Same for me (the sequence of Apple IDs). I now use icloud.com as my Apple ID for most things. But signing into Apple Discussions I need to use my original Apple ID that was not an email address. I also had hassles getting my iTunes and App Store purchases to follow my ID changes. Some App Store purchases still need me to sign in as mac.com.
I use my mac.com email addresses as my Apple ID for normal daily use (iCloud mail, Store, Notes, Find my…, etc.). The me.com and iCloud.com addresses are aliases that are interchangeable for Apple ID purposes.
I deliberately use a different Apple ID for my developer account. It is an email address but not an Apple email address. It reduces confusion for me as it separates developer activities from daily usage. For example, the billing information is different. It also uses 2FA, which I am not yet prepared to use for daily activities.
Basically Apple’s policy is that any updates to previous purchases have to be made from the Apple ID used for the purchase; if you try to download them or re-download a previous purchase with a different Apple ID then you are required to buy them again. This is my problem: if I want to switch my iTunes Store account over to my mac.com Apple ID, then I’m faced with a hundreds of dollars expense!
Since everything is in a database on Apple’s servers then it would not be hard to either replace the Store Apple ID with your other one (or vice versa) or to add the other ID to the store as an additional authorized ID. Like I said, any junior high school student would know how to do it. Of course, said student would have to undergo a security investigation by Apple before they’d be allowed to do the job.
Have you tried setting up Family Sharing with your second Apple ID as a family member? That would seem to be a workaround for this situation.
No, being a single person (my wife considers computers instruments of the devil), I never thought of that. Thanks for the suggestion, Adam, I’ll look into it.
Re: “Since everything is in a database on Apple’s servers then it would not be hard to either replace the Store Apple ID with your other one (or vice versa) or to add the other ID to the store as an additional authorized ID.”
The problem is not a technical one, the problem is a legal one. Allowing the consolidation of Apple IDs would essentially allow you to transfer your purchases en masse to another person, or–if you die–for your heirs to roll your purchases from your Apple ID into their own accounts. My understanding is that the contracts Apple has with the record companies specifically require that purchases be non-transferable, and any form of Apple ID consolidation is effectively a transfer that would violate these contracts.
Dave
True, but I’m not talking about merging Apple IDs of two DIFFERENT people. I’m talking about merging Apple IDs of a SINGLE person who has ALREADY made the purchase. That would NOT be a transfer to a different person. It would be no different than changing a credit card or an address for a person.
I suppose what @dave6 was getting at is that that mechanism could be abused to move music, for which you specifically have acquired rights, to another person, eg. an heir.
While I’m perfectly willing to believe that is a present legal obstacle, I see no reason why Apple couldn’t attempt to renegotiate to make such a common-sense change possible (eg. requiring you to declare that you are still the sole user of the new address). They have a lot of market power and they have negotiated in the past to make user-friendly changes possible. This problem has caused a lot of grief for too many people for too long, @sf.ross gave us an excellent example. Would be nice to see Apple negotiate for a more user-friendly procedure.
You can’t merge Google accounts either, so I’ve long wondered if there’s something more involved.
Adam, I looked at setting up Family Sharing, but as I understand the procedure at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201088 I can’t do it.
Why not? Can’t you just pretend your second Apple ID is your wife, and go from there?
Because both are already registered under my name.
I don’t see how the name should be related. I just did this—adding my second Apple ID to Family Sharing—and it worked fine. Well, except for a very weird and laggy situation where I entered the Apple ID address and password (I used the In Person approach from Settings > Adam Engst > Family Sharing > Add New Member). Nothing happened for many seconds after I tapped Next, and then I got a 2FA prompt on my Mac, and then another 2FA prompt after another set of too many seconds. And then it all just worked.
Adam, was your second ID already in use with either the iTunes Store or iCloud? The Apple ID I use with the iTunes Store, iOS App Store, & Mac App Store was created first (in 2003 IIRC) while the ID I use for hardware and Apple Discussions was created in 2004 or 05 and is linked to iCloud. It is the latter ID I want to try with the Store ID. I’ll look again and see what I can try.
The second Apple ID is a mac.com account, so yes, it’s in use with iCloud. I’ve never purchased anything with it because I was always careful to use my primary Apple ID for all purchases.
It looks like I won’t be able to use Family Sharing. My original Apple ID that is used with the stores, is based on my AOL address and isn’t linked to iCloud.
Then there is the bureaucratic problem that iTunes purchases are run by a different department in Apple to the Apple ID people. They would have to talk to one another to get this to work!
I did exactly that several months ago and it’s working perfectly.
I’m guessing APPL values credit card account numbers for marketing purposes and merging accounts would lower the amount they could brag about.