iCloud: managing TWO .mac accounts in one household

[amiriliano]

My wife and I have:
macbook, ipad 2, 2x iphone 4s

We both have .mac accounts and are trying to figure out how to do the following:
We want our photostreams to be pushed to all our devices
We want to share a calendar
but:

We do not want to share reminders or contacts

We are currently using one .mac account for both of us because we want photstream to be shared on all our devices. However, some problems have arisen such as "work" entry in contact list syncs to my work address and not my wife's. This makes it so that when she asks Siri to "remind me to do ___ when I get to work", Siri picks my work address.

Any suggestions? Use one account for both or each use own address?

Thank you all!

 

[Small White Car]

Basically you want to get 3 iCloud addresses:

1) NEW ACCOUNT - This is on all of your iOS devices as the MAIN iCloud account and also on your Mac. In the iCloud settings turn on Calendars, Bookmarks, Photo Stream Docs and Data, Find My iPhone, and Backup. Leave everything else OFF.


2) Now, change your old MM account to an iCloud account and add it as an iCloud account in the 'Mail' settings as a new mail account. So your phone will have 2 iCloud addresses. The main one and this one, which will only be reminders and notes and contacts and e-mail. Also do this on your iPad.

3) Repeat step 2 with her phone and pad, but using her old MM address.


- - -

That's the basic setup. You'll have to spend some time figuring out how to sync stuff in the proper order so that you end up with the proper contacts within the proper accounts. I suggest exporting an iCal and Address Book archive in those programs on your Mac so you have them safely backed up in case you mess this up.

 

[amiriliano]

Thank you. That's very helpful.

We don't ha MM accounts so I guess we can skip that step right?

I want to know if there's a way to do it without 3 accounts also...wondering if there is.

 

[r0k]

Thank you. That's very helpful.

We don't ha MM accounts so I guess we can skip that step right?

I want to know if there's a way to do it without 3 accounts also...wondering if there is.

A .mac account IS a mobile me account so you already have two mobile me accounts.

I'm not sure what is the advantage of having the two phones share an iCloud account. Do you want her to see your photos and vice versa? If so then the method outlined above will work.

I'm thinking of simply porting the 4 existing .me accounts our family has to 4 separate icloud accounts. We also have separate iTunes accounts with purchases all tracked separately.

 

[amiriliano]

Thanks. We really just want to share photostream and be able to share a calendar. The rest we don't