Extreme iCloud Confusion

[mjohns930]

iCould makes me want to hang myself. I consider myself to be reasonably tech savvy and I thought I understood this whole thing reading about it but now in implementing it I am having problems. I have done numerous google searches the last couple days and still can't find an answer to my specific problems.

Between my wife and I we have a MacBook Air, Windows 7 desktop, two iPhones and an iPad. The MB Air and one iPhone belong to my wife and the rest are mine. We use one iTunes account for all purchases and have separate email accounts. We both have our own gmail and yahoo mail account and our iTunes account is my yahoo mail account.

Now here is where I am getting confused: I know I can create a new @me.com id for iCloud for each of us so we don't have to share contacts, calenders, etc. but I need to know if we can segregate app/music downloads. In other words if my wife downloads an app/song it will only auto download to her computer or iPhone and none of my devices. Then obviously the same for me.

Can that be done with iCould through clever id management or not at all? If so how? All the research I have done it looks like the auto app/music downloading is linked to the iTunes id as opposed to a new iCloud@me.com id. I am highly debating going back to separate iTunes ids simply because of this even though that is a mess too.

If there is something that explains this better please let me know and link to it because I literally found nothing pertaining to this.

 

[realityking]

I think you'll need 3 Apple IDs. One for each of your for Mail/Contacts/Calendar and a shared one for the iTunes stuff.

Separating App/Music downloads isn't possible. (How would it be?) They are linked to one Account, I don't think Apple intents for multiple people to share one account.

 

[mjohns930]

Thanks for the reply. I have all the logistics of the iCloud ids worked out (I think) regarding contacts and calenders.

But sadly I have been doing more and more research and I think you are right about not being able to separate downloads on one account.

I read about this on some other website but Apple need to let us assign each device a "device owner" or something along those lines. Then I could tell iTunes "this computer, iPhone and iPad are mine and this that and the other are my wifes". Then it could theoretically work.