Most of us probably signed up for our AppleID when we bought our first Apple product (Mac, iPhone, iPad, etc.). Today, signing up for one is part of the OOBE (Out Of Box Experience) with most all new Apple products. You can get around it, but it's highly encouraged. Most likely, this was done in a hurry, because most people just want to get their iPhone/iPad/Mac to start working. How much we think about which email address we give Apple to be our primary login account is probably not something a lot of people think too much about. But this choice then becomes the primary way we login to everything Apple, and it's very much tied to our online identity with Apple. Most of us probably never think twice about it, and probably never think or need to go back and change this. But there are many reasons why, down the road, we may want to change our primary email linked to our AppleID's. You may have given Apple a work email that you had at the time, and now you've changed jobs. Or the school you attended doesn't give you a permanent address that you can keep using after leaving. Or perhaps you've forgotten how to access the old personal account and can't recover that account for whatever reason. Or maybe you and your ex-spouse/lover/good friend(s) shared a single account (back before Family Accounts were around or even after), and you need to create your own. Or your account is just plain hacked/hijacked and you need to setup a new one. There are lots of valid reasons to want to change. But if you do, be wary that it's not all roses doing so.
You can, of course, simply login to Apple's AppleID service to manage your account and change your primary email address that is linked to your account. Doing so is fairly straightforward on the site. The problems, however, occur after you've done the deed. If you're someone who's fully bought into the Apple online ecosystem by using iCloud (for backups, Back To My Mac, Find iPhone, Mail, Contacts, Drive, etc.), iTunes, AppleTV, Family Accounts, App Store(s), in addition to all of their hardware (or frankly, even if you haven't invested in many of these services), there are some after-affects to be aware of when you change your primary email address of record with Apple. In fact, if you use services like Back To My Mac, you may be stuck in a bit of a quagmire. My suggestion here is that if you decide to make this change, do it when you have the time to get to every device and deal with the change, instead of when you are on the run and suddenly need access to something and you can't because you now have account access problems.
The primary problems comes out of the fact that all your existing devices where you've previously logged in with your AppleID stores your credentials for convenience and easy access to all your digital assets seamlessly. This single sign-on is part of what can make the experience magical and (usually), it just works. If Apple ever needs to verify you on any of these devices (either for security reasons, or just confirmation), it usually just asks you for your password. It already knows you are logged in and will display for you the primary email address with which your AppleID is logged in with. But it won't give you the option to change this field, only enter your password. The problem with this is that if you've just changed that primary email address (an no longer associate your old email with your AppleID in any way), Apple no longer recognizes your password, even if you didn't change it. Moreover, when Apple tries to process your password, the error it comes back with is an obscure one, saying that it is having problems contacting iCloud. But this error is incorrect. It's simply not recognizing that the primary email address linked to your account is no longer associated with your account, and does not offer a way for you to address this except to deal with changing your password, which won't solve the problem.
In most cases, the simplest way to resolve this would be to log out of your iCloud account on your device, and then log back in using your newly provided primary email that you associated with your AppleID. This can be a pain. For devices like AppleTV's, it's usually just the pain of logging in to your account without access to a keyboard (unless you're using their iPhone/iPad app, Remote). But for iPhones, iPads and Macs, you're then faced with deciding whether to
You can, of course, simply login to Apple's AppleID service to manage your account and change your primary email address that is linked to your account. Doing so is fairly straightforward on the site. The problems, however, occur after you've done the deed. If you're someone who's fully bought into the Apple online ecosystem by using iCloud (for backups, Back To My Mac, Find iPhone, Mail, Contacts, Drive, etc.), iTunes, AppleTV, Family Accounts, App Store(s), in addition to all of their hardware (or frankly, even if you haven't invested in many of these services), there are some after-affects to be aware of when you change your primary email address of record with Apple. In fact, if you use services like Back To My Mac, you may be stuck in a bit of a quagmire. My suggestion here is that if you decide to make this change, do it when you have the time to get to every device and deal with the change, instead of when you are on the run and suddenly need access to something and you can't because you now have account access problems.
The primary problems comes out of the fact that all your existing devices where you've previously logged in with your AppleID stores your credentials for convenience and easy access to all your digital assets seamlessly. This single sign-on is part of what can make the experience magical and (usually), it just works. If Apple ever needs to verify you on any of these devices (either for security reasons, or just confirmation), it usually just asks you for your password. It already knows you are logged in and will display for you the primary email address with which your AppleID is logged in with. But it won't give you the option to change this field, only enter your password. The problem with this is that if you've just changed that primary email address (an no longer associate your old email with your AppleID in any way), Apple no longer recognizes your password, even if you didn't change it. Moreover, when Apple tries to process your password, the error it comes back with is an obscure one, saying that it is having problems contacting iCloud. But this error is incorrect. It's simply not recognizing that the primary email address linked to your account is no longer associated with your account, and does not offer a way for you to address this except to deal with changing your password, which won't solve the problem.
In most cases, the simplest way to resolve this would be to log out of your iCloud account on your device, and then log back in using your newly provided primary email that you associated with your AppleID. This can be a pain. For devices like AppleTV's, it's usually just the pain of logging in to your account without access to a keyboard (unless you're using their iPhone/iPad app, Remote). But for iPhones, iPads and Macs, you're then faced with deciding whether to