“Your Apple ID is the user name you use to log into Apple’s App Store, iMessage and FaceTime services, and its online store and support forums; it’s also important for Genius Bar appointments and product registration,” Keir Thomas writes for Macworld UK. “Want to create, reset, change, remove or permanently delete an Apple ID?”
“You can’t get far in the world of Apple products and services without an Apple ID. Happily, it’s incredibly easy to set up an Apple ID accountThomas writesYou then use your Apple ID to access a plethora of services, such as iCloud, Find My iPhone, iTunes Match, and Apple Music, as well as make purchases from iTunes and download Podcasts.”
“In this article we explain not only how to set up an Apple ID, but also how to find out what your Apple ID is, how to find (or change) your Apple ID password, and how to get the most from your Apple ID account,” Thomas writes. “Last of all, we look at the terminal option: how to delete your Apple ID permanently.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s amazing how many people we meet who have iPhones and who also have no earthly idea what an Apple ID is/does, what iCloud is/does, how to use Find My iPhone, etc. – or even how to get apps from the App Store!
Somehow, Apple should do a better job of trying to reach the morbidly incurious.
I think the people who don’t understand the ID issue are ones who generally buy at non Apple store locations. People I have spoke with who buy from cell companies have the worst time with Apple ID’s as it is either not set up correctly, or not at all. I even talked with someone who had their password put in by a verizon employee- but the customer didn’t ask what the password was! Not sure why that kind of buyer even uses a smart phone…
Well, there’s an advertising slogan for ya:
“iPhone – smarter than the average buyer!”
what i really need is a way to finally combine my ID with a stupid legacy ID from like 8 years ago that is still linked to a few hundred songs
YES!!! i have an apple id from the very beginning before you could get an apple email account, and it has an email address that i don’t even use anymore, but there are probably 1,000 or so songs linked to it. i do not understand, after all this time, why apple won’t let you merge ids. if they can successfully switch chip architectures and operating systems, then they should be competent enough to allow for mergers.
Last time I had this problem, Apple gladly merged the two. I had to call support, but I did get a local (i.e. not a Bangalore, or Manilla call centre), and she knew what I was talking about and took care of it.
Wait, what?! You are claiming that Apple support can merge 2 distinct Apple IDs? I thought they claimed publicly that was NOT possible. Please confirm.
@predrag: seriously, please provide to the best of you ability as much info as possible about your experience. Last year I suffered a mental collapse* requiring a visit to the local urgent care due to the unreasonable and unbending attitude of several people and several hours on the phone with no resolution whatsoever. I too have an apple id tied to a deleted email account and the stupid people know that even though the MAS still uses that id, they have no idea where the invoices go. They won’t fix things to link me and my various id’s to a single icloud email account.
* I also have a disability that is exacerbated by dealing with stressful situations over the phone. I kept telling apple support that my preferred method of working through problems was via email. I was reassured that those working the phones are trained to deal with all sorts of personalities and disabilities. Hogwash. They insulted me and told me I was being unreasonable. Oh, the irony.
Have different IDs for the store and iCloud and it will stay that way until I have no choice but to change. If someone gets your Apple ID and it is tied to everything you are as dead as Princess Di. They own you from Keychain down to your files.
But why??? Instead of one thing, you now have two, and the risk isn’t any lesser. If your iCloud gets compromised, that means your keychain, bookmarks, browser history, photos, files/docs on iCloud, address book, any saved credit cards, etc. You get to save your Store ID, which protects your purchase history and not much else (the rest is in your iCloud address book anyway).
Besides, the two-factor authentication makes any kind of breach simply impossible to exploit. Nobody can log in but you, even if they know your password.
I do not use Apple’s Keychain. I use 1 Password. I do not store any sensitive documents or photos on iCloud.
It is not that I think Apple is insecure, it is that I am not enamored of cloud computing versus local storage and do not want to put my eggs in one basket.
If someone gets my Apple ID they might be able to watch a lot of iTunes TV & Movie content and listen to a large library of music through iTunes Match. They will not have access to any passwords to banking, brokerage , insurance, etc.
In the macworld article near the top is this unnerving tidbit: “When creating an Apple ID you need to provide an email address for your username. Rather perversely, this can’t be for an existing email account that’s provided by Apple, and it can’t be an address previously used for an Apple ID.”
Perversely indeec. What you have have is an email address from google, yahoo, MS, or your work. If you’re like me and you don’t trust entities like google to be your email providet, you’re SOL.
What on Earth is apple’s reasoning behind not letting you use your icloud account as the email attached to your apple id? Requiring one who already exclusively uses an icloud email address to go find another email provider is simply ridiculous on tne face of it, not to mention that there’s no publicly-available explanation for this practice.
This headline is misleading. According to all I have read, you can’t CHANGE an AppleID. You can change supporting details and you can delete the AppleID, but you can’t change the AppleID itself. If I’m wrong I’d love to see a link to an article giving details. (The article linked in this story never says how to CHANGE the AppleID itself.)
Exactly! I read the article. The headline is wrong. The article is about how to change _other_ details about your Apple _Account_, but says nothing about changing your Apple _ID_. Complete headline fail.