clarifying iMessaging on multiple devices

keebler27 · Oct 13th, 2011, 12:12 PM

Hi folks,

I'm hoping I'm not the only one a bit confused on iMessaging, but here's my thought and hoping someone will confirm / deny

We have 1 iPhone, 2 iPads (one is mine, one is my wife's) and 2 iPod Touches (the kids although these sit in my office until they've earned the time).

If I understand this right, I can use my apple ID on my iPhone and iPad, but my wife and each kid will need their own apple ID to use the iMessaging.

But to sync to the iCloud, if we decide to do that, each one uses the same ID ? All purchases / dloads are done with my Apple ID.

Cheers,
Keebler

Chealion · Oct 13th, 2011, 12:48 PM

Not a complete answer:

iMessage can use a different Apple ID than iCloud (which can be different than the Apple ID you use for the App Store, iTunes Store, etc.). (That's how mine is set up - iMessage and the Store uses my main Apple ID, iCloud uses my MobileMe migrated ID)

I'm unsure if you can share an Apple ID but have devices respond to different email addresses (set in the Receieve At settings in the Messages section of Settings)

l84toff · Oct 13th, 2011, 11:57 PM

I have a similar dilema and am trying to understand this. Currently wife and I have an iPhone and iPad each. So far we've been using one Apple ID for purchasing from Apple. This Apple ID is different from my mobile me ID that we use on all devices to sync everything essentially. So now what?

From what I gather she will have to get her own iCloud ID and I can simply move my mobile me over to iCloud, losing some of the features of mobile me. But this will allow us to use iMsg and have 5GB for backups each? Can we keep using the same Apple ID for purchasing still? Not sure about this one but I don't really want to set up a separate account for her.

Haven't had a chance to play around with this yet as I've been away for a couple of days and am now having issues installing iOS 5 on the phones, same error (1654) keeps coming up. But I think I've found a way around it. If anyone has the answer to the other stuff, pls post. Once we're both on iOS 5, I will mess around and see what I find out.