Why can only ONE Apple ID be associated with a computer every 90 days?

Question

Level 1

18 points

Why can only ONE Apple ID be associated with a computer every 90 days?

We have 3 family members who all sync our iPhones/iPads/iPods to the same computer. My son can't access and download past purchases from his iTunes acct to our computer, because it says ONLY ONE Apple ID can be associated with the computer every 90 days, and I just downloaded a movie this week from my own account. Now, my son has to wait 90 days to access his own purchases. I feel I should have access to my purchases any time I want, as should my son and any other family members who use this computer. The number of devices authorized to access iTunes Store purchases is already set to five (which we do not exceed) so, why this additional restriction? I don't understand why Apple would restrict me from accessing our own purchases.

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Dec 16, 2013 5:09 PM

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Answer 1

roaminggnome

Level 10

106,365 points

Dec 16, 2013 6:33 PM in response to t m k s

Discussion of Apple decisions and policies are not permitted here.

You should keep all of the content on the computer, then you will not have to download it and the 90 day restriction will not be an issue.

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Answer 2

t m k s Author

Level 1

18 points

Dec 16, 2013 7:12 PM in response to roaminggnome

In a perfect world, yes, I would save everything to my computer. But, somehow over the past few years, four Mac computers, three external hard drives, and nine other Apple devices we've owned, somehow a few of our movies mistakenly got erased and sent to the cloud. So, we're still 82 days away from Apple allowing us access to the movies we purchased from them. I'm wondering if there is a way around this.

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Answer 3

k3nny5

Level 1

0 points

Dec 16, 2013 11:48 PM in response to t m k s

Try creating additional user accounts on your computer for each individual user. By default, the itunes library files are kept in each user's music folder, so you should be able to have multiple users on one computer. I have not tried this theory yet as I am the sole user of my laptop.

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Answer 4

Mar 8, 2014 10:02 PM in response to t m k s

This bothers me so much. It is absolutely ridiculous. I use my Apple ID as well as a family member's Apple ID to download music.

Every once in a while I will purchase a song and it won't download correctly or will give me an error that my computer is not authorized, a solution I usually fix by deleting and redownloading the song from the cloud. This doesn't work, however, when it happens to both accounts within 90 days.

It is incredibly frustrating to me that I have paid for a song, it downloaded incorrectly, and I must wait 90 days to try downloading it again because of these assinine policies.

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Answer 5

Jul 15, 2017 12:46 PM in response to roaminggnome

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