I have a last question... When you explain your app purchases take advantage of Family Sharing as expected: are these app purchases made through your iCloud account or through your other "iTunes Apple ID"? Another user above, @Bshank, seems to imply the purchases of both accounts should be available through Family Sharing but I may have misunderstood him.
Apple knows that I have two (2) Apple IDs and consolidates the Family Sharing behind the scenes and is managed via Preferences/Settings/iCloud on my Mac. When I open the previously identified settings dialog and select Manage Family it shows me as the Organizer under my Apple ID that I created for MobileMe which later morphed into my iCloud Apple ID, which I call my iCloud Apple ID. There are two (2) tabs on this dialog: Family Members and My Apps & Services.
The Family Members tab shows the organizer (me) and family members. The Apple ID associated with me is my iCloud Apple ID. However, on the right side of the dialog the Purchases and Music section lists my Apple ID that I originally created for iTunes music/book purchases, which I call my iTunes Apple ID.
The My Apps & Services tab has four (4) sections: Purchase Sharing, Apple Music, iCloud Storage, and Location Sharing.
The Purchase Sharing section again shows my iTunes Apple ID and the checkbox to enable family sharing of apps, music, movies, and books that are purchased via iTunes, along with payment info.
The Apple Music section (apparently) shows whether you have purchased a single or family plan. In fact, mine does not show that I have a single plan but instead includes a button to allow me to purchase a family plan. Odd.
The iCloud Storage section shows my current storage plan along with usage metrics and a button to enable or disable family sharing of my iCloud storage plan. This is where you flip the switch to share a storage plan. Keep in mind that you're buying capacity and not a storage device, so flipping this over to the family setting does not involve anything physically being copied or moved.
The Location Sharing section here is just for Find My Friends and Messages, not location sharing in general. I guess they needed somewhere to stick it and putting it under your iCloud settings was as good as anywhere else.
In summary, having two Apple IDs does not hurt your family sharing in any way. You can still do everything you want to do. But it creates an oddity of having two Apple IDs that are not simple aliases. Each Apple ID is a moniker for a different set of identification scenarios that covey certain privileges/authorizations. The way Apple lays everything out in the iCloud settings configuration dialogs implies that they have very clear and distinct knowledge about the two IDs being bound and even exhibiting a certain parent-child relationship. Still, Apple will not allow these two IDs to be collapsed into a single ID or even treated as aliases. I still get periodically queried to supply an Apple ID set of credentials and I need to always discern between which one it is asking for, in addition to remembering two login ids and passwords. Not a really BFD, but still an annoyance.
I share three Apple IDs using Family Sharing. But someone recently mentioned that Family Sharing doesn't share in-app purchases. Seems like an odd restriction, one that doesn't really affect me since I'm basically using it to access previously purchased apps under different IDs and moving forward under one new one, so I don't have any old apps that allow in-app purchases. Can you confirm one way or the other? To me Family Sharing was a no brainer way of getting around Apples Apple ID merging problem, but I could see where this might be an issue to some ...
mac_128 said: I share three Apple IDs using Family Sharing. But someone recently mentioned that Family Sharing doesn't share in-app purchases. Seems like an odd restriction, one that doesn't really affect me since I'm basically using it to access previously purchased apps under different IDs and moving forward under one new one, so I don't have any old apps that allow in-app purchases. Can you confirm one way or the other? To me Family Sharing was a no brainer way of getting around Apples Apple ID merging problem, but I could see where this might be an issue to some ...
We switched to family sharing a while back and I'm fairly pleased with it so far. I basically invited the other IDs and added our child with parental controls and such. Things were just getting too crazy at each upgrade trying to keep us all under one ID for apps, but separate IDs for Calendar, etc. (which we had to do before family sharing). We finally gave up and subscribed to Apple Music, since Apple took away the home-server music functionality of iTunes. (I'm still unhappy about being forced to do that, but my wife enjoys the broad access to more music, so it's a kind of OK trade-off.)
I still have some pre-AppleID music I need to deal with some day, as I get popups on some tracks... but I suppose I should just figure out how to fix that with Apple Music. It's all a bit of a mess I just haven't had the time to dig into. I just want all my music (photos, videos, books) in one place where everyone (in our family) can access them. I feel like we were closer to that about 10 years ago than now.
I just tried to change my gmail account to my iCloud account and the system will not allow it. I get an error message stating I can’t use iCloud addresses.
you can't switch a gmail etc to an existing iCloud because that would require merging existing accounts which still can't be done
Wait. So if my current AppleID is set up with the email "cornchip01@gmail.com" (not my actual one), I can't change it to "cornchip02@icloud.com" (not what I'm planning on changing it to)?
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Not sure I follow ... I use my .Mac addresses every day. Just don't use your .me and .icloud accounts?
That said, has anybody here managed to convert a third party e-mail address Apple ID to a .mac address?
I still have some pre-AppleID music I need to deal with some day, as I get popups on some tracks... but I suppose I should just figure out how to fix that with Apple Music. It's all a bit of a mess I just haven't had the time to dig into. I just want all my music (photos, videos, books) in one place where everyone (in our family) can access them. I feel like we were closer to that about 10 years ago than now.
Wait. So if my current AppleID is set up with the email "cornchip01@gmail.com" (not my actual one), I can't change it to "cornchip02@icloud.com" (not what I'm planning on changing it to)?