@gmail.com account is logged in on the iPhones as an additional iCloud account. So we have access to calendar, reminders etc that are shared and personal. We also have separate photo streams, but share one also.

In addition, you can also share calendars, events, reminder lists, and photo streams.

The only thing that does not work is Siri. This seems to be attached to the iTunes account, not iCloud or the device. I asked a genius about this he was useless, he said its attached to the device.
 
Gav2k said:
Settings > mail contacts & calendars > my info.
Click to expand...

If that is a reply to me, I agree, Siri is attached to the My Info data. But if I change the info on my phone that contact is pushed to my wife's phone and the iPad.

As I said above, all devices use joint@gmail.com for the iTunes store. On the iPhones joint@gmail.com is used as a secondary iCloud account to access joint data; joint@gmail.com is the main iCloud account on the iPad. I accept that there are connections between all devices, but do not know precisely how or why the My Info data is pushed about.

I have not experimented with it, as this is the only issue I have with iCloud now and it's not a biggy.
 
Christoffee said:
If that is a reply to me, I agree, Siri is attached to the My Info data. But if I change the info on my phone that contact is pushed to my wife's phone and the iPad.

As I said above, all devices use joint@gmail.com for the iTunes store. On the iPhones joint@gmail.com is used as a secondary iCloud account to access joint data; joint@gmail.com is the main iCloud account on the iPad. I accept that there are connections between all devices, but do not know precisely how or why the My Info data is pushed about.

I have not experimented with it, as this is the only issue I have with iCloud now and it's not a biggy.
Click to expand...

Do you both share contact data using the joint account? ...or do you both keep separate contacts?

I'm guessing you could turn off the syncing of contacts for the joint icloud account and only have contact syncing on for your personal icloud accounts.

Changes to contacts would not be synced between each of your iphones, but that would solve the my info problem.
 
I didn't see any posts regarding calendar sharing...while Contacts lacks family-friendly sharing, Calendar sharing is really easy.

On your Mac's Calendar.app, look at the left panel that shows your list of calendars. Control (or right) click the calendar you want to share and you will see an option for "Sharing Settings" - you can add other iCloud IDs so they can access your calendar, and vice versa.
 
The Apple ID is actually more well thought out than I originally thought. When my wife set up her own Apple ID for her phone and iPad she had to enter payment information for purchases. iTunes recognized the payment information as being the same as mine and applied my apple id to purchases. So she is always logged into her account until a purchase is made at which point it automatically asked for my id and password. Once purchased it's back to her account. All of that is done automatically. Calendars are easy to share. Go into the iCal app and go into the "calendars" section. You can share any of the listed calendars (or create a new one to share) with anyone with an iCloud account. It works seamlessly. Contacts are also fairly easy to share across.
 
The way my wife and myself have it setup is on we have separate iCloud accounts. 1 on each iPhone, both on the iPad and MacBook Pro. Then we do all purchases across all devices for apps, music, iTunes Match etc across all the devices. The phones are personal devices, the iPad and Mac you are a lot more likely to share with family.

This way we can share all apps, music, movies, books etc while the iCloud accounts keep all contacts, calendars, notes, mail etc separate. The only problem is that on the iPad and Mac you can have multiple iCloud accounts but FaceTime and iMessage can only use the primary iCloud account. So if someone wants to FaceTime my wife on the iPad or Mac they have to contact her through my iCloud account.

We could set up user accounts on the Mac but it is just a hassle switching user accounts all the time so we just use the one account.

It all works really well.
 
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