kdupuis77

40domi said:

Brilliant option in an emergency, the only question I have is, will it be a U.S. only feature?

chasm said:

xyzzy-xxx said:

I will not use Apple's password manager for several reasons:
- Passwords will be stored and synced in cloud
- You can import (on macOS) but probably not export
- Limited features
To me it looks like the main reason for Apple to make a password manager is to make it harder for customers to switch to another platform.

Possibly, but your passwords are not stored on iCloud in a form that Apple can read. All user data passed to iCloud is end-to-end encrypted, and Apple has stated (and proven) there is very little data they can give to law enforcement wrt iCloud stored data. So no, your passwords are NOT stored in iCloud in any form that is useful to Apple or law enforcement (if that’s what you’re worried about).

Further, you can absolutely export passwords on Mac. I have to do this for people who are moving from one platform to another all the time. Maybe you should try actually reading up on the subject you’re pontificating on?

dewme said:

zoetmb said:

rob53 said:

Apple ID continues to be misunderstood by some Mac users. Users don’t know when to use their iCloud account password or their Mac login account. I’m not sure changing iCloud to Accounts will help. I know some people use the same account name and password for iCloud and Mac login but not necessarily users who’ve used Apple products for years. 

Will Apple Account consolidate iCloud and Mac login or will they continue to be separate?

IMO, that’s not the biggest issue.  It’s that Apple provides no way to consolidate iCloud accounts.   There’s an issue going all the way back to the AOL days.  When Apple made people change their IDs to not use AOL (I forget the exact circumstances), if you created a new AppleID with the same name, it got screwed up forever.  

Also, if you created a second AppleID (I did so one time when my old ID stopped working (turned out it was an Apple server issue) and another time when I wound up with multiple AppleTV accounts), you could get signed in on another device to the wrong account.  If you purchased apps under that account, they would not update when using the “regular” account.  Luckily, most of those apps in my case were free apps and I could resolve the situation by deleting them and then reinstalling them and it even kept my data even though it tells you it won’t.  

In fact, the entire password/keychain system seems screwed up to me. I have multiple entries for the same sites when there should be only one - the one with the latest password.   I hope the new password system is more than a rename and new skin. 

I believe it was MobileMe, not AOL. I'm one of those ex-MobileMe users stuck with two Apple IDs. In reality this is only an issue if you purchased content under multiple Apple IDs. If you don't have content like iTunes music, movies, Books, iCloud Storage, Apple ONE, etc., registered to one of your Apple IDs you can simply kill it or abandon it. Having multiple Apple IDs also creates multiple opportunities to get one of your accounts locked out if you're not clear about which credentials you're being asked to supply and use the incorrect one. 

Things have actually gotten better but the root cause issue can never be resolved because Apple will never allow anyone to consolidate Apple IDs. What they have done is to allow you to specify two (2) sets of Apple ID credentials when setting up your Apple devices. One is for iCloud and the other one is assumed to be for media purchases, etc., that are "captive" with a second Apple ID. They have also improved their queries for entering Apple ID credentials to make it more clear which Apple ID is involved so you don't enter the wrong passcode. There was also a time around the rollout of multi-factor authentication (MFA) because some older devices did not have the ability to handle MFA. As a workaround users had to get a MFA code from an authentication query on a registered device and append the MFA code to their Apple ID when logging in using a device that could not handle MFA, like Apple TV and older iPhones and iPod Touches. This kludge was not well advertised or made clear when trying to log in and even users who knew about the kludge often found themselves stuck, or their Apple ID locked.

Now that all or most of the devices that don't natively support MFA have crawled into the tarpit and Apple is doing a much better job of clarifying which Apple ID they want, things are better but still not perfect. The only way to "somewhat" consolidate all of your paid content across your Apple devices is to make one of your Apple ID accounts a family member of the other. Goofy as hell for sure, but at least I can now access all of the content that I purchased under my old iTunes/MobileMe Apple ID from my iCloud Apple ID account. I am both the account owner and a family member of myself. 

I also don't see how changing the name of Apple ID to Account ID is going to disambiguate anything at all from the current confusion. It's like they've suddenly decided to refer to what was once called a "frankfurter" as a "hot dog." Hopefully it will turn out to be more than what it currently appears to be.