Can someone familiar with getting iCloud to work for spouses please, please help me?

[Bethany Smith]

If anyone can help me navigate this, I would be forever grateful. I have been a Macrumors reader for several years but never registered until the other day when upgrading one of our devices to iOS 5.

I am completely and utterly confused as to how to make this whole transition to iCloud work. My husband is leaving it all up to me since he pretty much hates technology and just wants it to work. Here is our situation:

My husband and I both used .Mac for several years. His .Mac email address is our Apple ID that we use to share purchases across all our devices. We would both prefer to not have to add anymore email addresses since everyone and everything we are registered on has either his .Mac email or my .Mac email.

When apple converted .Mac over to Mobile Me, we kept paying for it and so now we have mail coming to four addresses sometimes. His .Mac & .Me addresses, and my .Mac & .Me addresses.

Currently we have both our email accounts set up on each and every device so we can check each others emails if asked to. (Except iPhones now, more on that in the next paragraph)

We each have iPhones, but yesterday we both just upgraded to the iPhone 4S. After doing the upgrade, we just set them both up as new devices and didn't turn on any iCloud features because I was unsure of what to do.

We also share one iPad at the moment for our home and traveling. I have upgraded the iPad 2 to iOS 5, but did not set up iCloud on it. We have two Macbook Pros, but only Mine has all our purchased movies and songs, etc. on it as it was purchased first prior to getting our second one which is the one my husband uses for email, web, and documents.

We would very much like to be able to set up iCloud so that our Macs, iPhones and iPad to continue to use his main .Mac Apple ID to make purchases. We would also like to be able to use iMessage on our phones and would like to share contacts if possible.

I read as much as I could on iCloud. It seems to work great if you are one person using devices just for yourself. If however, you are trying to share things like we are, it's a nightmare.

My husband wants to just be able to have his music, apps, emails, and movies on his iPhone, he has already called me from work tonight and is giving me the guilt trip for sending him to work all night without any entertainment on his new iPhone 4S.

I'm pretty much speechless as I've been researching this all night and right when I think I have it figured out, I read something else that makes me realize I have no clue on how to make this work. Perhaps I am just over complicating this for myself, but as much as we love our Apple products this has almost brought me to the point of tears.

 

[vitzr]

You are not alone...

First off, I congratulate you for doing as well as you have. As a very long time Apple enthusiast, user & technologist, I commend you for your patience & perseverance.

This is a huge project and Apples done a pretty good job in all areas but one. That area is the long standing denial and outright refusal to make account control & consolidation, especially for families, a manageable task.

There is a distinct lack of information and help with this as you have discovered. I'm sorry to say I don't have an answer for you, other than to say that you are one of thousands with this issue. Many of us have posted warnings about this present outcome, only to be met with rage & hateful attacks from Apple fanboys and others who simply fear challenging Apple to fix this.

Common sense suggests that surely there's a solution but Apple has yet to provide one. Therefore all we can do is wait & remain vigilant in our quest for information & a solution.

Sadly this is what happens when one chooses to migrate to the latest product before Apple has it sorted out.

Patience is the key at this point, since something tells me that perhaps the number of people with this issue is far greater now than before. Apple may be forced to take responsibility and actually do something about this.

 

[NorfolkMustard]

What I think you're after is definitely possible Bethany. You can have separate AppleIDs for most aspects of the iPhone/Pad and can also have multiple iCloud accounts on the one device for some of the iCloud functions - if you wish.

You do need to migrate your mobileMe accounts to iCloud. Do that first.

For sharing one iTunes account for purchases:
Settings > Store (this one is so that when you buy more stuff from iTunes they will automatically go onto all your devices which have the same account on this page in settings)
and
Settings > Music > HomeSharing (this one is so you can also wirelessly stream iTunes content from your MacBook Pro to your iPhone/Pad when @ home)

Next, iCloud. Only the primary iCloud account on a device (the one in the Settings > iCloud screen can use PhotoStream, Documents&Data and Backup. But secondary iCloud accounts on the device (in Settings > Mail ) can do everything else (email, contacts, reminders, bookmarks, notes) this is how you can have multiple iCloud email accounts on one device - so you can again have both your and your husbands emails on both phones and iPad if you wish.

for iMessage enter just your personal AppleIDs into the Settings > Messages section so that you can then iMessage each other

 

[Bethany Smith]

Thank you for the reply Vitzr. I am just dumbfounded that they would not provide any information on a situation such as mine. I know it's not the typical scenario and they can't plan for every possibility, but it's not like it's unthinkable that a situation like mine is not out there. Even if they said something such as I'm sorry, you can't do this at least I would have a starting point. I feel as though I am in limbo with no way out.

Before my husband left for work, I was going to at least set up his email on his new iPhone 4S but I couldn't even do that because when I tried to enter in his Mobile me account, it wanted to convert it to an iCloud one and I was afraid I would do something irreversible. He almost took his old iPhone to work (With no Sim it's basically an iPod Touch at this point), but was angry and left it behind.

----------

What I think you're after is definitely possible Bethany. You can have separate AppleIDs for most aspects of the iPhone/Pad and can also have multiple iCloud accounts on the one device for some of the iCloud functions - if you wish.

For sharing one iTunes account for purchases:
Settings > Store (this one is so that when you buy more stuff from iTunes they will automatically go onto all your devices which have the same account on this page in settings)
and
Settings > Music > HomeSharing (this one is so you can also wirelessly stream iTunes content from your MacBook Pro to your iPhone/Pad when @ home)

Next, iCloud. Only the primary iCloud account on a device (the one in the Settings > iCloud screen can use PhotoStream, Documents&Data and Backup. But secondary iCloud accounts on the device (in Settings > Mail ) can do everything else (email, contacts, reminders, bookmarks, notes) this is how you can have multiple iCloud email accounts on one device - so you can again have both your and your husbands emails on both phones and iPad if you wish.

for iMessage enter just your personal AppleIDs into the Settings > Messages section so that you can then iMessage each other

Norfolk THANK YOU. I was already replying to Vitzr at the time you made your post.

Okay, I think I understand how to try and do this now. I have one question though, does it automatically change the email accounts on our MacBook Pros & iPad, or do I have to re-enter the iCloud information into them after setting them up? (I hope I made this clear enough)

 

[NorfolkMustard]

I updated my post whilst you were quoting it, the first thing you should do is migrate your MobileMe accounts to iCloud ones. https://www.me.com/move/

Re email. Have you upgraded both of your MBPs to OSX Lion 10.7.2 ?

 

[Syltaldo]

This is what I`ve done. As recommended by Apple.

Wife has her @me.com address. For email. I Converted it to iCloud and upgraded her iPad 2.

I have my own @me address. Converted that as well. Updated my iPad 2 and iPhone 4.

Now we use our separate iCloud accounts for everything except iTunes. Here we both use the same Apple ID. in our case, a gmail address I`ve had since iTunes opened in Norway.
IN your case, that should be the @mac address you`ve always used.

Apple has stated that you can use one address for iTunes purchases on multiple devices, and another for every other aspect of iCloud.

So you set up your me address for all your devices, and his address for all his devices and then you use the iTunes one for all the stores, on both iPhones, iPad and mac.

 

[Bethany Smith]

I updated my post whilst you were quoting it, the first thing you should do is migrate your MobileMe accounts to iCloud ones. https://www.me.com/move/

Re email. Have you upgraded both of your MBPs to OSX Lion 10.7.2 ?

Yes, when iOS 5 came out I upgraded our MacBooks to OSX Lion 10.7.2 and updated iTunes to it's newest version as well. When the MacBooks finished restarting, I was greeted with an iCloud pop up but dismissed it since again, I was unsure of how to proceed.

 

[NorfolkMustard]

Ok, Good. One thing to note is that when you migrate MobileMe to iCloud, your Contacts actually get migrated via one of your devices (iPhone, Mac).

e.g.
* MobileMe <-contacts-> MBPro (which is your current setup I presume?)
* then migrate to iCloud @ http://me.com/move
* Then login to iCloud on that MBPro, and that MBPro will upload contacts to your new iCloud account.

* make sure everything looks good on http://icloud.com before you try to sync more devices - you want to make sure the MBPro->iCloud upload went well first.

Whenever/if you're asked during this process if you want to keep contacts on your computer, always say yes.

 

[Bethany Smith]

Okay, will start it all when my husband gets off work in an hour. I'm actually exited. Thank you so much for your help!

 

[Bethany Smith]

Okay, after a few hiccups, I think I have it all working.. lol. On the MacBook Pro it shows duplicate contacts, but on the iPad it shows only one with a notification that there are two cards for that person. I am too mentally exhausted to try and figure that out..

The other issue I am having is I wanted to be able to get iMessages on both the iPad and my iPhone from my husband's iPhone but we can only seem to get it going to one or the other and not both. No clue what we are doing wrong there either.

 

[Bryan55]

The duplicates in iCal and contacts may be iCloud and mobile me showing up together. I clicked on Calendars in iCal and unchecked the mobile me calendars and the duplicates were gone.

 

[d21mike]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

Bethany. You have been given a lot if excellent information by others. I would like to add whenever you are not sure if you duplicate or missing data you should login to www.icloud.com. That is what all devices sync too. If it is accurate then you always reload any particular device from the master copy.

 

[Bethany Smith]

Thank you all so much for all the help. I was able to get the iMessages from my husband's iPhone to show up on both the iPad and my iPhone.

The last issue I am having is still with the Contacts. I'll keep plugging away at it.