what is the difference between an apple id and a .mac name?

Question

Level 1

54 points

what is the difference between an apple id and a .mac name?

I already have an Apple id that I set up when registering my macbook and for my itunes account. My Apple id is not an email address, it is just a word. I now want to get a .mac account but am not sure whether I am supposed to use the same id for this, or can I choose another name? Would this then be my menber name and my email name? I would prefer a combination of letters and numbers.

macbook white 2ghz, Mac OS X (10.4.6), 512mb ram and 60gig hard drive,

Posted on Jan 22, 2007 11:55 AM

Reply

Answer 1

locmi01

Level 2

315 points

Jan 22, 2007 1:04 PM in response to 12frets56

Supposedly they've merged... although I do find from time-to-time, that sometimes you need to enter just <userid>, and other times <userid@mac.com> to login to a particular service.

Here's two tech articles from Apple explaining the merge:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86308
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86334

Regards,
ML

Reply

Answer 2

12frets56 Author

Level 1

54 points

Jan 23, 2007 6:07 AM in response to 12frets56

Ok... these articles seem to assume that you have set up a .mac account first, then the apple id uses the same user name and password. I am going about this the other way round as I have an apple id already but not .mac so does this mean that I have to use my existing apple id name and password to set up .mac. I would have prefered a more anonymous .mac user name.
thanks.

Reply