Merge apple id's, me.com and itunes account?

You would think they would have thought of this. When icloud came out I'm sure many people were confused as to which apple id to use. Its so stupid that you can't merge mobile me and your itunes apple id. The idea of icloud is to make things easier not more complicated with workarounds. I'm just really disappointed that they didn't see this ahead of time and find a way to make it work. I feel especially bad for people juggling several apple id accounts! I just ran into the issue where I had to log out of my mobile me to access itunes and put in my original itunes apple id to update my apps on the computer. Its just a mess. And has anyone reaped the benefits of icloud.... ? ....b/c I really don't quite get how it works. I wish they still offered one to one.

Although I agree with your sentiments, why don't you just use your original iTunes Apple ID for iTunes and the MM/iCloud one for everything else. That's what I do and it works fine.

I'm still waiting to be able to merge my IDs though, so that I can finally get rid of the old iTunes account.

Heres a question, like many here I have one very old apple Id used for purchases. My other apple Id is for MobileMe which I just upgraded to iCloud. Now presumably all my data and settings, etc is backed up to my iCloud account, but does this mean that my iTunes and app store purchases are not? I believe that they are not because I've noticed that even though I have automatic download on for ally devices that none of them are syncing.

I have to admit, if iCloud is only backing up for one account this is a showstopper. Most people will not be thinking about specific apple ids being backed up, they will be thinking their iPhone is being backed up in its entirety.

I'm going to try a full iCloud restore and see what happens, since my battery life is so bad now anyway a restore was in my future. Sigh, not a very smooth upgrade...

It's not the end of the year yet, so let's stop, look and listen to what happens over the next two months.😉

I honestly believe that **** will freeze over before Apple will back down on this, but, as I said, I hope I'm wrong.

Found this:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4895

So it looks like if you have just one iCloud apple ID and one iTunes apple ID then both data and apps/iTunes are backed up to a single iCloud account

So the remaining issue is people who have multiple iTunes accounts.

BonaHoTep: No, that's not the only remaining issue (multiple iTunes accounts). People might have one iTunes AppleID, and another AppleID used at a different store -- namely the App store, which started out being a totally separate store that launched on a totally different platform with no expectation of a shared sign-in. And the wise thing to do, for some of us, was to use our distinct mac.com / me.com login there, figuring it might be more feature-rich in the long term. Hence, people like me have parallel purchase histories. Which never was a problem, until iCloud and iOS5 started insisting on one AppleID for all future purchase transactions, but also (by implication) the basic tie-ins to our history of purchases.

Although iTunes can still be authorized to *play* the many protected media files I've acquired, there are complications with local-network sharing, accessing purchase history, and what happens when I restore... (When I upgraded my iPad to iOS5, all the music purchases from the older iTunes account were wiped from the device, though I've since re-added them by toggling into the older ID to access that purchase history.)

The good news: iTunes will show and play the added files no matter how they were purchased, and same with apps (apparently we can still expect update notifications even for the off-ID purhcases).

The bad: items on my Newsstand rack seem to pop in and out of existence when I switch AppleID at the top level. Every now and then, I seem to hit a brick wall that requires me to sign out of the mac.com AppleID and sign in temporarily to the old one. And if I mistaken make another purchase while logged in under the old one... that's one more thing that's out of the loop.

To some degree, we're unhappy about *not* having some of the "shiny new" new features we'd like to be entitled to (especially automatic synchronization of purchases) -- that was the point being made by the snarky person who said "you guys crack me up" [with our whining]. But the reason we're out of the new-feature loop is not that we're on old unsupported devices, or that we screwed something up.

At any rate it's NOT just being left out of new features, either: we're now in the position of having to often take steps that Apple pretends we shouldn't need to do, and hasn't designed the iOS to help us do, just to keep us in touch with the things we've paid for. If the support documents at Apple would just *acknowledge* the predicament of parallel purchase histories -- and acknowledge that it happens to reasonable people -- longtime Apple customers who haven't just lost track of their info or needlessly duplicated IDs in any way at all -- that would be a promising sign.

Thank you, spandrelf, for clearly stating the problems "reasonable" people are experiencing. Your final paragraph summarizes the frustration we would like acknowledged and resolved.

"At any rate it's NOT just being left out of new features, either: we're now in the position of having to often take steps that Apple pretends we shouldn't need to do, and hasn't designed the iOS to help us do, just to keep us in touch with the things we've paid for. If the support documents at Apple would just *acknowledge* the predicament of parallel purchase histories -- and acknowledge that it happens to reasonable people -- longtime Apple customers who haven't just lost track of their info or needlessly duplicated IDs in any way at all -- that would be a promising sign."

I will keep my hopes high that Apple resolves this as soon as possible.

Anyone read the Macrumors article where it is said that Tim Cook wrote back to a user saying that they were aware about this 2 ID problem especially with people that had a previous m.me account and that they were looking into it.

Great news from TC

Igmackenzie...maybe you would loose the bet!

I hope that this article, which mentions CEO Tim Cook's awareness of the problem and is working on it will shed a little light on this topic of merging IDs.

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/18/apple-still-working-on-allowing-merging-of-a pple-ids/

This is more substantive than all the naysayers who say merging will never occur. Keep the faith that the right thing will be done.

Thanks, n3nto, I cited the article url in a recent post. My bet still might have life for something before the end of the year. It's in Tim Cook's hands. Now, if we only knew Tim's e-mail address to send him encouragement from loyal Apple supporters who appreciate a resolution/solution--maybe even easy merging of IDs.

BonaHoTep1 wrote:

My other apple Id is for MobileMe which I just upgraded to iCloud. Now presumably all my data and settings, etc is backed up to my iCloud account, but does this mean that my iTunes and app store purchases are not? I believe that they are not because I've noticed that even though I have automatic download on for ally devices that none of them are syncing.

Automatic download is for "new" purchases and it is used to automatically download something you purchase on one device or computer to be downloaded to your other devices, it is not used for backing up. It has nothing to do with backing up your previous purchases or apps. Also, read on the apple website about Itunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match, it may shed some light for you. No need to do an iCloud restore.

William M Moldrup wrote:

You seem to think Apple is blameless for its refusal to allow merging and the rest of us are simply ignorant of iCloud "bliss."

Unfortunately, you are in the silent majority and do not empathize with well-intentioned criticism. Make you a bet that Apple will authorize merging accounts before year's end.😉

William, well, I do empathize with your situation. I am in the same situation. Perhaps using the word ignorant was too strong a word and I apologize for that. And I definitely think Apple really dropped the ball here and I said as much in my previous post, I do not think they are blameless at all. In fact, I think they are totally to blame. This problem has been around for years and I am really shocked that they haven't fixed it by now, especially before iCloud was released. There were articles many months ago warning that this will be an issue and yet they still went ahead with the iCloud release and they did so without an adequately publicized procedure for making the transition with various ID scenarios. Apple has a PR nightmare slowly building here. I just think that it is what it is and the wheels are already spinning about this issue in the press so boycotting to me seems rather pointless...I would rather think of it as a "bug" like any other bug and enjoy iCloud until they fix the "bug." But that is just my opinion, who am I to tell you what you ought to do, boycott if you must. I too want them to merge IDs, but doesn't look like it will happen in the next few days so I think to myself why not enjoy iCloud until they do just like I would with any other bug? I hope you're right about merging of IDs by year's end, but I plan on enjoying iCloud and making purchases with my 2 IDs until then.

Apple Forever,

Thank you for your thoughtful response and I apologize if I misunderstood your original post--I thought you were discounting the complaints. You are probably already familiar with this post at MacRumors (it's not a rumor):

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/18/apple-still-working-on-allowing-merging-of-a pple-ids/

I found Tim's e-mail address earlier today, e-mailed him, received delivery and read receipts--but no personal response yet. Nevetheless, all's well that ends well and I still believe/hope/think that merging multiple Apple IDs will occur (long) before the 2012 Time's Square New Year's Ball hits the ground.

akirasixty9 wrote:

maybe the new "discussion" site

what is that???