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So infuriated with family share and now can't find fix

A

ashenfang

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 1, 2012
111
16
Keeping a long story short, I have three iPhones and two iPads in our family. Prior to iOS 8 and family share, they each were set up with the SAME apple ID for app store purchases, but each device has their OWN UNIQUE iCloud ID. Worked great for many years. Allowed us to all use the same billing info for purchases, transfer and share purchases ect. But the separate iCloud ID's on iCloud kept contacts, messaging, FaceTime etc all separate from one another.

Over the weekend I setup family share after reading about it and I really liked the "ask to purchase" feature so that when the kids wanted something on their iPad they didn't have to chase one of the parents down to enter the app store password. After a couple hours of TRYING to get the stupid family share to even work and change birthday's on the kids iCloud acts (to enable ask to purchase), it finally appeared to be working...until I realized that none of our iTunes movie purchases were showing up under "movies". Apparently, you can't "share" anything prior to family share. I was tired of screwing with it and removed the family share account and put everything back the way it was before.

Tonight, my son asked for something on the app store. It prompted me for the password and upon entering it, a message came up;

"Unable to Ask Permission"
You can't ask permission because you have signed in with iCloud and iTunes accounts that are not associated with each other."

WTF?! Same message on all devices except my wifes phone. I double checked each device to make sure that my apple ID was signed in to app store, their ID signed into iCloud. But for some reason, its acting like family share is still set up but it doesn't recognize the billing apple ID or the individual iCloud IDs together?????

So confused and ticked that I am unable to use the app store on any of my kids devices. Any suggestions?
 
It took me forever to get it to work but did (think) finally dig it out. This is example how I have it.

You are the organizer! Use YOUR iTunes email.
As for everyone else use their email used for iCloud.

So here's an example how mines set up.
Me: Organizer, Family Purchases I used iTunes email
Wife: Parent, Family Purchases uses same iTunes email as mine.

Kid1 (14 yrs old) used her iCloud email to set up with Ask To Buy ON

Kid2 (10 yrs old) used her iCloud email to set up with Ask To Buy ON

Took Kid1 and Kid2 iPhones and went to to their Apps Store app and signed out of each and signed back in with each of their iCloud email/iPhone

Then to check to see if Ask To Buy worked I choose a Free app and clicked install. Then at popup I clicked Ask on kids iPhone then I got a popup on mine. (I just hit not now or whatever. Was just testing)

BUT BEWARE! Can can remove/add family accounts but don't remove yours. After the 2nd time of removing yours you'll be locked out for 365 days

Hope this makes sense and understand what I'm trying to say
 
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Thats how I had mine set up......


Whats with the 365 day lock out period? Thats ***** retarded.

What I didn't like with family share was the fact that previous purchases that were made prior to the family share sign up are not eligible to be shared and that includes movie purchases that would typically "show up" on the cloud under "movies"
 
ashenfang said:
Thats how I had mine set up......


Whats with the 365 day lock out period? Thats ***** retarded.

What I didn't like with family share was the fact that previous purchases that were made prior to the family share sign up are not eligible to be shared and that includes movie purchases that would typically "show up" on the cloud under "movies"
Click to expand...

yeah the 365 is retarded BUT only applies if you remove ALL in the Family. Keeping the Organizer but removing everyone else more than twice is ok... yeah makes sense!
 
on the phone with apple support now....so far.....as a senior advisor he has not been successful in figuring out the problem. He did confirm that "some" movies will not share because of DRM.....really?

Just needed call with apple support.......conclusion? He has no idea and has "placed a call" with engineers and will call me in the morning......

Im hoping that its not one of those cases where if you "try out" family sharing and you don't like it, you can't go back......that would literally screw people out of real money.....
 
Fix

Had the same problem, quick fix on child's phone and after removal from family sharing, just signed out from the App Store and sign in with a never before used active App Store account On the child's device and then sign out and login with the child's previous email... Can buy/download apps afterwards... Hope it helps
 
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My girlfriend had problems with some apps saying it was unable to be shared. After a few tries it would work. Even apps I purchased 2 plus years ago...
 
I also tried to set it up with only my wife and her iOhone, but the next day started receiving error messages when downloading app updates. I'm presuming its b/c they were originally downloaded under my Apple ID. Anyways, I said **** this; not worth it, and I just changed her back to my Apple ID.

Apple always brags about their ecosystem "just working," and being "magical," but working and magical Family Share is not.
 
Maybe I am doing something different, I don't think I did anything special, but I been able to download music my wife bought before we set up the family share, are you all just having this issue on the iphone/ipad? I been doing it on macbook.
 
MPclk2006 said:
Maybe I am doing something different, I don't think I did anything special, but I been able to download music my wife bought before we set up the family share, are you all just having this issue on the iphone/ipad? I been doing it on macbook.
Click to expand...


Same here. It's working perfectly fine for me and the wife and I can see all her downloads back to the OG iPod. She can also access my old app purchases.

DRM restrictions does make sense. In the agreement with Apple they could have set a guideline about it only being accessible to a single iTunes user or whatnot. So that part is entirely possible, we don't have any movies through iTunes so I cannot test it out
 
I really don't understand what Family Share actually improves over the old system of sharing an iTunes ID and having separate Apple ID's.

It seems like one of those features that sounded great, but the implementation is pretty clunky.
 
ashenfang said:
on the phone with apple support now....so far.....as a senior advisor he has not been successful in figuring out the problem. He did confirm that "some" movies will not share because of DRM.....really?
Click to expand...

This is what I was thinking. And as crappy as it is, I am betting that Apple has their hands tied by the IP holders of said movies. Hopefully family sharing successes will prove to these companies that they need not be so ridiculous. Same thing happened with iTunes music years ago.
 
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