Me: iPhone 5, The wife: iPhone 4S and iPad 3 for the house - How to setup Apple ID??

[fredericroumi]

So the wife currently has a Blackberry and I have a 4S. As soon as I get my 5 I'm giving her the 4S. We also have an iPad 3 that we share.

My question is, do I create her a separate Apple ID or do I use my current Apple ID for all 3 devices?? What are the pros and cons of either solutions??

Thanks for your help!!

 

[JLee361]

Keep it simple and create separate ones for yourselves. I made the mistake of having two and now I wish I hadn't. Trying to "share" and/or combine is a bad idea. Especially for things like find my iPhone and app store app purchases and managing iCloud storage.

 

[nostresshere]

The good part with ONE Apple ID is that anything you buy will be sync to all three apple devices. That is what we do.

Only reason against it that I can see is if she has totally different things vs you.

In itunes you can deselect items for each device if you want to help with that.

 

[Shockwave78]

I made a separate gmail account for the house iPad....Originally i used my account but all my text messages and face time request were going there. Not the best things for the kids to see sometimes

So really the only proper way to do it in my opinion was to make a separate account for the iPad.

Edit: My main account is for the app store, everything else on the ipad is the secondary email i created for it

 

[lordofthereef]

The good part with ONE Apple ID is that anything you buy will be sync to all three apple devices. That is what we do.

Only reason against it that I can see is if she has totally different things vs you.

In itunes you can deselect items for each device if you want to help with that.

Spot on. I see no reason why sharing a single ID (for purchases) would be a problem. I share mine with my wife. We don't use the @me account for email or anything anyway. No sense in having different accounts. Things like Reminders are wonderful because she or I can add things to a grocery list from the PC, or from either of our devices without necessarily having to tell the other that it was added and it syncs with all devices seamlessly.

 

[midtownhd]

Sharing one single Apple ID allows you to share the apps you purchase.
But if you each have separate phone contacts/notes, you should have separate ones.

 

[Duke&tank]

you both could have your own iCloud account and then have one Apple ID for buying apps songs ETC.


Aaron

 

[Kadman]

With 4 iPhones and 4 iPads, 3 Apple TVs, a MacBook Pro, a MacBook Air and one Airport Express, our family has found a mixed approach works best. For iTunes we use a common account. This lets us share apps, music, movies, across the mobile devices, order movies on the Apple TVs with a common account, and enable AirPlay more easily. But for things like iMessage, Facetime, etc. on the notebooks, iPhones & iPads we have separate Apple IDs for each person. This obviously keeps calls/messages to/from those devices personal. Some people don't realize it but you can use different Apple IDs for different apps/services on one device.

 

[Chip Chanko]

You can use one shared id for the app store and then have separate id's for everything else.

http://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-5-icloud-tips-sharing-an-apple-id-with-your-family/

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39...our-itunes-account-with-multiple-ios-devices/

This has nothing to do with other settings on your phone (email, contacts, icloud). So you can set up individual icloud accounts for each id. My girlfriend and I do this (i use my apple id for everything...she just uses it for the store).