Trying to figure out how to manage a second iPhone

[neilw]

I am a long-time Mac/iOS user, and a recent iPhone user. All iOS devices (my iPhone, iPad, and our dauhghter's iPod touch) sync to my iMac, my iTunes account. Until now, this has been fine. (while my wife has a Macbook, but it's basically a browsing machine, without any local iTunes data (yet)).

Now my wife is getting an iPhone, and I have to figure out how to manage a new device that will not be completely subservient to iTunes on my iMac. We'd like to share most of the data from my iTunes library (apps, music, movies, photos) but stuff like contacts should be separate.

I would assume she'd have to have her own iTunes account, but will that make it hard or impossible to share apps? If we sync her iPhone to my iMac (to have access to my media library), is there a way for her to have a separate contact list?

The effect of iCloud on this whole setup is another variable I don't (yet) know how to manage.

If anyone can give me a high-level approach to dealing with this, I'd appreciate it. I don't want to make a bad decision at the beginning and then need to do massive re-configuration later on.

Thanks in advance...

 

[Acronym]

I am a long-time Mac/iOS user, and a recent iPhone user. All iOS devices (my iPhone, iPad, and our dauhghter's iPod touch) sync to my iMac, my iTunes account. Until now, this has been fine. (while my wife has a Macbook, but it's basically a browsing machine, without any local iTunes data (yet)).

Now my wife is getting an iPhone, and I have to figure out how to manage a new device that will not be completely subservient to iTunes on my iMac. We'd like to share most of the data from my iTunes library (apps, music, movies, photos) but stuff like contacts should be separate.

I would assume she'd have to have her own iTunes account, but will that make it hard or impossible to share apps? If we sync her iPhone to my iMac (to have access to my media library), is there a way for her to have a separate contact list?

The effect of iCloud on this whole setup is another variable I don't (yet) know how to manage.

If anyone can give me a high-level approach to dealing with this, I'd appreciate it. I don't want to make a bad decision at the beginning and then need to do massive re-configuration later on.

Thanks in advance...

in your contacts on your mac make two subfolders one called "<YOUR NAME'S> contacts" AND "<HER NAME'S contacts" then when you sync contacts over select the option to sync certain contact groups only and you both can select your own contacts that you have placed in your contacts groups.

make sense?

 

[neilw]

make sense?

Yes, sounds like that should work fine. I'm such a light user of contacts I didn't even realize you could do that. Thanks.

If she has a different iTunes account/Apple ID, will she be able to sync to my iTunes library without problem?

 

[JRoDDz]

Your wife will need a separate iCloud AppleID for backup and syncing purposes. You will continue to use your AppleID for iCloud. As for iTunes, both devices can use the same appleID so you both can share music, apps, and movies.

In other words, iTunes ID doesn't have to be the same as iCloud.

 

[Acronym]

Yes, sounds like that should work fine. I'm such a light user of contacts I didn't even realize you could do that. Thanks.

If she has a different iTunes account/Apple ID, will she be able to sync to my iTunes library without problem?

if she has a separate itunes account then I think she should still be able to, but I am unsure of how it will differentiate which apps she bought and can sync and which ones you have bought. In my opinion you're better off using the same iTunes account and just having separate iCloud accounts.

 

[JRoDDz]

if she has a separate itunes account then I think she should still be able to, but I am unsure of how it will differentiate which apps she bought and can sync and which ones you have bought. In my opinion you're better off using the same iTunes account and just having separate iCloud accounts.

Yes, the simplest way is same iTunes account and separate iCloud accounts. There is another way too, which I am not fond of, but you can use 2 itunes accounts and 2 iClouds, you would just have to enable "Home Sharing" in iTunes.

 

[neilw]

Thanks for the quick answers, I think I grasp how it should work. Common iTunes account + separate iCloud accounts, with separated contact groups should do the trick.

Now, if one day she wants to maintain her info on her own Macbook, I may need to start over, but I don't anticipate that happening any time soon.

 

[Acronym]

Thanks for the quick answers, I think I grasp how it should work. Common iTunes account + separate iCloud accounts, with separated contact groups should do the trick.

Now, if one day she wants to maintain her info on her own Macbook, I may need to start over, but I don't anticipate that happening any time soon.

she can copy all the contacts/songs/apps/videos/etc.. over to the new mac and you can just authorize the computer and you're good to go

 

[neilw]

she can copy all the contacts/songs/apps/videos/etc.. over to the new mac and you can just authorize the computer and you're good to go

Please stop trying to make my life easy. If I wanted easy, I'd have gotten a Mac. Oh wait a second...

 

[Acronym]

Please stop trying to make my life easy. If I wanted easy, I'd have gotten a Mac. Oh wait a second...

haha am I to detect sarcasm? either way it is easy, mac's are easy to use same with a PC if you know what your doing.

 

[neilw]

haha am I to detect sarcasm? either way it is easy, mac's are easy to use same with a PC if you know what your doing.

Yes, albeit sarcasm of the end-of-the-day half-garbled variety. As a 15-year Mac user I *expect* stuff to be easy, but in this case I'm dealing with some areas that I haven't needed to really touch before. In general, I find managing sync across multiple accounts and multiple systems (iCloud, iTunes, Google accounts) to be a confusing area (I've mostly given up trying to explain it to my parents). Happily, in this instance Apple seems to have provided a straightforward solution.

Turns out this Macworld article directly addresses this, albeit they didn't touch on the Contacts issues.