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Multi-iPhone households - what is your iTunes account setup?

C

chriskzoo

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 25, 2005
368
0
We are going to be a two iPhone house setup for the first time and had a few questions:

1) Do you use the same iTunes account on both phones? Obviously if I purchase an app I would like my wife to not have to purchase it as well.
2) Do you have to use the same MobileMe account on both phones or can can you just specify a different @me.com email address?
3) Do you get any conflicts with apps showing up on both phones? For example, if I download an app on my iPhone, will is sync to my wife's iPhone if we are on the same iTunes account?
 
I don't know how many times I have to say this; Use different User Accounts on your mac, or whatever you're using.

You should be doing that anyway.

It will prevent cross-syncing and ease a LOT of conflicts.

Man, why are people so reluctant to make separate user accounts?!
 
MrCheeto said:
I don't know how many times I have to say this; Use different User Accounts on your mac, or whatever you're using.

You should be doing that anyway.

It will prevent cross-syncing and ease a LOT of conflicts.

Man, why are people so reluctant to make separate user accounts?!
Click to expand...

Maybe because if I create a new account, then I lose access to all the stuff we already have in iTunes (music, etc.)? Why would I want two copies of all that filling up my Mac?
 
No...you don't.

Drag all of the content out of the Users folder and into a Shared folder. All of the music you currently have will be accessible to both. Then, if your wife downloads a song, you can drag it to your library as well, sharing the same copy of that song.

If she deletes a song, she can choose to leave the file so that you can keep the song.

It's so much easier than people make it out to be.
 
Two accounts

My wife and I also have two accounts. However we have two different computers and two different iPhones. We use the sharing feature between our iTunes libraries. It's pretty easy. We also have all of our music on a network media hard drive. That way all of the music is accessible on both computers and our PS3. Either way, I would recommend two accounts. My wife and I also share a MobileMe account so that if one of us puts something on a calendar it updates both phones and MobileMe and my Outlook calendar.
 
My girlfriend and I share an account, it's really not a problem. We both add whatever music we want, use different computers and pay for an app only once, yet both are able to download it.

Who told us about this idea? The girl at the Apple store who sold us our phones.
 
MrCheeto said:
I don't know how many times I have to say this; Use different User Accounts on your mac, or whatever you're using.

You should be doing that anyway.

It will prevent cross-syncing and ease a LOT of conflicts.

Man, why are people so reluctant to make separate user accounts?!
Click to expand...

He asked about iTunes and Mobile Me, not local user accounts.
 
Yeah, I guess I could clear up that my wife and I have two iTunes accounts and only buy/download apps, songs, videos, etc once and use the "Share Library" feature. We do really well with one MobielMe account.
 
bundu said:
My girlfriend and I share an account, it's really not a problem. We both add whatever music we want, use different computers and pay for an app only once, yet both are able to download it.

Who told us about this idea? The girl at the Apple store who sold us our phones.
Click to expand...
So are your phones like identical? i.e. pics and stuff? Is this easy to do? Only had one iPhone in my house but may be adding two soon, just curious.
 
NikeTalk said:
So are your phones like identical? i.e. pics and stuff? Is this easy to do? Only had one iPhone in my house but may be adding two soon, just curious.
Click to expand...

No. You still pick whatever you want on your phone. The point is that you both get to pick from the same master list of stuff.
 
Small White Car said:
Because is makes no sense, has several disadvantages, and no advantages.

So, uhm...that's why?
Click to expand...

Oh gee, you're right! I forgot how much of an advantage it is to have to argue over desktop images, file locations, peeping and overall settings.

See what I mean? It's like they have an anxiety of having more than one user. Sad, really.
 
I have an iphone and so does my wife. We use one itunes account. She rarely ever hooks her phone up to itunes. I recently started using itunes to get things organized, create ring tones and im going to start creating play lists to transfer to my iphone. Once she gets the new Iphone i will make her use Itunes to keep her phone organized. What are issues in sharing one Itunes account? If we have multiple logins to the mac wont our settings and what not be different? Currently we dont use itunes to purchase music. Just apps and download podcasts.
 
MrCheeto said:
Oh gee, you're right! I forgot how much of an advantage it is to have to argue over desktop images, file locations, peeping and overall settings.

See what I mean? It's like they have an anxiety of having more than one user. Sad, really.
Click to expand...

I've been married for 6 years and not ONE of those things has ever been an issue. Not even thought about a little bit.

Maybe you just like arguing with your wife? How do these issues even come up? "File locations?" I have a folder with my stuff and she has a folder with her stuff. What is there to argue about?
 
1. All of these problems are non-existent in my life. Loaners don't need somebody taking up bed space and wasting valuable resources. XD

2. Normal people like to feel like they have total control over a single user, allowing other users to do as they like, too.
 
NikeTalk said:
So are your phones like identical? i.e. pics and stuff? Is this easy to do? Only had one iPhone in my house but may be adding two soon, just curious.
Click to expand...

Nope. We both have different pictures (I wouldn't want her pics!) and different music. Like I said, we use two different computer.

The only advantage thus far has been why we originally did it: paying once for an app we can both download.
 
our setup

My wife and I have several macs, two iphones, two ipods and...one iTunes account. We've set up our computers to automatically share iTunes libraries (one of my favorite features), so even though I sync through my MacBookPro and she syncs through an iMac, we have access to all of the same music, and we don't have to make sure that every single computer is "authorized."

Now, if you don't want to share playlists, scrolling through his/hers to get to yours, then maybe it doesn't work for you. But we've never had a single problem. You just plug yours in, select what you want synced (if you can't sync your entire library), and you're good to go.

Plus, you don't have to pay for apps more than once.
 
Tilpots said:
Is there any kind of guide from apple to explain the 2 iphone 1 mac options? Searched, but can't find anything useful.
Click to expand...

There's really nothing to explain.

Use your phone like you want to and let the other person use their phone like they want to. You can pretty much ignore what they do.

What part has you worried?
 
My wife and I have separate accounts on my MacBook, and we each have our own iTunes accounts. Frankly, it seems like pretty basic computer policy to set up multiple accounts on a multi-user computer. Besides, my wife most definitely does not need administrator priviliges.

As for iTunes, we each had our own accounts before we met, and I saw no reason to change that. It would make no sense for us to share a single iTunes account; all it would do is make a nightmare of playlists and unwanted music to sort through. She would want very little of my music, and I would want almost none of hers.

Besides, any music or apps we want to share can easily be managed. My whole collection is in unprotected 256 Kbps AAC, and hers is mostly MP3 and 128 Kbps AAC. If disk space ever became an issue, we could use shared folders to prevent redundancy. Any apps we want to share (which are, in fact, very few in number) we easily can simply by having the other sign in and re-downloading the apps we want to share.

Small White Car: what possible disadvantage do you see to maintaining multiple user accounts in such a situation? I can think of any.
 
Hate to sound slow but just want to understand correctly.

I could have an iPhone and my brother an iPod touch and we could share music and apps if we had one acct?
 
thelatinist said:
Small White Car: what possible disadvantage do you see to maintaining multiple user accounts in such a situation? I can think of any.
Click to expand...

Our photos, music, movies, TV shows, and apps are all easily shared between us. We can sit down and instantly access anything at any time.

If you want to share stuff then you have to go through ridiculous workarounds (I know, I helped a friend set one up) with ridiculous extra steps all the time (like having to add every song you buy to iTunes twice) that can just stop working when you least expect it (just ask my friend about 'permissions' for some fun stories).

And that's just iTunes. I can search all our mail at once, so when my wife says "what time is the party?" I can just search for it instead of having to search one account and then switching over to the other account to search again when it turns out she got the invitation e-mail instead of me.

Our iPhoto library is huge. My wife enjoys being able to grab stuff from it when she's writing an e-mail or making a DVD. If they were only in my account then she couldn't do that. Unless, you know, you go through one of those ridiculous workarounds that just adds complexity and makes it harder to deal with everything (and makes it more likely that you'll mess something up and end up with some photos in one account and some in another account with no knowledge about where to go for which).

Basically, it adds more work and gives no return. I'll work for things that have some value, but I'm not gonna waste time to fix problems that doen't exist.

EDIT: I wouldn't be opposed to seperate accounts if all this stuff just worked. But it doesn't. Not even close. If Apple ever wants to add these features then I could see myself using seperate accounts. But right now it's way, way too much work.
 
In my opinion, you are seriously overstating the complexity and unreliability of using multiple accounts and shared folders. It works very well in my household.

It is also untrue that there are no benefits to isolating accounts. By isolating accounts you are able to maintain individualized usage data, play counts, and ratings. You are able to get personalized recommendations based on your own preferences, and are able to improve the quality of shuffle based on your own listening habits and ratings. Finally, you lower the risk of accidental corruption and deletion of other people's data. You may not find these benefits compelling, but that does not make them non-existant.
 
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