Apple ID Best Practices

For those sharing an Apple ID, which is not a good practice as you said, see How to Stop Sharing an Apple ID.

(Note that I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link, because some pages on the site contain small banner ads).

Maybe to make #3 crystal clear... did you mean to avoid re-using an email address that serves as another account ID somewhere, or to avoid using a non Apple domain address?

For flexibility, one shouldn't use an Apple domain address, as once you have you can't change the email associated with your Apple ID.

Juggling the same Gmail address for both Apple and Google purposes can be confusing for some when it comes to password management.

(1) Agreed. It is a really bad idea to ever share personal login accounts of any type. In particular, it's hard to change the attitudes of older folks that have always shared email accounts and often even share the same Mac login. Younger folks tend to get it.

(2) Agreed. This problem is a communication problem that Apple needs to address. Users seem not to understand that the accounts that they use for the App store, iTunes store, iMessage, iCloud, FaceTime, etc., are all just AppleIDs, and that these services can be logged into by one, or different AppleIDs, even on a single iOS device or Mac. It's very confusing to users and is the reason why they seem to create more than one AppleID over the years.

(3) Agreed. Unless users are technically savvy enough to use a password manager, then not only is forgetting passwords a problem, it's exactly why I have a real aversion to recommending that many users enable 2FA on their various web accounts. If a user can't manage a simple password, or learn to use a password manager, then they simply cannot and should not attempt to use 2FA either. Honestly, for users that frequently lock themselves out of accounts, 2FA is unfortunately more of a risk than a benefit.

(4) Agreed. Although many folks don't think this is a problem, I agree with you completely. I would love to see Apple and every other web service stop with the insane practice of using an email address as a username. I know that that's how it's done on every major site on the web but lets be honest, it's a really horrible design choice. First and foremost, when a service uses an email address as a username it confuses the crap out of the majority of non technically savvy users. Think about the fact that it's very common for someone's AppleID username to be a Gmail email address, their Office 365 login might be an iCloud email address, and their Facebook login might be an outlook.com email address. That's insane! Anyone that has ever provided technical support to a technically challenged user knows the maddening discussion that ensues before you can even begin to help them.

I cannot for the life of me see why one would want to do that - it is confusing.

Because as I've already told you in some instances users aren't offered the option of using the iCloud address as their primary address and ID and have to use their non iCloud address.

I don't agree with no. 3, there is no problem with using a non iCloud address as the primary ID, indeed depending on where you set up your ID, you may have no choice but to.

Thank you. 🙂