“Apple has set itself up to be the glue that ties together all of your digital devices. And iCloud is a key part of that strategy. Being able to sync your desktop, laptop and all of your mobile devices to a backup in the cloud, what could be simpler? But what if you have a family of devices and a family of people? It gets complex,” Anthony Wing Kosner reports for Forbes. “If you’re not careful, you find that everybody’s stuff is showing up on everybody’s devices. Or if everybody gets their own Apple ID, then you have to buy all of that content all over again.”

“Managing a family in the Apple ecosystem is complex, but, it turns out, not complicated,” Kosner reports. “If you started out with Apple before the cloud and before having children, you probably have a primary Apple ID that you may or may not share with your partner (if you have one). If you move into the world of iCloud trying to just use that one ID, you are in for trouble. You will have already found that you are either syncing too much (and having your personal information showing up on your kid’s devices) or not enough (and shutting off services that are useful just to try to contain the contagion.)”

Kosner reports, “To understand what you need to do, you need to look at the whole complex of entities you need to manage and see which things need to go together and which things should not go together.”

Read more in the full article here.