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

My experience is garbage...not helpful.

I'm still waiting since 3 weeks! I'm very tired by apple's silence. I wrote 2 mail and I never had an answer.

Apple wake up! Say something!

Considering the hundreds of posts requesting, imploring, begging Apple to publicly address this issue and provide some encouragement that merging of multiple Apple IDs is in the works, do you have any recent evidence to support your below quote? The source you quote from is a MacRumors article from mid-September and to the best of my knowledge Apple has made no public statement acknowledging the problem. In fact, this problem is not even being picked up or discussed in the major computer print/Internet media. it seems there is a blackout on this troublesome topic that has been magnified by the introduction of iOS 5 and OS X Lion.

"jb86 wrote:

Found this article....

Apple appears to be working on a process to allow iTunes users with more than one Apple ID to somehow "merge" them into a single account. The ability to do so will be critical to the early success of the company's new iCloud service, since it relies on Apple IDs for syncing iTunes purchases and other data..."

Message was edited by: Hunter06 five minutes after original post.

I seem to be in the same boat as everyone else (and im sure 100,000's more)

Apple ID 1 - myname@yahoo.com (created back in 2004 when i got my first ipod and had to create user ID to buy stuff) (used solely for purchasing music, apps, books, etc)

Apple ID 2 - myname@me.com (created when I got my first iphone and thought mobile me would be convenient) (used solely for my primary email addess, calenders, contacts, etc.)

You think apple would have thought about aaaaalll those people who made apple ID's way back when itunes and ipods first came out, and especially now with all the free me.com addresses.. They really NEED to let use merge accounts.

I found another problem with this today too..

I'm on GameCenter (logged into my apple ID 1) and i want to sent someone a freind request.. when i try to send it to them via their email, it says that i must have a verified email address, so when i log into my account to have my email address (myname@me.com aka apple ID 2) verified, it tells me that its already verified to another account.. which is the apple ID 2 that was automatically created when i signed up for mobileme.. now *** am i supposed to do.. theyre essentially forcing me to use my apple ID 2 account which has NONE of my purchases and updates.. all i want to do is use my apple ID 1 which ive had for almost a decade with my me.com email address (aka apple id 2)

this is really ridiculous apple... you need to let us merge our accounts.. your going to have 100'000s of angry customers who have multiple accounts that they need to maintain. their original account with all their purchases, and this new me.com account that your forcing everyone into..

w.t.f.

I'm in the same boat as everyone else here.

Apple ID 1 - myname@customdomain.com (created back in 2004 when i got my first ipod and had to create user ID to buy stuff) (used solely for purchasing music, apps, books, etc)

Apple ID 2 - myname@me.com (created when I got my first iphone and thought mobile me would be convenient) (used solely for my primary email addess, calenders, contacts, etc.)

Waiting for an answer from Apple on when this will be resolved.

Thanks Richard Branson

Richard, at this point of Apple's total neglect and refusal to address the merging multiple Apple IDs issue, I think it will take divine intervention to get Apple's attention.

Despite rumors and innuendo, nothing is being done to assist thousands of loyal Apple users who have been in this black hole of multiple IDs--completely isolated from consolidating all of their purchases into one, unified account.

If Apple would only publicly state they understand our problem and will diligently work to allow merging of IDs (for those who want this), then, and only then, will there be any hope for resolution.

I'm not sure I really understand the problem.

MY problem was that I wanted to be able to use my old mac.com that I never renewed after the initial me.com introduction. I wasn't sure that that was going to happen so I made a new me.com based on my current iTunes ID. So, I got the new one and used it a few days and then I got notice that my old mac.com account was active, so now I use that me.com for email. I use the iTunes ID for just iTunes. They are separate, but I don't see any real need for them to be combined. Email, and calendar are on my newly reactivated mac.com account and music the old iTunes.

Or maybe there are other services that I don't use that would make this more of a pain? I will say that I do not have an iPod or iPad.

Dave in Maine

I haven't tried this, but I did go into iTunes (Store/View My Account). Under Apple ID Summary, it appears that you can edit the Apple ID (click Edit off to the right of the screen).

If you changed the email address for iTunes (which, in my case, is an old @comcast.net address) to the iCloud/Apple ID you want to use, will it then solve the problem of multiple IDs?

Perhaps making this change would associate all of your historical purchases under the @comcast.net (or whatever address) with the newly-created iCloud address.

That will not fix the problem. It will tell you that you can't use an already existing me account or something like that.

Dave,

Just to be clear: this is a major headache in a number of potential ways, and if you read the history of this thread, you'll see various different scenarios.

In my case, I have a LONG history of iTunes music purchases from the days before mac.com (third-party-email AppleID), and a LONG list of app purchases made with a distinct me.com AppleID.

Why didn't I tie the old account to the iPhone app store too, back in 2008? Well, there were two entirely separate Apple-run stores initially accessible only on different platforms, being used for different reasons. There had been no way around acquiring a second AppleID because of how the mac.com signup had worked anyway, and I expected the mac.com / me.com setup for apps might facilitate better integration with the iOS (partially true). And it seemed logical to use different a different credit card for music and for apps (the latter being business expenses sometimes). All perfectly reasonable at the time.

The problem is not just that only half of my purchase history can talk to iCloud, though that's a nuisance.

Worse: if I happen to plug my iPad to my computer's iTunes (which signs into the old ID so I can play all my music), the sync operation VAPORIZES my app purchases on the me.com account. And all their data. (Yes -- all their data; when I re-installed, I lost work.) Needless to say, I have since learned how to prevent iTunes from "helping me" with my iPad (plug it in with apple-option keys pressed, then disable automatic syncing for the device).

(As far as I can tell, the only solution -- if this mess goes on -- would be to buy DRM-removal software with which to CONVERT each of my old iTunes music files to unprotected mp3 files [running a virtual burn-and-re-import cycle for each album], let go of the convenience of accessing purchase-history-related features for all those purchases, start manually managing all that music as if I had initially imported it all from CDs, start signing into iTunes with the mac.com ID, and wash my hands of that older accoount. I'll let you know when I have a workweek to spend on that. 😉 Maybe Apple will spend $30 for each of us to subsidize a purchase of that third-party software to remove the DRM "feature"?)

I get what you are saying and figured that out but am still left with a MAJOR problem because of all this sync'ing with different Apple ID's that I don't seem to be able to merge - hopefully you can help....

a) I started using iCloud on all my devices (ipad, iphone, macbook) and added Contacts to the list of items I want in my iCloud

b) i ended up with every address TRIPLICATED on my macbook (not really on my ipad or iphone...not sure about that one)

c) I turned off iCloud syncing for addresses on my macbook

d) I lost ALL MY ADDRESSES and can't even seem to restore them through my TimeMachine...I have no idea what happened and have been totally unable to get them back. Timemachine isn't working for my Address book, (I get yesterday, after it emptied my address book and that's it), if I sync with my phone where I DO have my addresses, it still shows an empty address book on my macbook

I can't find a library on my user/applications/ ... folder and really am totally stuck now. Is this related to a different iCloud account somehow or what happened? And more importantly, how do I get back my contacts?

I have 10,000 of them and they contain EVERYTHING I worked on in the past 20 years.....

Dave,

Are you saying that your mac.com email address is now active again?

If so, how did you go about accomplishing this?

I also had a mac.com account which lapsed. I've continued to use it for iChat, and I can log in with it as an AppleID and make changes to the account, but I can't confirm the email address because I can't access it via email. Sort of a Catch-22.

Anyone have a solution to this?

I'd love to get this all under one roof (since I have another AppleID that's based on a 3rd party email address).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

~ JB

I am one of those unfortunate MobileMe customers who are stuck with two apple IDs. It has been giving me headaches and I hope they address this issue soon.

Please let us all know if they actually make someting happen!

So I am having a similar problem. I wish I read about this before we upgraded to iCloud. My husband and I have two separate iTunes accounts, created when we were both in high school. We are currently sharing a MacBookPro, along with an iPad and iPod touch. Sharing our music (and accounts) has never been an issue, so we buy our music from whichever account is active on the computer and have both ids authorized on this computer. Enter iCloud, which gives us the option to download prior purchases. We both have some purchases lost in a disasterous iPad update last year, so we were eager to download them. We started with mine, since it had less music purchased through it. After we downloaded everything, I went to switch to my husband's ID, and was met with the notice that I would have to wait 90 days to do so. Now the hilarious part is that I can buy purchases with any of our devices using his account and they get downloaded right away. After much fiddling, I also found out that I can download the music through the iPad, and then back up to our computer (since it is authorized for his account). But I cannot download from his ID from iCloud to our computer for 90 days. How is this more efficient? If an account is authorized on my computer, then I should be allowed to download those items, since in order to play them I have to keep the account authorized (which someone trying to steal everyone's music would have to limit themselves to 5 people). Or Apple should allow people within the same immediate family, as well as individuals holding separate accounts, to merge them! We want to be able to consolidate all of our music, and are having a hard time figuring out how iCloud was supposed to help with this.

Hear, hear.... This is indeed shamefull from Apple. I recently immigrated to a new country, hence a new App store, for which I needed to create a new Apple ID, because my Old Apple ID was only valid in country A! As I bought quite a few apps in country A and now also in Country B, bought apps need regular updating, you can see where this is going, when I do update all, I get the invalid Apple ID error.

Not to mention the password struggle...

Apple's arrogance Towards the consumer shines through and all we have is the right to complain.... Let's hope they do let us merge accounts, because this is a daily nuisance to me and many others!