How to configure iCloud for a family

I'm looking for a solution as well - very good description of the situation!

Where I'd be already happy to sync my own contend like iPhoto and the video feeds from a camera with the rest of my family.

I am working through the same issue. We have one iMac, one MacBook Pro, four iPhones, oneiPad2.

Setting up iCloud has been one of the most difficult Apple set-ups ever, it seems Apple has not thought through multiple accounts and family members

I got transitioned me.com to iCloud, but had to keep my old Apple ID so I have two ID's. (that's another issue that is an issue). This is working on the Mac, one phone and iPad.

I followed the settings in pererences in mail, and iCloud from instructions posted a bunch of places. Very easy to set up one account

Now I am trying to get the next user (my wife) on iCloud and get an @me email set up. I went to preferences, mail, onthe iMAC and added another iCloud account. All good so far.

It worked but;

Message came back - This is not your primary iCloud Account - Only your primary account can use bookmarks, photo stream, find my Mac or iCloud storage.

The reason of going to iCloud was for photo, itunes, email and calendar synching.

Is this correct? Is there a way to create 4 Primary iCloud accounts or will all other iCloud and @me emails be sub accounts? withOUT photo stream or storage

Thanks

I am having the same problem - my second computer will not recognize me either in iCloud. Hopefully, someone at mac will see this.

Amichalo - would this help?

Go iTunes / iTunes Store / Home . Look on the right of that page and notice an item on the list there - 'purchased' It's marked 'new'....

click on 'purchased'.. When you're in that page, look to the top right and click on 'learn more'... That takes you to a page called 'iTunes in the cloud'

Looks like there might be info there that will help. I hope so...

Good luck

I am having the same issue, only with calendar entries. With Mobile Me, our family would share a calendar that was automatically updated on all our peripherials and now an entry has to be entered in each account. Does anyone know if you can link accounts to share calendars? Has anyone else found any help on setting Families up with iCloud?

amichalo wrote:

...

The trouble is, I have no way to 'link' me@mac.com, wife@, boy@, and girl@ to do any sharing that someone@me.com or someoneelse@me.com couldn't also access.

...

For this very reason, I switched my family calendars over to Google several months ago. I have a family of 4 as well and my children are fairly young, so I wanted them to be able to see my calendar without risk of them accidentally deleting something from it. I was able to set up a separate account for each family member and then "delegate" calendar permissions to other family members. My wife and I can update all four calendars. My children can each update their own calendar, and can see the other calendars, but can't update them. None of the calendars are visible to the public.

I hope this helps you with that one issue. I wish I could answer all of your questions, but I can't. I'm struggling with how to best manage a family of four in this new environment myself and will keep an eye on your thread here in hopes of finding answers to my own questions. I also started my own thread before finding yours. I'll link to it in case any helpful information turns up there:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3407404

I forgot to point out that this setup works beautifully with iCal on multiple Macs and with several iOS devices. It integrates so well that you would think it were an Apple solution rather than Google (or any other third party).

GaLeonard wrote:

Setting up iCloud has been one of the most difficult Apple set-ups ever, it seems Apple has not thought through multiple accounts and family members

I agree 110%

My wife and I want to share photos, calendars, and contacts. But we don't want to share emails, notifacations. Also on Siri if I set my name as the phone owner then it changes that on my wifes phone.

This was not a "family friendly" roll out. I would imagine there are more familys and couples using IOS devices then inviduals, so then why would they not make it multi user compatiable? I guess the only thing we can hope for is a IOS update in the future.

Actualy... I think iCloud is just the wrong thing for families.

For families it would be easier if iOS5 would have 'home sharing' with upload/download and not transfer everything to CA first.

iTunes home share could have 'cache' options to download music for offline use at work.

iPhoto home share could have 'cache' options to download photos for offline use at grandma.

Simple tick boxes for 'offline' use would be perfect, followed by a 'cync' period.

Far easier to understand I think and saving loads of mb's sending over the internet.

I totally agree Icloud seems to be for a single person with many devices. I have 3 kids with an itouch each and they share an icloud. This seems to be working well as they are currently all into the same music and tv programmes as they are young and it saves me syncing each of their devices. My husband and I share a different icloud and we have an ipad each. I also have a Mac which primary icloud is the kids ones. My problem is I keep getting an acount saying my apple id does not recognise my icloud and keeps disenabling my password. this has happended twice now and I have had to change it twice (it doesnt let me reset it to the same password) Anyideas why this is happening?

cant you switch mail off?

I went through the same issues with my wife and I, with two iPads, two iPhones, Mac and a MacBook Pro.

Bottom line, is that we finally just came to the agreement that the iPhones and the iPads are considered "personal" devices, so we set up two iCloud accounts, and operate our phones and iPads as if they were exactly what they are...our own devices. If there are items we want to share on our calendar's or contacts, we simply invite each other to the event...works out well since I never remember anything she tells me anyways!!! The MacBook and the Mac we share, and the accounts share with each other as well, but we ultimately found absolute happiness, by simply using the multiple users on the Mac and MacBook Pro, so we each have the computers set up how we each like it. Once you get it all set up...it really is nicer to have complete control over your own "devices", rather than trying to pick and choose what items to share.

When it comes to the stuff that costs money, we simply use the ONE Apple ID, and once again, pick and choose what purchased items we want on our own settings. Sure...it makes for an occassional mystery app showing up on my phone or iPad, but I can deal with the 2 seconds it takes me to delete it!!

it was a fair amount of work, but now that we have it all set up, we both really enjoy it and feel we are set up the way that Apple intended us to set it up for a family.

The ONLY thing that I have not figured out how to deal with, is when we both are reading the same book in iBooks and it syncs with all the devices because of the AppleID....makes for a lot of book marks!!!!

I need only ONE calander and address book and set of pictures and we (wife and I) share a single email address. There is no way, it seems, to have only one account for multiple devices. They all have their own "on my computer" and then on icloud and then on each other computer or device. Numerous duplicates show up on each calander for example. 'Not thought out at all.

aehaas

Have to agree with you, iCloud looks like driving me to Google!

This works perfectly with iCloud.

First you need to setup a master iCloud account per user. It seems logical that every person in the household has his/her personally iCloud (Apple-Id) account.

On the Mac (it is likewise on iOS) you have the iCloud preference. At this location you setup the master iCloud account of that person. You can then select which services you would like to use for that account.

• Mail: If you want to use it, it seems logical that every person has a personal mail address. Note that you not need the mail. You can still use the current mail service you are using today. If you come from MobileMe then you need to migrate this mail service to iCloud.
• Bookmarks: Seems also logical that everybody has different favorites.
• Photostream: This is the only must activate on master iCloud feature, you cannot have it as a secondary one. Besides it seems logical that photo's are streamed only to your personal devices and not to every member.

Next to the iCloud preference you will also see a "Mail..contacts" button. With this button you will automatically also see your master iCloud account. But here you can add other accounts. This can be other iCloud accounts. But also a GMail account or a mail account from any other provider ....

So to share calendar and contacts there is an option. To setup iCloud on the master id on one of the persons of the family. For that person you tick the options for these 2 on the master account. For the other members you setup a secondary iCloud account (using the id and pw of the first person) and then only tick the calendar and contacts options there.

But there is a drawback of this approach. The contacts in iCloud also synchronize the me-card in the contacts. So if you do this then all persons will have the same me-card. This also means that if anyone changes the picture when you login on your Mac, that this is then synched to all others Macs as well. So it looks at this moment that sharing contacts via iCloud to several members in a family is not a good thing. I'm still looking for a better solution here.

If you share the calendar(s) this way, then everybody can read/write in the calendar(s) contained in iCloud. So for a calendar it is actually better to setup different iCloud accounts per person each with their own calendars (e.g. a private-one and a to-be-shared-one). One of the family members might setup a family-shared-calendar.

After they are setup then you log in into www.icloud.com and there you can share a calendar. See the process on how to do that: http://www.busymac.com/busycal/userguide/caldav-sharing.html

So this way you might have a private calendar that nobody from the members can see. And a shared one that the others can see. You can select per persons whether that person can only see it or also change it.

This is our setup:

Made a personal master iCloud account for every member in the household. For each of us there is a calendar where the name of the calendar is the first-name of that person. I created a family-calendar for events on which we (normally) all participate. Then using icloud.com we all shared our calendar to the other members of the family with write access (we can trust each other and the kids are old enough). So now everybody can see all the calendars (and if wanted decide to switch them off as well in iCal).

I added a secondary account for my work calendar. So next to my private-calendar (shared with family) I will also see my-work-calendar. My family members have no real need to see my work calendar.