Comment by postalcoder
15 hours ago
Apple also makes it a biznatch to make a developer account separate from your personal account. In Apple's ideal world, multiple accounts should in no circumstance ever exist. I, in an ideal world, would agree with this. But we live in this world, where Apple bans accounts for redeeming legitimate gift cards.
And yet Apple CREATED the multiple-accounts problem for millions of people by implementing their idiotic "Apple ID must be an E-mail address" policy.
So of course people thought that when they changed jobs, cable companies, or whatever... they needed to create a new Apple ID with their new E-mail address. This was reinforced when Apple further stupidified their policy by requiring your ID to be a WORKING E-mail address (originally it didn't actually have to work).
After the outcry over people's App Store and other purchases being scattered across multiple IDs, Apple finally publicly and huffily declared that they weren't going to fix the problem they created by letting people consolidate accounts.
The moral: Don't force people to use E-mail addresses as user IDs. It's stupid on several levels.
> Apple finally publicly and huffily declared that they weren't going to fix the problem they created by letting people consolidate accounts.
They somewhat changed that. It now is possible to move purchases between accounts. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/117294. Looks quite cumbersome to do, and will not apply to everybody (“If an Apple Account is only used for making purchases, those purchases can be migrated to a primary Apple Account to consolidate them.”, “This feature isn’t available to users in India.”)
What's weird, and I'm not sure if it's a documented or undocumented feature, but the account I am logged into on the App Store differs from the one logged into on the system. The system Apple ID is setup with Family Sharing, and the users are able to use apps purchased with the secondary Apple ID.
I haven't transferred the purchases or anything either. The two Apple IDs have different purchases on them, and those on Family Sharing are able to access both.
Interesting. But WTF is a "primary" Apple account? My original Apple ID isn't an E-mail address, so they forced me (and others in that situation) to create another one for iCloud because that one inexplicably has to be an E-mail address.
I use both for quite a few things. Which one is "primary?"
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> And yet Apple CREATED the multiple-accounts problem for millions of people by implementing their idiotic "Apple ID must be an E-mail address" policy.
Ironically they then relented only for India and China because market share too sweet, so all auth developers now need to update the assumption that Apple auth users have an email address. Worst of both worlds :)
Maybe in the 90's before Gmail came about so everyone still used their university or ISP email accounts.
Hotmail came in the mid 90s, Yahoo Mail followed soon, I don't think Apple was cloudy at all back then.
I suppose those mail services were "cloud"...
I am facing this issue right now. I need to create a separate developer account because I am risk averse. Do I need a new phone number for this? Online some people say yes, others say no. I tried creating the account several times but it just doesn't work. At this point I am planning to just get a prepaid SIM card from US Mobile for the phone number.
I set up a couple developer accounts recently for my clients. Just use a new Google Voice number for 2FA. I had to live chat with Apple support to get past initial verification both times and after that setup went fine.
Thanks, that's great to know! I will take this route.
>where Apple bans accounts for redeeming legitimate gift cards.
Is there any evidence of this happening with an actual legitimate gift card and bot one which was stolen or originally purchased via credit card fund.
Slightly off-topic, but stuff like this does not just happen at Apple.
When Cyberpunk 2077 came out, my wife bought it with her credit card and gifted the game to me. It was fine at first. I even managed to play through the game. However when coming back to the game a few months later (to see all the bugfixes), it was gone. I contacted the (gog) and they said it was removed due to automatic fraud detection and that the balance had been paid back to the original credit card (my wife's card, she had obviously not noticed this in her bank statement).
Point being automatic fraud detection systems can wipe out stuff you purchased even months after the fact (or in some cases lock your account)... It feels kafkaesque.
Since it's gog at least you could download the game and save it somewhere.
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https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/
> The card was purchased from a major brick-and-mortar retailer (Australians, think Woolworths scale; Americans, think Walmart scale)
>was already redeemed in some way
This is the important quote showing that the gift card was not legitimate.
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this kind of stuff happens all the time across major companies with minimised support. sure your google account is likely to be there tomorrow but it's only a very good chance that it's not locked forever.
i would be surprised if there's any company with millions of users where .01 or .001 (still a LOT of users) just get screwed with zero recourse
Yes.
https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/
That was already posted and it was not a legitimate gift card.
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The two are related. Apple doesn't want you having multiple accounts, because it wants to ban you for redeeming legitimate gift cards, not just one of your personas.
For Apple Business Manager, Apple forces you to create a separate new account.
Yes - all ABM accounts are Managed Apple Accounts, not Personal ones. You can’t mix and match (they each have different features).
If you create your developer account in another country (or with a card from another country, who knows), the whole thing just crashes and the sign-in on the phone loops.
When encountering this, I updated the device which bricked the appstore, the device has to be fully reset if that happens.