This has been a busy season in consulting, especially with all the Lion upgrades that our clients are doing. Since Lion is only available with new machines, or via download from the Mac App Store, more and more people are learning the ins and outs of purchasing apps online. Some of our clients have been buying online for years thru the iTunes Store. In order to make purchases, you must have a valid Apple ID, usually linked to a credit card. However, I have been seeing that a lot of my clients, particularly families, are using more than one Apple ID, both for the App Store/iTunes Store, and for MobileMe and iCloud. This can cause some confusion, so let me offer some advice!
First of all, let’s separate the use of an Apple ID for MobileMe/iCloud and for the stores. For iCloud, I generally recommend that each person in a family have their own iCloud account, so that they can each have separate email, contacts, and calendars. Family members can still choose to share calendars. Occasionally I have clients who do want the exact same address book, and in that case it would be ok for a couple to share one iCloud address.
However, for purchasing, I almost always recommend that the whole family use one Apple ID for purchasing. Why? App updates! If you have apps on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from multiple Apple IDs, you will only be able to update the ones that were purchased or downloaded with the Apple ID you are currently signed in with. While you can sign out of one and back in as another, it is a major pain, and you will probably get confused as to which Apple ID to use. This usually happens when someone is signed into the iTunes store with one Apple ID, but signed in on their iOS device with a different Apple ID.
I recommend that you check every computer and device in your household and see if you are signed in with the same Apple ID for iTunes. If you find you are using different Apple IDs, decide if you have a good reason to do that (maybe you do want to keep App purchases separate), and if you want to unify, pick whichever Apple ID has the most purchasing history and make that the account that you use on everything.
Since you can’t move Apps from one Apple ID to another, many of my clients will have me remove all the apps from all the devices and iTunes libraries, and then re-download everything from the store. Sometimes this means having to re-buy a few things, but it is usually worth the expense to simplify the whole setup.
The one other place where you want to use one Apple ID in a household is for Home Sharing thru iTunes and on iOS devices. This way, you can be assured that you can stream media from any iTunes library to any device, especially an Apple TV!
If this still sounds a bit confusing, it can sometimes be hard to get your head around. Our consulting department has expert staff that can help you get unified in your iTunes and App Store strategy!