If you are unaware, Automatic Downloads is a new feature that lets you purchase content from one of Apple’s stores and have every device automatically download that content, without any syncing or manual action by the user. You can also go to the ‘Store’ section of the Settings app to ensure the correct Apple ID is being used and to turn Automatic Downloads on. Simply sign into the iTunes Store, App Store or iBookstore on all the iOS devices in your family with this shared Apple ID (preferably the one you have already been using for purchases - otherwise you’ll lose your previously purchased content).
This can continue to happen with iOS 5, and in my opinion it should probably be the only service which you share an Apple ID across everyone in a family. I would guess the number 1 reason people currently share an Apple ID is so that they can share Apps, Music, Movies and all the rest of iTunes’ content with their family without having to purchase it multiple times. Note there is somewhat of a partial workaround for this which I have described towards the end of this article.Ģ. use Photo Stream with ID #1 and Documents and Data with ID #2). Only one Apple ID can be used for iCloud, unfortunately this means you can’t mix and match iCloud services with different IDs (ie.Photo Stream must be tied to your iCloud account, which means if you do decide to make it personal, you can’t share photos using Photo Stream with others who have a different iCloud Apple ID associated with their devices.This is my first suggestion because even if you are OK with sharing email and Photo Stream with others, it will become frustrating to see all of your wife’s calendar appointments or contacts synced to your iPhone, or when her Pages documents start appearing on your device. This is the most important suggestion I can give you, iCloud includes a number of new services from syncing mail, calendars, contacts, reminders and bookmarks to Photo Stream to storing your documents and data for third party apps.
With that said, here are my top recommendations for how to deal with sharing an Apple ID and using iOS 5. So this means you can use one Apple ID for iCloud, another for iMessage and another for iTunes and so on. In actual fact there are 6 services in which a different Apple ID can be used: iCloud, FaceTime, iMessage, iTunes Home Sharing, iTunes (includes App Store and iBookstore) and Game Center. FaceTime) which Apple ID to use - and you can set up a mixture of Apple IDs (although only 1 per service). Within the Settings app, you can tell various services (e.g. Jump the break to see all of our tips in dealing with this issue.Įssentially what we want to do is to use multiple Apple IDs on a particular device, sharing the existing Apple ID for purchases and downloads and creating a separate one for iCloud and other services - fortunately Apple has made it fairly easy to do in iOS 5.
The other issue is that iCloud involves a lot of data synchronization and this doesn’t work well with multiple people as it results in data conflicts and devices syncing data (such as calendar events) that are meant for another person in the family.įortunately there are a number of ways to resolve these issues, whilst still benefiting from all of the new iOS 5 and iCloud features. Now that Apple ID is tied to a bunch of services, a lot of which involve personal and private data that you don’t necessarily want to share with others - even family members. Prior to iOS 5, sharing an Apple ID wasn’t really a problem because its main purpose was for purchasing content on iTunes, using it for support purposes and purchasing items on the online Apple Store - all tasks that worked fine when sharing an ID.
As many are realizing as they update to iOS 5 and begin to use iCloud, this can be somewhat problematic when iCloud is used with the Apple ID that is shared by their whole family.
They have increasingly made the PC less important and iCloud has meant that it is no longer the ‘hub’ to which your devices sync to - iCloud is now that hub and importantly, it is all tied to an Apple ID. With the launch of iOS 5 and iCloud on Wednesday, Apple took another huge step towards the Post-PC era.