When Apple introduced MobileMe, they really created a cluster$@#! of a situation with Apple IDs because they forced you to make a new one when you signed up. That means that millions of MobileMe users have two Apple IDs: the one they’ve used forever to buy songs, movies and apps, and another Apple ID forced upon you for MobileMe.
Well, now iCloud is here and MobileMe accounts have been ported and almost all of MobileMe’s services are now free. Wouldn’t it be nice to frickin’ be able to merge those two IDs into one so you don’t have to worry about this crap anymore?
Don’t hold your breath. Apple’s not playing.
Here’s what the official Apple support article says on the matter:
Can I merge multiple Apple IDs into one?
You cannot merge two or more Apple IDs into a single one. You can, however, use one Apple ID for iCloud services and another Apple ID for store purchases (including iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match). See “Using one Apple ID for iCloud and a different Apple ID for Store Purchases” above for details.
It’s not a huge deal, because Apple does allow you to sign in with a separate store ID, but it just seems stupid and arbitrary that Apple can’t fix this and simplify things for millions of users who didn’t want a separate MobileMe Apple ID anyway.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
75 responses to “Want To Merge More Than One Apple ID? Cupertino Says ‘Fat Chance’”
I still can’t believe that Apple haven’t addressed this problem. It seems like they’re just not capable because there are so many people out there complaining. It’s not even a new thing either, there are threads going back to the launch of MobileMe. I’ve spoken to a number of Apple employees about this and they all agree that it should be sorted. I’m in the same situation as everyone else… I originally signed up to iTunes with a very old Hotmail account. Since paying for MobileMe I started using that for purchases. Now, when iTunes has updates, I have to log out of one and into the other just to update – what a mess.
I used my gmail address to buy music and apps. I later got a me.com address as well. When I upgraded to iCloud my me.com address became my Primary iCloud account. Only the primary iCloud account can synchronize music but all my music is bought using the other email. This means that iCLoud is essentially useless for me now as I’m unable to change my primary account.
Ugh.
I am begining to think this isnt a technical issue but a legal or contractual issue. Maybe the purchases are tied to that account and merging or moving it isnt allowed.
How do I log in to my original Itunes account which did not have @email:disqus .com. Now I used my mobile email address as Apple ID and all my apps have been disappeared. Not sure how to bring back my apps from my original itune account
FYI you can merge and people have been successful in the past, just be prepared to take a week out of your life to huff and puff at apple.
P.S. split keyboard is awesome! I am using it on my iPad, love it.
It also seems stupid and arbitrary that those of us who have been using “home sharing” to keep our music and app libraries together with our families,/spouses/significant others are left out in the cold. One username, one account.
Seems to me that there was a post not too long ago on CoM that they were working behind the scenes to resolve this. Apple being who they are, they’d would stand by this rule until the minute that they announced it. That the FAQs and what have you still say it won’t happen isn’t a surprise.
My concern now is that I’ve converted to iCloud, I can’t seem to turn on the iTunes Match beta on my iPhone. The option doesn’t exist in Settings > Music any longer.
While I think the option should be available, I am glad I have two IDs. My wife and I share an AppleID for iTunes, but I do not want to share one for iCloud.
You can use your current Apple ID to login to iCloud. You’ll get an @me.com mail address for receiving e-mail, while you login with your old Apple ID e-mail.
You can use your current Apple ID to login to iCloud. You’ll get an @me.com mail address for receiving e-mail, while you login with your old Apple ID e-mail.
Actually, if you have 2 IDs, even two Store IDs (I got that for US and German iTunes Store), updates are all included and iOS or iTunes will separately ask for the password according to the app you update and the account you used to buy it with… don’t know exactly what you’re doing wrong – no login/logout required.
This has long been an issue that has bugged Apple users. When I tried to set up iCloud yesterday, I decided I wanted to just cancel/delete one of my Apple IDs, so that I could use the email address assigned to one, and switch it for the other. (My main Apple ID uses my old email address, and at some point I had set up a new one using my main email address, but only made one iTunes purchase with it and never used it again.) I searched all over the Apple ID part of the site, and found nothing about deleting or canceling an Apple ID. So I called Apple and had possibly the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had with them. The first woman I spoke with sounded absolutely put out that I wanted to speak with her, she was rushed and rude and told me to go look on the website since they don’t have access to Apple IDs. She put me on hold, which then ended the call. The second guy I talked to was nice and seemed intelligent. He said they didn’t have access to Apple ID accounts, but he would try to open a claim through one of my pieces of hardware, and try to do it that way. He put me on hold, but instead I was transferred to someone else. This last guy was alright, he didn’t really know what to do but he was trying. But, after putting me on hold to look into it, he came back and told me to Google deleting an Apple ID. Seriously. An Apple employee told me to GOOGLE something to solve my problem. Which didn’t really solve my problem since all those websites say to just delete all the information on the account and abandon it. I told him this and he said he couldn’t help me any further because my hardware was out of warranty so I didn’t have phone support, so there was nothing else he could do. Guess I’ll be calling tomorrow when I get my new iPhone and have phone support again…
I WAS able to get my current Apple ID to function as my “new” apple id that works across the App Store, iCloud, Game Center, etc…but after a couple painstaking hours.
I had to login to the Apple ID center, change my e-mail address there to something else, “verify” that email address and then do the same thing all over again BACK to my original address.
On the Apple ID center homepage there was a form to merge your primary e-mail address with a simple “submit” button…but this was the submit button to nowhere and I simply couldn’t get it to work!
It works the way you are describing on the iPhone, however, when using iTunes, it requires a separate login.
Login with your old ID. Your Purchases are linked to the apple ID you used when making them.
Mr brown lee, Your articles seem like high school assignments, you lack class as a writer.
I gotta tell ya, this whole AppleID debaucle is getting me extremely frustrated. I setup a “normal” AppleID (just username, no “me.com/mac.com“) quite a while ago, then decided to purchase MobileMe. Now I have a me.com address, but I’ve been using the “username” account for everything.
So imagine my surprise when today I download the “Find My Friends” app and try to log in, it says I must have an AppleID which is in e-mail format! So I log in with my me.com ID and it says now I have to verify my account. So I go to My Apple ID and try to verify my me.com address, which has my me.com e-mail addy as my primary e-mail, and it says “E-mail address is already verified with another AppleID”. Okay, I go into my old one, and attempt to remove the “primary e-mail address” which is my me.com addy, and it won’t remove. I can’t delete the primary address. I can add a secondary and verify that, but not the primary. So I try to use the “change your ID to match your primary e-mail address” feature, and THAT doesn’t work.
Then, out of nowhere my Mail password has now changed to the same password as my OLD ID, and not what the normal ID is. ?!?! I can’t use any of my Apple apps on the phone because of this verification issue, and I can’t save any of the Apple ID changes. And forget about Express Lane support. I filed my case and the only contact option was “Chat Later” so I can arrange a time to chat about it at my own convenience. Well when I go to take advantage of that, the only contact option presented is… you guessed it.. “Chat Later”.
If anyone has any ideas, I could use them. Oh, and since my wife joined the Apple world later than I did, she only had the me.com AppleID and everything is just peachy keen for her. No problems whatsoever. Ugh…
This SHIT pisses me off too. Yesterday I made a new account to use iCloud on and I realized that I couldn’t merge them and it made me furious. I hope they allow merging in the future…. FUCK!
And what exactly did they do? lol
Myemail….then you must be in middle school because you can’t even retype his name properly…Brownlee, not brown lee. Douche.
She is allowed not to share with you, not the other way around. The wife hasn’t ingrained that in you yet?
Give ’em a break — it’s early days. We’d all like products to emerge fully perfected, but that never happens. It’s a GREAT start, and a couple years from now, we’ll all be amazed at how far iCloud has come.
Yeah but the problem remains for people who already had an @me.com account with mobileme.
You don’t need to cancel the ID to use it with iCloud, just use it.
It’s not really early days though, MobileMe has been out for a few years now and Apple must have been having constant complaints about this the whole time – just check their discussion boards for the number of threads about people who ended up with two Apple ID’s after setting up a MobileMe account. You’re right about the direction iCloud is going though, I think it’s started off great and I’m very excited to see where it’s going. It’s also nice to have the extra 20GB storage as a MobileMe member.
Seriously, are people really this short sighted, or just plain stupid?
Apple has said before they’re looking into it, just because an article on there website says you can’t, it’s just saying that for now it isn’t possible.
No doubt apple are aware and will look for a solution and release it if/when they’re ready!
If I’d had a choice, I would have just set up iCloud with my iTunes/AppleStore ID, and forgone the MobileMe me.com email address, which I never use anyway. After fighting the battle yesterday to update iTunes, Lion, iWork apps, etc. I finally tried to get iCloud set up. It was the biggest cluster of them all. Briefly lost all my iCal items, but once I re-started by not-wanted MobileMe/iCloud conversion, it came back. I still can’t use iTunes with my iPhone because it keeps wanting to restore from yesterday’s backup and there’s no way around that.
It’s a good thing Steve Jobs is dead, so he has a grave to spin around in.
I think people are mad with this because Apple have been “looking into it” for quite a long time now. I completely agree with you though – I’m sure they’re working on a fix for it, I just hope it doesn’t take too long.
So who pissed in your porridge there Johnny. From the title down your comments are nasty, hyperbolic etc. Hell this whole article is nothing new. We’ve never been able to merge IDs
No it doesn’t. Unless you just tried to log in without following the directions to go to the whole “Move” page that they are forcing folks to look at so you have to verify that you understand things like any devices that can’t run iOS 5 or Lion will be cut off after you move.
Took me about 2 minutes to set up my mobile me for backup and syncing. another 2 to set up the other 4 accounts on my family plan for just email
I’ll be honest, I really wanted to find a way to unify my Apple ID / MobileMe situation, but now that I think about it, it makes sense that I have a separate ID for my purchases than I do for my mail, contacts, calendars, etc. I share my purchases with my family, so we all use a single Apple ID for purchases so that all our devices can use the purchased apps, music, etc. But I don’t necessarily want my daughter’s device hooked up to my email, etc.
What I’m most frustrated/angry at is that I have two accounts that I purchase with. This will keep me from taking advantage of iTunes Match most likely.
Here here!!!
So I signed up to post here just so I can share my pain but also what I found out. I just spent 3 hours with an apple rep on chat to discuss this same issue. I had a mobile me account that I was forced to get 2 years ago. Since then I didn’t upgrade my account so they call it being “deprovisioned” or something like that. But I didn’t care I just needed to “merge the account”. I thought it was a complete mess to have my apple id that i use for all purchases, etc. etc. Then this @me address that was from mobile me. Now here is where it gets tricky. I didn’t have access to my mobilme account anymore. So all my contacts were linked to that mobile me account, and were stuck on my phone. I needed and wanted to take all those contacts off of the me account and transferred to my real apple id. Now keep in mind, If you need more than just contacts. God knows what you stored in the contraption of mobile me. You need to go into your sys prefs on the iphone select your me account go to contacts and check off. Then from there it will ask you to delete from phone or keep on phone. Select Keep on phone! If you need more than just contacts that you don’t have backed up make sure and select each one off and “KEEP TO PHONE”. Then from there go to the bottom of the me account and select delete account. Again select “KEEP ON PHONE” just to make sure you don’t lose anything. Now go back under system prefs and select icloud and login to icloud now with your original apple id. Once you do that the icloud account will ask you if you want to merge “contacts” or anything else you had deleted/”turned off and kept on iphone” from your old me account. From there you should be looking great! I know can cast my mobileme account far far away and be done with it. Run a few test contacts to make sure the icloud is pushing to all devices. Hope this helps just one person, so they don’t have to go through the 15 hours to figure it out and to work:)
I have two accounts. brought about by the BMM (Before MobileMe) and AMM (after MobileMe). The problem was I used the same email address for both. Now it won’t let me “verify” the email address for the @mac.com AppleID, which is almost forcing me to create a 3rd AID with a (just for instance) @gmail.com address. This is so ridiculous. I think it would be fine except they want you to “verify” the email address… And you can’t use aliases from your @mac.com address. Wow! I’m gonna sit tight and see what Apple does…. meanwhile, I have to do with out my Time magazine application because it got lost in the upgrade. That and a few other things. This is really sorta dumb.
People are now having issues with verifying their email addresses with multiple Apple IDs. Argh.
https://discussions.apple.com/…
I had the same problem, until i tried my pre MobileMe username: i.e. in the ipad Messages App to register i just used the first part of my MobileMe email address (everything before @me.com) and used the [email protected] to register.
Personally I like them separate for the following reasons:
1) I have a separate Mac App Store login. I can buy any Mac software once and log in to wife’s & kid’s computers with same account to share software between us.
2) I have a separate iOS App/Music store login for the same reasons above.
3) My email login is separate and not shared with anyone.
4) Security: if one login/pw combo gets compromised you do not lose all your eggs.
The whole Apple ID is a huge debacle. I have multiple ID’s and email addresses, and for iMessage alone, I was forced to create a new Apple ID. When I wanted to add my email address to iMessage, it says that email is already in use. Duh, yet iMessage wouldn’t let me use that one to sign in. So virtually every app on my iOS 5 has a different ID… FaceTime (isp email address), Find My Phone (mobileme address), Find My Friends (requires iCloud address), etc, etc.
appleid.apple.com just needs a way for you link all your IDs under one main ID. It’s not rocket science.
Oddly enough I don’t ever recall being forced to do anything.
In fact when MobileMe came along I just kept using my .mac address. All of my music and settings transferred over to iCloud with no hiccups.
This is such an inconvenience that I am unable to change my primary Apple ID which renders me useless to take advantage of iCloud. I used my corporate email account as my Apple ID and email and now it wants me to verify this account which unfortunately I no longer have access. I tried changing/adding another email and deleted the previous and it did not transfer any related account information to this new email address. WTF, now I am unable to update any of my softwares/apps under the older unverifiable email. My newer updated email it isn’t working either since it tells me that I do not own any of these apps/softwares. Obviously these accounts are linked to the same credit card #. This should just be a simple process and now I am left with thousands of dollars worth of softwares, apps, songs and related purchases that I no longer own because the associated Apple ID could not be verified. I’ve had bad experience enquiring within the store and hate dealing with unapproachable, unhelpful and not so customer friendly geniuses. I have a basic questions that a regular apple employee should know and instead I have to go to the genius bar to have an appointment. Ugh…would be great if they serve apple martini! Help you guys!
Petition:
http://www.change.org/petition…