“You succumb and buy your kids ‘Let it Go’ on iTunes to play over and over on your phone – but are you thinking about what happens when they get their own devices?” Lou Carlozo reports for Reuters. “Even though you bought and own it, you can’t pass it along, transfer or give it away because of the way digital purchases are structured.”
“As parents come to realize the limitations of their Apple ID… they are frustrated. All the apps, songs and movies they’ve purchased are quarantined in their own accounts. When the kids branch out to their own devices, they pretty much just have to start over, with limited workarounds,” Carlozo reports. “‘It’s extremely frustrating to casual users and advanced users alike,’ says Mike Wehner, a writer for The Unofficial Apple Weblog. ‘It’s an opaque system and, goes against Apple’s message – it’s not very intuitive. And there’s really no built-in solution, which is what everyone is looking for.'”
“Apple spokesman Ted Miller says that while you can have up to 10 devices on the same ID: ‘You can’t transfer between Apple IDs and you can’t merge Apple ID accounts.’ The issue is largely ‘a technical question,’ and policies regarding Apple IDs and transferring are laid out in the company’s terms of service. Experts have their own theories, though,” Carlozo reports. “”‘It’s partly a technological issue but more significantly a licensing situation,’ says Eric Slivka, editor in chief of MacRumors.com. “On the topic of simply merging two Apple IDs, Apple CEO Tim Cook and his representatives were telling customers two and a half years ago that Apple was working on a solution. But so far – nothing.’ As for how Google handles things, it’s pretty much the same… ‘They don’t own the content they’re selling, they’re simply acting as the middle man,’ TUAW’s Wehner says.
Carlozo reports, “One way around this dilemma is to separate the IDs of family members as early as possible and to share anything desired through iTunes.”
Read more in the full article here.