Comment by VerifiedReports

15 hours ago

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.

9 comments

VerifiedReports

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Someone  12 hours ago

> 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.”)

  • d0lphin  12 hours ago

    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.

  • VerifiedReports  12 hours ago

    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?"

    • Someone  9 hours ago

      That text is badly written. They define that after mentioning it:

      “At the time of migration, the Apple Account signed in for use with iCloud and most features on your iPhone or iPad will be referred to as the primary Apple Account.

      At the time of migration, the Apple Account signed in just for use with Media & Purchases will be referred to as the secondary Apple Account.”

      ⇒ apparently you can be signed into multiple accounts at the same time ¿but I guess with only one account per feature?

      But as I said, that page is badly written. So, maybe I’m understanding it wrong.

      1 reply →

deaux  7 hours ago

> 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 :)