Danny Novo
Just “watched” Apple’s latest from their Worldwide Developers Conference, and they announced a lot of cool things, but they have left me, in the end, worried.
In a nutshell, Apple hates me (us).
Right now, we have one Mac, two iPhones and an iPad in the family (with another iPad on the way, we expect). We have music, movies, games, apps, etc. on all of these devices. (Note, “device” now includes Macs, as per Apple’s new nomenclature.) We have one happy Apple ID, and that Apple ID is tied to our service contracts for our hardware, our music purchases, our app purchases, and our device profiles. With so many devices, you’d think we’d pay a fortune buying songs for each one!
But Apple (or the old Apple, at least) was nice about this. Using our one Apple ID on all of our devices, we could buy an app once, or a song once, and use it on all our devices. They all connected to one account (on iTunes on the Mac) and if I didn’t want the iPad (which the kids use a lot) to have certain songs, or certain apps, then I could choose to leave them off. On subsequent connections, iTunes remembered that the iPad doesn’t get Cee Lo’s original recording, that my iPhone doesn’t get Sesame Street Live, and that my wife’s iPhone doesn’t get Solomon’s Keep.
Apple loved me and my family.
But now, I am not so sure.
Everything they just described today seems tied directly to your Apple ID. When I get a new iPhone, all I have to do is enter my Apple ID and my password, and whoosh, all my stuff is dropped in from the iCloud. And when I get a new iPad, whoosh! And when my wife gets a new iPhone, whoo..ait a minute. Does she have to have her own Apple ID? If she uses mine (ours) does she get all my (our) stuff? What if she doesn’t want that music, or those apps? What if I don’t want her (or the kids) to have that? Does all my mail show up on her phone? If we use the new iMessage (also tied to Apple ID, I think) are we just talking to ourselves?
No problem, you say, Apple IDs are free! She can get her own. And one for each of the kids, too! (And the dogs!) Okay, but then, does she have to buy all her own apps? Her own music? Has the gravy train come to a screeching halt?
Cause if that’s the case, you better betcha iCloud is free, buddy, since I’ll be spending beaucoup bucks catching all my “devices” up to where they were before the magic happened.
Here’s hoping they didn’t show us some kind of profile feature in iCloud.
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I agree with everything you just stated. But should we/you let them no? Why don’t you encourage all your readers to send your post to apples feature request or what ever? Not that I think spamming them is necessarily the best way of getting their attention, but none the less it’s one way.
All my readers? Heh. Got that, Mark? But my lack of readers notwithstanding, yes, I think Apple should know, but no, I don’t think they will change their plans.
Once upon a time, we were supposed to buy a copy of everything we used, for each computer. Remember that? The advent of the family pack of software? Then Apple relaxed a lot on that, and it was glorious. I can’t remember how many copies of the Mac OS I have installed all over the place.
But now that era is ending. And I am afraid that it is what it is. People are talking up how with the App Stores (iOS and Mac) you can buy once and install on all your devices… unless you need different Apple IDs on your devices. Apple knows that our devices are becoming more personal, what with 70-some percent of their Mac sales being laptops, and with “personal” comes each with your own Apple ID, I suspect.
Maybe iOS has a future with user profiles, but I doubt it, much as I want it on our iPad. I have accepted that maybe each person in the family (and the dog?) will get their own “device” eventually.
Sorry, long reply to say, “I wish.”
Andreas, if this is in fact Apple’s plan (unknown), Woz himself won’t be able to change Steve’s mind with a feature request. In other words, this will be a situation with which Apple users will have to deal.
Well. Are we (you) getting ahead of (y)oursel(f)ves? Also, this WP template kicks a$$!
Lots of folks (inc. me) have similar concerns. We have a mobile me family pack which we have set up with a couple of accounts (@me.com addresses) for my wife and I. This includes one account which is the master (in my wife’s name) and which has an email alias associated with it, for an email address she uses for her work. These mobile me accounts quite happily sync our respective email, cals, bookmarks etc to our iOS devices (an iphone 3GS in my wife’s case, an ipad in mine). We also each have a Macbook Air, and we have a mac mini which acts the central ‘media’ server for the house as well as as my desktop machine when I want to work at home. Lastly, we also have a 2nd Gen Apple TV hooked up to a flatscreen.
The macs are all set up to log into the itunes store with a single shared Apple ID. That ID happens to be the same as my Mobile Me account name (well, sort of — it’s actually the old @mac.com version, which Apple linked to the @me.com version when the transition to Mobile Me happened…yes, I’ve been an Apple user for a longish time!). We have a number of other Apple IDs which we used over the years to buy content from iTunes, so all the macs are authorized to use each of these as well as the Apple ID we currently use.
Last, we have all the macs, plus the Apple TV, plus my iPad, signed in to Home Sharing using the master Apple ID I described above. This enables us to access content from the mac mini (or any of the other libraries) on the ATV, and also to ensure that certain types of new purchases are automatically copied to the itunes libraries which want them.
It all seems to work fairly well. We can have our email etc in sync on our laptops and iOS devices, devices which are ‘personal’, and yet also share the media (songs, TV, films, etc including a fairly large library of songs ripped from CDs) we already have bought and ensure that new purchases are available to both of us if we want them.
Then, along comes iCloud with it’s “one Apple ID, multiple devices” philosophy you describe. If Mobile Me were not being discontinued I would be fine with that — I could simply ignore iCloud and let those who wish to use it enjoy it. But the merging of Mobile Me with iCloud looks like it will pose significant issues for anyone (or, rather, any household) which has some combination of individual data syncing for personal devices (iOS, laptops) and shared data syncing for entertainment content on those and on other devices.
Motto? Every man for himself. Compartmentalize, don’t merge. Share only on an “as needed” basis. Celebrate your differences, not your unity as a family.