I Need "Apple ID Shared with Multiple Devices" Help

I Need "Apple ID Shared with Multiple Devices" Help

Since 2010, my son & I have been sharing an Apple ID on both of our iPhones and iPads. (You guys know the upgrade rotation that we do because I've posted about it in the past.) We do this because it's easy to have access to all app purchases and makes it simple to have all of our devices (and now there are 8) tracked in one place using Find My iPhone. He hadn't used iMessage because we have unlimited texting and he uses only his phone number for FaceTime. Neither of us uses iCloud for anything but Find My iPhone. Backup is done manually via iTunes.

Last weekend (at a party, of course ) someone told him that iMessage was faster than SMS so he turned it ON. Yikes! When I woke my iPhone up on Saturday morning, there was a popup message from Apple (on all of my devices) telling me that his phone number & email address were now being used by the Apple ID for iMessage and FaceTime. I was supremely annoyed to see that my phone number was now locked out of both because the settings had been changed. I called him & had him turn iMessage OFF and then I had to log into my Apple ID account online via PC and was able to reassociate my phone number back to iMessage (which I use with my sister & my best friend in California) & FaceTime.

Fast forward to this evening, when my son bought a new MacBook Air for his new job. Guess what happened when he set it up? Automatically the Mac used my email address/Apple ID for everything and I got another popup message on all of my devices saying that the Mac would be using the Apple ID email address (which is one of my Gmail addresses) for iMessage & FaceTime, along with his own email address. This means that I'll also get his iMessages and he'll get mine if he turns it ON. He said that he didn't see a way to only check his own email address for that. Ugh.

What I want to be able to do:

1. SHARE - Continue to be able to share app purchases under the primary Apple ID & I think this will be OK. * We should choose the primary Apple ID in Settings > iTunes & App Store.

2. SHARE - Continue to be able to track all of our Apple devices under one Apple ID, the primary one which is currently being used. * We should only have Find My iPhone turned ON in iCloud Settings under the primary Apple ID as it is now.

3. DON'T SHARE - Set up a secondary ID for my son to use for iMessage & FaceTime instead of the email address associated with the primary Apple ID (that's one of my Gmail addresses.) * I think that this can be done on his iPhone and will then be available to his other devices, too. What I've read says to go to Settings > Mail, Contacts & Calendar > Accounts > Add Account > iCloud > Scroll to bottom of page and choose Get a Free Apple ID. This won't remove the primary ID and should then be set up using his own Gmail address that already exists in iMessage & FaceTime (from last weekend's event.)

I've been reading for hours about how to do this and I've managed to give myself a big headache. This is only a problem since I gave him my iPhone 4 a year ago; prior to iOS 5 these problems weren't possible - iMessage & FaceTime didn't exist.

Has anyone accomplished this and how did you do it? r0k, you have several iPhones and kids - how did you manage this?

All assistance is welcome. You can't believe how complicated it is to research this stuff. Sorry for the long post.

 

Have you tried only adding the secondary account under Settings->FaceTime?

I don't use multiple AppleIDs, so I can't test it myself, but I found this:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/23001982#23001982

 

Urg. I know my parents had this issue, I don't remember how they fixed it but the Apple store straightened it out in a few minutes for them...might be worth a call or visit.

 

I wonder how much the Geniuses could help, given that we are 800 miles apart. I envision me at one Apple Store & my son at another, each with a Genius talking on the phone to each other, working out the finer points. < lelisa13p wakes up > Nuts. Must've been dreaming again.

 

Lol.

If I recall correctly, they explained it to my dad and he was able to do it on his own (and he's not super tech savvy). I believe it had to do with separating the Apple ID from the iCloud ID...but in any case they didn't have to both go in with all their devices, my dad obtained instructions and got walked through how to disentangle them.

 

It is both possible and relatively easy from what I've learned from my B-in-Law who has his iOS devices set up as you seem to want. I'll try and find out from him what you might need to do.

 

Lovely. More examples of hands-on experience are just what I need to hear about.

 

Here is what I have done but might not be the road that you want to travel on. My wife and I share the same ID. She has a Macbook Air and an old IPhone 4 she is using as an iPod which she uses for iMessage and Face Time. I have a MacBook Pro, an iPhone 4s and an iPad Mini. As far as apple is concerned, I own all of the devices so there is no problem. On another note my wife is still using a Palm Centro as her phone. Imagine that!

 

That's a little bit like our situation was in 2010, when I gave my first iPhone 3Gs to my son and moved myself to an iPhone 4. We had no conflict for as long as our devices didn't progress, but of course they did. 2011 was when we rotated again; this time both of our iPhones were capable of using iMessage & FaceTime although my son didn't use iMessage and used FaceTime via wifi so all was well. Now he needs to access the full meal deal and here we are.

 

Everybody in my family has their own AppleID. We all have separate purchases. I have 3 AppleIDs. One for iCloud, one for iTunes purchases and one for my developer account. They are all pretty well firewalled off from one another. I've heard you can share an Apple ID for purchases while maintaining separate Apple IDs for facetime, icloud, etc for each family member. One down side I ran across is I had to provide billing info for my "icloud only" ID because I ran out of storage and decided to buy some more. Apple wouldn't let me use my "purchases" AppleID to buy storage for my iCloud ID. Oh well. No biggie really.

If you want to buy one copy of an app and allow it on multiple kids' devices, I suggest each person have their own iCloud AppleID and you have one shared family iTunes AppleID. A family of 4 would have 5 AppleIDs. Everybody in the family would need to know the password for the iTunes AppleID. When you set up a new iThing, log in to the iCloud AppleID for things like backup and contacts sync. Then when you go to make a purchase, log in to the iTunes AppleID. At first, Apple said they weren't going to allow this but they do allow it. Be sure to switch off "auto load apps" or you'll wind up with dozens of silly kid apps cluttering your iPhone just because the kids downloaded some stuff. One bad thing about sharing an AppleID is once you give them the password, you've also given them your credit card. You see a password is needed even for free apps. Once they know the password, there is nothing to stop them from buying in app purchases. There was a lawsuit a while back over this. I think it was in the UK. Some kid ran up $1200 worth of in app purchases before the parent noticed it. To avoid this you could disable in-app purchases and only switch it on momentarily an an as-needed basis then immediately switch it off after use. Bear in mind, there are some apps in the app store that cost hundreds of dollars. They are professional apps but they sometimes come up unexpectedly in search results. There is nothing stopping a kid from purchasing one of these by mistake so perhaps you should consider switching off purchases altogether. Then what you do is when they ask for an app, you enable purchases, you buy it, then you disable purchases. They can then go to "purchased items->not on this iphone" in their app store and re-download it without a password. This way they never need to know your password but you have to micromanage their app purchases.

Another alternative is to avoid giving Apple a credit card. You can use iTunes cards and put $15 of credit in your iTunes account and when it runs out, it runs out and purchases would be declined. I haven't tried setting up iTunes without a credit card lately but the wide availability of iTunes cards in stores implies it's easy enough to do it.

Facetime or iMessage does not require an AppleID. It uses your phone number (for sms) or any email that you provide. That email can be an AppleID... or not. My iMessage/Facetime have my email and my phone number associated with them.

hope this helps...