Can I merge 2 Apple IDs?

Has anyone tried this - I am going to this evening when I get home: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1386308 (newagemac's comments about 5 posts from the bottom).

My understanding after a quick ADDHD read:

1. Use homeshare to transfer app and music purchases from one of your Apple ID accounts to your second Apple ID account.

2. My primary purpose was to disasociate my work email from my personal app & music purchases - the reason I created a second Apple ID when I bought my new iPad Mini (and my new iPhone 5 which I have not synched or associated with any Apple ID yet). So before I do #1 above - I will change my primary Apple ID with my work account to a third email account. I will then make the passwords for both of my accounts the same.

3. After doing both #1 and #2 above, the only downside that newagemac reports from his homesharing solution is that when apps are updated you need to update under the account used to purchase them. But if the passwords are the same "no problemo" and I think I read that under the latest OS passwords are not required (will have to check as maybe it does not apply for two accounts).

If someone has already done this, hit me back with some tips, otherwise I will give it a go and report back.

Uhhh...or duhhhh....Now I realize I could have simply changed fro my work email associated with Apple ID to a personal email. I think I thought I had tried to do it but couldn't (realizing now how illogical that was), but now have purchased a $150 app - yikes - on my newer, second, Apple ID. 🙂

I am another long-time Apple user that has been forced over the years to create number of Apple IDs because Apple keeps recquing that I do so. There is no doubt that this has caused many hours of frustration and confusion for me and countless other Apple users.

Love my apple hardware but I have come to the sad conclusion that Apple is simply not good at internet related products and services. If you look at the MobileMe, iCloud, years of Apple ID issues, it becomes clear that internet services are simply Apple's weakest area. I won't name names, but having one universal ID for all online products and services is basic stuff for most companies nowadays. For some reason, the brilliant engineers and programmers at Apple simply can't figuret this one out! What gives? 😕

I completely agree. You know, I've been watching this thread evolve since early 2012 and some other threads on the topic going back even further to 2011 and yet this problem persists unchanged. It occurs to me that I do not have this problem with any other IT service vendor regardless of the industry; storage, financial, security, email, merchant... you name it. This is an Apple exclusive problem- an iProblem and just a mess beyond comprehension. Is it possible that an IT giant like Apple made a booboo? I find that hard to believe, but maybe so. What I find impossible to believe is that it has not been resolved for this long. That shouts 'design' to me. But still a big Apple fan. Mac forever!

And if the issue is not technical in nature, and more to do with contracts with providers as some folks have proposed, a) tell us...and b) work it out!

I find it hard to believe that consolidating IDs can't be done. The problem only gets worse as time goes on.

None of the work-arounds from other folks involving converting, copying, and re-importing media are acceptable...with tens of thousands of tracks and dozens of movies and shows - NOT A VIABLE OPTION!

So i guess Im stuck using my @gmail account for apple itunes purchases instead of using either my icloud.com or me.com account. Its aburd how you push us to gmail. Hope Apple addresses this issues in order to avoid becoming a new windows vista microsoft.

My guess is the media industry is afraid that by allowing account merging people may transfer thier purchases to another account. Say for instance you have a bunch of movies and music, you could sell your purchases on craigslist to another user and then transfer/merge your purchases to them. Imagine a future where you could pass your media purchases as assets down to your heirs.

Unfortunately the media companies do not allow this as they consider your media purchases non transferable as you don't actually own them, techically you are only licensing.

Apple could and should still provide a way to merge accounts but not content. You chose which account is the primary and any items on the other you will have to repurchase. (at a reduced cost? license transfer fee?)

In my particular case I have an old unused .me address that was converted to a icloud that I would like to merge and associate that particular username with my primary ID. I have nothing of particular value on that old ID and I would just like to free up the username for my use since I can't sync email or notes unless you have an icloud email.

My apple id is associated with an email on my own domain. I did this because it doesnt take a genius to realise that Apple is floundering in the internet services area. .mac>.me>icloud in a relatively short span. Who knows what the next iteration will be.. @apple.com?

When I old email got hacked, in my fumbling of ways address the problem, I create a new apple id accounts. So I have two apple ids. Right now I always got "You have updates available for other accounts" on y Mac update. I would like to fix it. But I could not remove the old account or merge them.

"Efforting": What a marvelous apologist u r for Apple. One might suspect a Troll. You can sell you owned CD's on Craig's list. That is legal as is selling your owned digital content along with your ID, as long as it is only one copy to one copy, I.e. a transfer of ownership. The music industry is trying to not let you own the content u buy, but only rent it, thus limiting your rights to sell it. Bottom line is an average programmer in just a few weeks could write the 'merge accounts' program. Face it, Apple is just screwing its customers!

This is the very reason I will never buy anything from iTunes; in fact, everything in my iTunes either came free from Starbucks, or was imported from a meticulously organized folder of music files, mostly 320kbps MP3 files without DRM. See, if you buy digital goods from online stores like Amazon and iTunes, not only do they take a 30% cut up front, but they don't actually sell you the files themselves - you get a license to use the bits and bytes. Now one way around this would be to burn ONE CD of each album, and then when you want to sell it, put it up on craigslist. Technically, as the license from Apple allows you to burn the songs onto 0-5 CD's, it's not illegal as you're transferring it to another person physically, and destroying the original files. It is Apple's fault that you still have access to the content via iTunes cloud storage though, and in fact Apple should be reported for not complying with your transferring of your ownership of the content.

There is a very simple fix for doing updates for purchases that were done over two (or more) Apple IDs....You simply need to go into Manage My Apple ID and make sure that the password on both (or all) accounts is the same. Then when updates are needed, and your password is asked for, all you have to do is type in the password that is common amongst them.

You don't have to pay attention to the Apple ID that is attached to that particular update since the password you put in is the same for all of them.

Go to Manage My Apple ID, and get your passwords sync'd and you will have no more issues with upgrades that require a password:

https://appleid.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MyAppleId.woa/

Cheers,

GB

Thank you, but thats a workaround, not a solution.

This problem is solvable, Apple is just being lazy.

They won't even give you the option to delete an account. In my case all they have to do is to delete one of my ID's, I don't even want to merge the accounts, they can delete it and any content it was associated to. I just want to make that ID available again for my use. If they can't be bothered with that, merging accounts will likely never happen.

I just wish Apple would officially address the situation, show they understand that for some users this an issue that they feel needs to be fixed and work out a legitimate solution to the problem.

Apple's idea of a solution to deleting an account is just to log into your ID and clear out all the information and then log out and forget you ever had it. That ID and any of its content will be locked in their system forever!

here, here...

just discovered my older apple ID.. and I do intend on finding out why my older purchases on itunes no longer work... I have a lot of years of life left and will be spending a lot of apple support hours asking the same question... and since I don't have a great memory.. it will be fun rediscovering these accounts over and over again. No doubt, several times over the next several decades. I just wonder what this will end up costing apple over the long term. I don't think it will dent their $140B cash horde in the bank.

With all that money, you'd think that solving this problem would just be a problem of.. hey it costs us pidly diddly to solve this problem that most human beings would have using our services... lets save everyone a ton of time and effort... heck it won't even cost $1B to solve this.. not even $100M .. not even $10M ... not even $1M ... maybe $100k to fix this.

Let's see now, how many apple users there are out there? 600M ? Let's say it costs $600M to solve this (which we know it doesnt).. that's like Apple investing $1 for every user. ok, lets say it costs $300M, then its like spending $.5 on every user to solve this problem... ok, ok, maybe it costs $150M to solve this.. so that's like apple spending a quarter for every user to solve this problem.... nah.. maybe it will cost apple $75M to solve this.. ok, so $.13 per user? hmmm... ok, 75 is too high you think? maybe it costs $30M to fix this.. ok, so that's like $.06 cents or less per user ? Does it actually work out to spending less than $.01 on your users to fix this? nope... too expensive, wont fix.. next!

efforting wrote:

Thank you, but thats a workaround, not a solution.

This problem is solvable, Apple is just being lazy.

They won't even give you the option to delete an account. In my case all they have to do is to delete one of my ID's, I don't even want to merge the accounts, they can delete it and any content it was associated to. Well that may be great for you, but for the myriad of other users out there, if Apple did this they'd be accused of stealing music that YOU OWNED, and then charging you to get it again. Apple conspiring to find just anouther way to suck every hard earned penny out of their users. So....not a viable option.

I just want to make that ID available again for my use. And you cant't use that account now, why? Why isn't is still "available" for your use?

I just wish Apple would officially address the situation, show they understand that for some users this an issue that they feel needs to be fixed and work out a legitimate solution to the problem. And therein lies the rub. It would hardly be "legitimate" to trash some older ID that you set up at some point, and along with it, trash every purchase that had been done under that ID.

Apple's idea of a solution to deleting an account is just to log into your ID and clear out all the information and then log out and forget you ever had it. That ID and any of its content will be locked in their system forever! Unless you can articulate what the specific problem with the account you want to mothball is, you are not helping us to direct to you to a potential solution.

And oh, by the way, my "workaround" is a solution for me. I don't have anything to do with my old ID except to log onto it occasionally to change the password. Beyond that, it's like it doens't exist. Not understanding what the problem is with something that might take, say 1 minute per year of your time?

Please, if I have misunderstood what you are indicating your issue is, the please clarify exactly what your particular situation is, and where it is causing you the mos grief. There may be a farily simple way to resolve your issue, but without specific information, it is a bit difficult to troubleshoot.

Cheers,

GB

The issue is that a user can (*inadvertently) end up with multiple itunes accounts. And this is a pain, especially in AppStore contexts. For instance: I had a account. I bought a new laptop and in the signup was ambushed with a "do you want to create an an account" message (it's free)". so i apparently said "yes", not realizing the implications --

And now I have two AppStore accounts: and some of my apps are in one; and others are in another. Some apps I've bought twice.

This is especially bad in regards to the Mac AppStore, because when I am logged in as one account, only the apps or assets for that account will get auto-updates. So again: I have to play the login-logout game every few days -- if only to save me from those pesky "Updates Available" messages that keep popping in my face every day or two (*oh, which account do i need to be in to update this app or that? PS, it's always the other one.)

So I just don't get it:

• Why can't you merge accounts
• Why can't you "push" assets from one account to another (thus deleting them from the original, so only one version persists.)