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

Ahh, well that explains it.

You definitely cannot make your @mac email your primary email address for one Apple ID while that same @mac email is also itslef a second, separate ID.

If you want to keep your @mindspring as your main Apple ID/iTunes account, and you *don't* want to actually use the @mindspring email for correspondence, then you will have to create another email address that is *not* your @mac address.

As suggested above, you could set up a gmail account (or some other free email), make that your primary email for your @mindspring Apple ID, and then simply set up your gmail account so it forwards all your emails to your @mac.com address.

That's the only workaround I can think of.

That seems so ridiculous though - that I would have to create a whole new email account, you know? I'm not putting it past them, but, jeez. I'm waiting to hear back from support and have them actually admit that.

I wouldn't bother getting in touch with Apple. They will tell you the same thing.

As far as setting up another email, I imagine that you will quickly forget it even exists after a few days. The emails from Apple regardiong your account will simply go right to your @mac address.

Matthew Palm wrote:

You definitely cannot make your @mac email your primary email address for one Apple ID while that same @mac email is also itslef a second, separate ID.

You seemingly can't set an Apple email address as your primary email address even if it is already associated with the same Apple ID.

I've mentioned this before in the thread, and provided screenshost as evidence. I checked again today, just incase things have changed, and I still get an error when trying to set my @me.com email address as the primary email address (for the same Apple ID).

If there is any way at all to do this, please let me know:

(You also notice the out of date message refering to it as a MobileMe account, the @me.com address was not created on MobileMe but was created on iCloud, I signed into iCloud with my old AppleID and chose a new @me.com address, hoping I'd be able to use it as my primary email address, but no. Now everyone emails me on my @me.com address, except Apple, it's utterly ridiculous!)

This thread has been going on since 2010. WOW!

I have a very similar problem. My original iTunes account pre-dated my me.com account and so, since then, I have two iTunes accounts. To get my email from apple, I need to get it from one, while most of my purchases (apps, music, movies) are on the other. However this happened, it was never my intention to have 2 accounts.

It would be great to merge the two (losing any purchases in me.com account would be an "acceptable" sacrifice) so as to have only one email referencing all apple purchases, emails, etc...

NickT

I have been searching for an answer to my issue:

I have an old mac email/itunes Id that i'd love to keep as my email address: sentimental@mac.com (also works @me and @icloud.com).

this is my email AND itunes ID.

now we have ipads and iphones etc.

my wife now has an iphone, and we want to share photo stream so our pics all go to place, and address books and contacts.

she has her how icloud acct, but my acct is on her phone for the photo stream etc.

are we stuck with my acct always being primary? when the kids are (soon) old enough to use the itunes store are we stuck with them having access to my acct info? apples says there is no way to change the primary itunes acct. it also looks like there is no way to make my acct secondary on my wife's phone without losing access to photo stream. is there a way to share photo stream another way?

any other ideas to solve these issues?

Each iDevice needs its own user ID to work "properly" however if you really want to have SOME shared info it is totally within reason.

You need a "family" iCloud ID example family@mac.com

You need to put THAT ID in FIRST as iCloud ID for all shared devices

You need to create a unique person in the SHARED contacts that can be used on ALL shared devices. (Siri and others applications will use the "this is me" card. I made one with the name Master Rouse so Siri calls me and my wife both Master and the address is our shared address so auto fill works for lots or forms.

Then we each have our OWN UNIQUE apple ID that is added as a SECOND iCloud user for contacts and calendars we wish not to share (eg my business contacts and hers).

Other than the icon on our macs login window getting confused the system works well.

I have a SEPARATE apple ID non-email version I use for purchases.

There really is no point in the concept of the main topic of this thread: all purchases are permanently tagged with whatever apple ID was used to purchase them. You can have up to FIVE on a device and up to TEN devices can use them. You need a very large family before this starts to become a problem.

Last time I tried the email tag solution still worked so you can trick all emails to go to one place.

Example: my non-email apple id has an email address: name+itunes@gmail.com and it delivers to name@gmail.com

Any questions?

This is all just absolute nuts. Its almost as bad as the tax code. Just remember 400 particular things you need to do to move your music or do whatever to try and get around the 4000 issues we've created related to IDs

Apple seems to know enough to send us each a @me.com and a @icloud.com email address to our existing apple IDs. And these themselves can be/are apple IDs, but they are too stupid/lazy/arrogant/greedy... pick your adjective... to allow us, their customers, to move are accounts to a new ID including the one they just sent us.

Its really simple, allow me to pick a new apple ID, assign a credit card number, and move any account using the same credit card number to the new account and allow us if we want to release the old ID, once we see everything is transferred. Move the music, move the apps, move it all, yes even duplicates and allow me to choose the ones I want to keep because not all of them have the same purchase date/features.

Please just do it once and get it right. It will massively increase purchases now that we can put everything on the cloud, but millions of us aren't going to do it an repurchase everything or lose what we have.

Don't tell me the current system works, it doesn't for me and millions of others, get over yourselves apple and serve the customer.

sorry but i need help all sorry agin for this post here

i make apple Id but cant use that in the itunes if you can help me please make apple id (free app creat acc so none gift certificate) me thank you a lot of

Email:uselessshadow@yahoo.com

This is the most ridiculous thing I've seen with ANY company. Just look at all the complaints and request to allow Apple IDs to be merged. I became a Mac user about 3 years ago, and my biggest pet peeve is Apple's stubborness and lack of listening to their customers on important issues.

Why the ^@#! can't they just create a simple web app or something to merge Apple IDs? This is such a simple request, and causes major havoc for some people.

LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS, APPLE, AND HUMBLE YOURSELF!!!

Agree, this will hurt Apple big time. I'm sorry to say this but Windows 8 sound's promising..

I completely agree w/ you.

I'm a devoted user of Apple products and very happy with the way they facilitate my life. But, this control freak approach is really getting to my nerves. Especially when it will only take them a little tweak or two to make our lives easier.

Apart from the ID problems between devices, I'm one of those people who has to have multiple accounts in iTunes due to app availability. Whenever I have a major app update session, I need to go back and forth between stores switching IDs.

They don't have to create an app. All they need to do is allow us to use multiple stores with the same ID or even simpler; since all our accounts are already authorized, let us do our tasks w/o having to switch.

Is it so difficult or are they sado minded?

That is a completely different problem worthy of a different thread.

That is an iTunes bug and is a really dumb programming oversight!

Only reasonable workaround is to update apps first on iPhone (since 6.0 firmware, you don't need password to do updates of installed apps) (can you gimme a DUH?) then sync to iTunes.

iTunes is useless as hen crap on a pump handle when it comes to identifying the purchase id of apps and songs. You have to be a detective to figure out which user to re-sign in as to find those mystery un-updated apps!

On iDevice update works much cleaner now. iTunes needs to be fixed. I'll make a bug report now.

-awr

<Edited By Host>

Quote:

Your tracking number for this issue is Bug ID# 13122676.

Not that there is any way for somebody else to track the number. That at least is something  might fix as opposed to the multiple user id which will not be changed.

I for one am going to stop buying on my old @gmail.com address and use @icloud.com as primary, but lose all my paid apps in the process. (what a simple thing to do...makes me sick how long this thread is and Apple does nothing). All we want to do is use icloud with the purchases already made from another email account. Why can't there be a way to fix this???