2 iCloud users sharing same contacts and calendar

Thanks so much for your reply. We don't really want to use the Family sharing method as, from everything we've read, it will cause all sorts of new issues when trying to share contacts and calendars, plus we are totally happy to be sharing one music Library and the same apps etc.

I have tried to figure out how to use my apple ID on her iPhone for Contacts and Calendar, and use her apple ID for everything else (except iTunes and Apps) but all the cloud using services seem to be using a single apple ID - mine - and I can't remove mine as Contacts and Calendar will no longer be shared. I guess I'm doing something wrong?

Thanks very much for your brilliant post. I think I understand everything and I'll give it a go tonight and update here after.

Apple don't make things easy as they've grown their ecosystem. Just getting my partners Apple ID working was a job as it turned out her email address was being used as a secondary email on another Apple ID account. It's all easy when you know but finding out isn't quite as simple! lol.

And it's clear to me that Apple are in the process of trying to completely replace all our physically purchased music. I reckon the main reason they ditched the iPod classic is because it wasn't connected to the internet and couldn't use the new Apple Music services, which Apple obviously hope will replace users need for physically purchased music. If they can get users to adopt the subscription method and stop buying physical media they'll get more of users cash for life. I like having my locally stored physically obtained music on my local drive and like being able to listen to music from decades past as and when I want to locally and for 'free'. Long term, Apple obviously want to charge eternally for this simple pleasure to those that are very young today and won't be buying physical media as £9.99 a month is more attractive and manageable than the cost (and hassle I suppose) of buying CD's and transferring them to iTunes. It's a shame really.

Thanks very much again for your help.

I think that's mostly it - subscription services have been ever more heavily promoted to todays (dare I say it?!) 'throw-away-generations' and are fairly quickly becoming the go-to solution for many users music fix. With the subscription based services almost inevitable dominant growth, over time the physical production of music will become eroded until it's no longer financially viable to produce and market physical media. This will leave users with only two options - to purchase digital music or subscribe to a vast and always growing collection of music. I believe the younger generations and those that follow will favour the subscription based services (as is proving to be the case with once physical-only software like Adobe Creative Suite etc.) as they appear to offer more for a manageable monthly cost.

If Apple can coax all it's users to purchase its hardware products that provide an efficient and enjoyable Apple produced streaming service that also offers benefits the competition don't provide (such as custom radio stations and one click purchases of music that is placed into a database which is accessible on a plethora of Apple only devices) it has the real potential to dominate the consumer focused music industry. At the moment the only real competition in terms of user numbers is Spotify.

Purchasing beats for $billions was a somewhat risky but potentially very clever move on Apple's part as it brings additional and instant credibility - admired by a huge number of younger generations - to the Apple Music brand with the inclusion of Beats Radio etc. which in turn will help Apple sell bucket loads of Apple owned Beats products too.

I think the passing of Steve Jobs has given birth to a new Apple business model - one which is slightly less interested in best quality practises and ethical decision making and far more interested in expansion and multi-market dominance.

That's just the way I see it.

Hi Winston Churchill

First of all I just have to say thanks again for all your help. I'm very pleased to have the issue resolved. Sorry I didn't reply here sooner, but it took a little longer than anticipated to complete the task.

In the end we opted for Family Sharing, which was easy to set up, although there were a few potential pitfalls to do with the possibility of loosing contacts and calendars if the incorrect option had been selected. As it was I finished setting up my partners Apple ID and created her iCloud account. Then we merged the contacts and calendars with her iCloud account, which meant she kept her contacts, but she also kept all mine, so we've been deleting them bit by bit and will continue until all mine are gone (I have quite a few hundred mixed in). Finally we set up her mail correctly and created her a new iCloud email address to go with her Apple ID.

We haven't got onto sorting out the merged Calendar info yet, but I assume it'll be the same as sorting out the Contacts - deleting what isn't needed and moving anything that used to be in 'Joint' into the new 'Family' calendar category.

It all seems to be working well and text messages are finally behaving correctly, which is great. It's so nice to be able to utilise messaging from our Apple Watches properly at last.

So, thanks very much once again. 🙂