Sharing an iPad with "Family Sharing" and a unique "Family" Apple ID.

Nobody expects Apple to bring Apple ID switching to iPadOS -- even though there's a version of it for managed devices. Technical and revenue issues aside, there are likely DRM contractual limitations.

So no Apple ID switches for the iPad. But there's a relatively easy way to implement a shared iPad for up to 5 people where Family Sharing can be used:

1. Give the iPad it's own unique Apple ID
2. Make the iPad Apple ID a family member. (See also: migrating from legacy shared iTunes Apple ID to family sharing.)

The five person "limit" is because Apple DRM / FairPlay is limited to at most 6 Apple IDs in a family group. Five for each family member, one for the family.

Caveat: Family Sharing for adults means every family member's purchases go first to the Apple Cash balance purchaser's account, next to the Organizer's payment method. Sooner or later I suspect Apple will need to fix this but it's been a problem for years. Without family sharing the shared iPad isn't useful for sharing Apple's media content.

iOS App Update hangs without an error message in infinite download: a general approach

Apple's FairPlay DRM management is notoriously fragile. It can be confused by family sharing, Screen Time controls, payment method changes, and, heaven forfend, mixed Apple IDs on a device.

Once Apple's DRM gets confused there's often no user accessible error message (PS. This is a bug [1]). The app just hangs. So when I realized my (manual) App Store updates were not completing I was not completely surprised. Recently I had:

1. Changed payment methods. I made my Apple Card's award balance (1-2% transaction) the default payment method (so it always gets emptied)
2. Enabled Screen Time account change restrictions to mitigate the harm of Apple's biggest current security issue.

I fixed the problem in the usual way (see Apple's article on this as well):

1. [Switch to manual update if you've been using automatic]
2. Verify Apple ID payment methods look correct
3. Turn off Screen Time [Apple doesn't mention this.]
4. Restart phone (power off/on)
5. Download a new free app from App Store [An old method, still useful]
6. Verify I can now update one of the pending apps.
7. Update All
8. Turn Screen Time back on.
9. [Turn auto update back on if you like that.]

-- 

[1] Failure to generate a user notification of a failed interaction is, of course, a bug. Regardless of whether there's a bug in the interaction processing (which there is, so that's another one).

Migrating from an Apple Store/iTunes shared media Apple ID to a standard Apple ID configuration

I'm putting this up as a peacekeeper. I hope one day I'll fill it in better, but if you are trying to migrate from a shared Apple ID to each family member having only one Apple ID for both iCloud services and media then you will welcome any information.

First, see my prior post. I'll continue with this convention:

Let's say my iCloud Apple ID was "Sam" and my Media Apple ID was "Linda". So my device Apple ID configuration was Sam/Linda.  After the change it was Sam/Sam. 

I think the migration will more or less work. This is what I did so far, omitting errors and redirections:

1. Let my Apple Music subscription lapse and cleaned up other subscriptions. These were owned by "Linda".
2. Subscribed to Apple Music one day after the lapse using Sam. I'd seen hints Apple keeps iCloud media data (playlists) around for at least 1 month post lapse of subscriptions. I can confirm they last at least 1 day.
3. Changed my devices to be Sam/Sam (maybe this would best be done later)
4. In iCloud Family Sharing settings opened settings for Sam.  Even though my device might be Sam/Sam when I inspected details on my Family Organizer Apple ID I could see shared access was mediated by Linda. I changed that to Sam in Family Sharing.

I ran into too many issues to enumerate. A few tips:

1. Changes to media rights seem to take time to be effective. After starting a subscription give it at least 30-60 minutes.
2. iTunes classic allowed import/export of XML playlist files. These are useless. The key identifier is the track ID so they only have meaning for the Library they came from.
3. Sharing a playlist by URL from Monterey worked -- but not at first. It got hung up in the subscription translation.
4. Even after family members had renewed subscription access they needed to do something to get Apple Music.app to synchronize. Sometimes this was clicking on the sign-up add for Apple Music then choosing the subtle link for "already have a subscription". Sometimes shutting down and restarting. Sometimes looking at Music.app preferences and turning on iCloud library synch. (Sorry, there were so many issues!)

Extra comments

1. There are two kinds of Playlists - "Apple Music Playlists" and traditional iTunes/Music playlists. I think when you migrate an old iTunes library to Monterey the app turns legacy playlists into Apple Music Playlists. Not 100% sure about this.
2. I'm not gonna talk about this more, but I'm still running iTunes on Mojave and I'm amazed it works at all. It more or less survived the process. I have future work to do around migrating things out of iTunes on Mojave. (That machine will be an Aperture machine until I migrate that -- an even greater challenge. Then it will likely be replaced.
3. Post migration it's not clear how to identify what a Family Member purchased from the days of the shared Apple ID. Apple suggests going to reportaproblem.apple.com; it only goes back 90 days though. Before doing the Apple ID migration the Family Organizer view had data broken down by family member, but after the migration that was very limited.

Update 11/15/2022 - the dreaded Apple ID for purchases". 

Only my #1 son still had the "Linda" Apple ID for purchases (Store, Media). He's on iOS 16.1.1. Even after switching his Media Apple ID to be his iCloud Apple ID, and despite his Settings Family Sharing saying he had access to the Apple Music subscription, both iTunes.app and Music.app said he didn't have family sharing access.

I found https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201454. There are 3 Apple ID settings in iOS, not 2. There's iCloud Apple ID, Media and App Purchase Apple ID, and for the Family Organizer there's also Apple ID:Family Sharing:Purchase Sharing:Purchases:Apple ID for Purchases! The last is not updated when a user changes Media Apple ID. It's a "secondary Apple ID".

I don't think the Apple ID for purchases always exists. On my son's phone it can be changed. On my personal family organizer phone it appears it cannot be changed and it's incorrect. There can be significant timing delays when it's changed, the Done button may appear not to work but on screen refresh it may work.

After I removed the secondary Apple ID for purchases from his phone he was able to access Apple Music. Then I could enable "Sync Library" in Music Settings.

Related: A post on App Update hanging in infinite download.

Update 11/18/2022: Article on the secondary Apple ID and purchase sharing. This article changed 9/2022. It feels like Apple's attempt to mitigate the multiple Apple ID curse. You can only change this every 90 days. I changed it from "Linda" to "Sam" but in 3m I might change it back again -- after some research.

Update 11/19/2022

After doing the Apple ID separation I needed to recreate a Library for my son that identified what he'd actually purchased over the years that his purchase were on the family shared Media Apple ID. The Media Apple ID had its own account on one of our Macs, so I could create a Playlist from that to share, then open that shared url in his current Library. That worked pretty well in the end, but there were many issues and steps. I used many macOS Music app queries and sorts to reconstruct which things were his (He still purchases Music from Apple. That's a longer story.)

Once he had the Playlist I created open in his macOS Music app I had to select all songs and use "Add to Library" to actually make them part of his Library. Note you can download songs for a Playlist but that doesn't make them part of the Library. I needed his Library to reflect his purchases and preferences.

As a part of this process I found the best way to view purchase history was to enable iTunes in Apple Music, then in iTunes click the Purchases link.

Incidentally I ran into many UI bugs and issues with Apple Music. The worst is the insane and inexplicably persistent Apple Music product manager decision to use an enormous Playlist header section that makes the essential column browser very inefficient. There were problems with Authorizations, with downloads, with list row selection and more. It's just a buggy and flaky app. At one point I was trying to download locally and nothing happened. Only by showing the Activity window could I see that my device authorization wasn't working. I had to use my son's Apple ID to authorize Music / iTunes in his user account -- perhaps the Apple ID I first used had too many authorizations on it. There was no error message.

Apple Music subscriptions stop working when I changed my Media & Purchases Apple ID

Apple digital rights management (DRM, FairPlay in this case) is very complex, particularly when one adds Family Sharing or has an atypical Apple ID setup.

In our case, for reasons that made sense 10-15y ago, my iCloud Apple ID is different from my Media & Purchases Apple ID. My iCloud Apple ID is the family organizer and my Media Apple ID is a family member.

Over the past few years I've been trying to migrate to using a single Apple ID on my phone. I have migrated all but one family member.

Migration has been difficult. I don't think Apple has published a transition guide. You can't, of course, transfer purchases or media or subscriptions. There's a risk of losing a lot purchases and Apple is unlikely to help.

I looked at doing a test migration on a macOS Monterey account of mine but it seemed Monterey did not a user to change only their Media Apple ID. [Later I found you can. In Monterey, unlike iOS, it's obscure how you do this; it doesn't show up in an Apple ID. You change the Media Apple ID through the App Store (Sign Out, Sign In).]

Since it seemed couldn't test on Monterey without trying a full Apple ID transition I made the changes on my iPhone.  Let's say my iCloud Apple ID was "Sam" and my Media Apple ID was "Linda". So my device Apple ID configuration was Sam/Linda.  After the change it was Sam/Sam. Sam is the Family Organizer, Linda is a family member. Linda owns our app and media purchases -- at least that's where they show up when I look.

I was particularly curious how Apple Music would work including test playlist sharing. Unfortunately I couldn't test the playlist sharing because Apple Music didn't work at all! As far as iOS was concerned I didn't have an Apple Music subscription. It offered to give me 6 months free. I also didn't have any Playlists or other configuration. Music (iTunes) configuration is tied to the Media Apple ID, not the iCloud Apple ID.

To recap, Sam is family organizer and Sam/Linda purchased the family plan Apple Music subscription. Linda shows up in Family Sharing as a family member. Once I became Sam/Sam I had no access to Apple Music. Reviewing Family Sharing it appeared that Sam should have access to Linda's Apple Music subscription. That doesn't work.

Apple's Family Sharing problem support page says:

... Make sure that you're using the same Apple ID for Family Sharing and Media & Purchases... 

They don't say how to migrate to that idea of course! Obviously it was possible to use a different Apple ID for Family Sharing and Media (Apple Music worked before). I don't know if the changes made to my device impacted any other family members (wish I'd checked!), but it appears for a Family Organizer device to see Apple Music they have to use the same Apple ID used at time of purchase.

Somewhat surprisingly Apple let me revert back to Sam/Linda on my iPhone. (I think there was some time limit/change limit on Apple ID media changes.) After a period of sync I had my old playlist and Apple Music access.

My guess is that to make the change to Sam/Sam and keep Apple Music I'll have to end my current subscription (tied to Linda) then change the Media Apple ID then resubscribe for the family. (In practice I'll end all subscriptions for Linda before the change.)

Managing multiple Apple Store Apple IDs in Monterey: how to sign out and thus change default Apple ID for app update and purchase

There's a lot of complexity in Apple's software, but my nomination for the ultimate complexity is the web of undocumented and slowly changing rules and tools around Apple's Digital Rights Management (FairPlay) including rights to use media (music, video) and software (apps) for both individuals and family members.

I don't think anyone truly understands it all, not even Apple's senior developers. Sometime in the past decade Tim Cook said he'd fix the Apple ID problem and then things went silent. It's a nightmare. I remember when changing a phone number associated with an Apple ID could switch the ownership arrangement for device history (presumably a matching problem between disparate databases).

My most recent experience with this was trying to fix the default Apple Store Apple ID used to for Mac App Store DRM on my wife's Air Monterey account. It was defaulting to an Apple ID we used to share for iTunes purchases 10+ years ago. I've been slowly disentangling it for 4 years now and the rules change with each macOS/iOS release. Currently there's a bit more tooling to sort out who owns what on a Mac but it's obscure.

As far as I can tell the controls for this are now hidden in the App Store app. That kind of makes sense, because the rules (and Apple's DRM contracts) for movies/TV, music and apps are all likely different. You have to go into the App Store app, which can show the apps associated with multiple Apple IDs, then you have to sign out from the menu:

After signing out the default account for App Store purchases was her Apple ID.

Her Music account seems to be based on her Apple ID, but I didn't check to see if changing the App Store Apple ID changed that too. It would make sense if Apple were to have separate rules though. 

I think the complexity of Apple ID DRM may be one of the reasons Apple never provided a multi-user iPad for families. (Our shared iPad has its own unique Apple ID but is a member of our family sharing.)

What happens when you have an Apple ID without an email address and you change it? (And much more about Apple ID hell.)

I'll provide some back story below, but it's tedious and a bit ranty so I'll put the most useful stuff up front.

For *reasons* (see below) I have had an Apple ID associated with iTunes, App Store, physical Apple Store, hardware and other purchases for about 20 years. For other *reasons* almost lost to memory the username has not been a valid email address for most of those years. Until recently it had an associated email address it would forward to but Apple changed things sometime in the past two years and that stopped working.

I'm simplifying.

We will call this Apple ID username "bob@mac.com". I will use alice@icloud.com and dan@me.com for my new Store Apple ID ("Media & Purchases") and my longstanding iCloud Apple ID respectively.

Once bob@mac.com stopped forwarding I no longer received notifications related to Apple Discussions or emails related to charges. Since bob@mac.com was the store Apple ID for my family (this was the practice in early iTunes days) our children (now adult) used it for purchases. Simplifying a lot and omitting family details the lack of email meant no monthly statements -- so I didn't spot a scam subscription - among other things.

I knew I had to fix this but I dreaded the side-effects. I'd already tried undoing the shared store Apple ID and ran into disaster; I had to reverse that attempt. I had to fix the Apple ID invalid email problem first.

Before Apple broke forwarding for the Apple ID "bob@mac.com" I had used "alice@icloud.com" as a forwarding address. Although there was no clue in the Apple ID online configuration tool, I knew alice@icloud.com was still entangled with bob@mac.com (see below, this post goes on for a long time but still omits much).

Ok, so far? I gets a bit simpler then you can skip the back story.

Anyhow ... when Apple broke forwarding they seem to have introduced the ability to change an Apple ID userid - such as bob@mac.com. I believe, though I can't find any documentation, that the visible username with the form of an email address (ex: bob@mac.com) is an alias for an unchanging hidden identifier (maybe a GUID). 

After some thought I decided the cleanest approach would be to change my Store Apple ID visible username from bob@mac.com to alice@icloud.com (I knew the two were entangled, see below). It's easy to make this change from appleid.apple.com. When I did this I was not asked to confirm that alice@icloud.com was a valid email address I owned. All I got was an email sent to to alice@icloud.com saying the change had been made.

After I made the change I found the following. I expect other changes as Apple's different systems synchronize and update (I will update this as I learn more, I expect to learn of problems from family members later today):

1. I cannot login to the Apple ID or anywhere using bob@mac.com but the two factor notification dialog still says bob@mac.com (this may change).
2. I think I may have more control over Apple ID two-factor, I can add/remove trusted devices, remove from account, and I can add a second trusted phone number. I still can't add a backup email address; that is available on some other Apple IDs I have
3. Apple Discussions is intact. When I login with alice@icloud.com I show as "member since June 23, 2003".
4. Mail sent to bob@mac.com still fails, there's no redirect.
5.  iTunes on Mojave: asks me to sign in and displays new alice@icloud.com. Says session expired, asks again. Purchase history intact.
6. Media & Purchases on iPhone showed new iCloud address and I had no trouble with updating apps.

In addition, Messages in my personal dan@me.com iCloud stopped working! It turns out "Messages" has legacy associations with the old Apple Store ID used with iMessage before Apple implemented iCloud. I got this error message

Messages in iCloud not available as iCloud and iMessage accounts do not match. (Messages in iCloud is not available because iCloud and iMessage accounts are different.)

There's a fix here but it's not the one I needed. When I looked at Messages on my iPhone it showed only my Phone number, the Apple IDs were all absent. When I tried to enter an Apple ID it showed my store Apple ID; I chose "use other Apple ID" and entered my personal iCloud Apple ID. That worked and it immediately restored all my send/receive message list. I could then reenable messages in iCloud.

It didn't fully work on Mojave iMessages though. I reenabled using iCloud Messages in preferences there and about an hour or two later it seemed to start working (though uploading messages to iCloud is still ongoing.)

That concludes the current record of changes to date. So far it has been less of a problem than anticipated, but it's early days. I will add other issues as they emerge. Then I can return to the herculean tasks of moving family members off of a shared Media & Purchases account.

Below are details for the benefit of someone searching who finds this post. They are related older items that I will summarize in outline.

----------- additional details ---------------

As noted above years ago I had alice@icloud.com as forwarding email for the Apple ID bob@mac.com. The address bob@mac.com had no associated email because of complex changes Apple made in migrating from free iTools to not-free .Mac to MobileMe. [1][2]

When I finally realized I wasn't getting Apple media purchase statements for bob@mac.com I began investigating what had happened to the old alice@icloud.com iCloud account. I found it was deactivated. I was able to reenable it. That's when things got weird. Remember (if you read above) that there was no longer anything I the Apple ID settings for bob@mac.com that showed alice@icloud.com.

Once I reenabled alice@icloud.com with a new password I found that:

• Both alice@icloud.com and bob@mac.com worked as usernames for the same bob@mac.com Apple ID.
• The password for the bob@mac.com Apple ID had changed to match the alice@icloud.com password. [This actually took a day to propagate to iTunes purchases]
• Both alice@icloud.com and bob@mac.com showed the same iCloud services (mail, etc).
• bob@mac.com was still not a valid email address. 

fn -

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobileMe#.Mac

Originally launched on January 5, 2000, as iTools, a free collection of Internet-based services for Mac OS 9 users, Apple relaunched it as .Mac on July 17, 2002, when it became a paid subscription service primarily designed for Mac OS X users. Apple relaunched the service again as MobileMe on July 9, 2008, now targeting Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, iPhone, and iPod Touch users.

On February 24, 2011, Apple discontinued offering MobileMe at its retail stores, and later from resellers.[2] New subscriptions were also stopped. On October 12, 2011, Apple launched iCloud to replace MobileMe for new users, with current users having access until June 30, 2012, when the service was to cease.

... The original collection of Internet software and services now known as iCloud was first called iTools, released on January 5, 2000, and made available free of charge for Mac users.

Services offered by iTools included the first availability of @mac.com email addresses, which could only be accessed through an email client (e.g. the Mail app); iCards, a free greeting card service; iReview, a collection of reviews of popular web sites; HomePage, a free web page publishing service; the first version of iDisk, an online data storage system; and KidSafe, a directory of family-friendly web sites.

.Mac[edit]
As costs rose, most particularly due to iDisk storage space, the wide demand for @mac.com email accounts, and increasing support needs, iTools was renamed .Mac on July 17, 2002, as a subscription-based suite of services with a dedicated technical support team.[25]

... Existing iTools accounts were transitioned to .Mac accounts during a free trial period that ended on September 30, 2002. This move generated a mixed reaction among Mac users, some believing .Mac was overpriced...

[2] eWorld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EWorld

. Yesterday the password for App Store was different from password for Apple ID but today they seem to be same. I think they are two different systems that update every few hours...

 · Feb 19

Today it appears there is a single Apple ID with two usernames and one password. One username has iCloud services but is nowhere displayed in Apple ID information. twitter.com/jgordonshare/s…

... If you change a phone's Store ID to match the phone's iCloud ID  you cannot update all their apps with their iCloud ID password. You need to use the old Store ID password. Even when family sharing is in play...

... I have a hunch that Apple has an internal ID for users separate from the username (email form) displayed with their Apple IDs and Store IDs and iCloud IDs and that is what they use in FairPlay. 

Apple Mac App Store: "Unable to download item. Please try again later": The problem may be that you are not the purchaser.

I was logged into my admin account on my daughter's Big Sur Air and saw the usual nag to update Apps. When I tried though I got  "Unable to download item. Please try again later."

It never works to try again later. This is a typically useless Apple error message produced when something has gone wrong with their complex FairPlay DRM authentication. There are a range of fixes that Google shows but, even after I figured out the bug (a design fail of this sort is a bug) I couldn't find anything that explained the fix [1]. So here you go!

The problem happens on a multi-user Mac with multiple admins installing software using different Apple Store Apple IDs. It might also require that automatic updates are not enabled and it might require that Family Sharing is enabled.

Every admin gets notification of a pending update, but only the FairPlay determined DRM owner can actually successfully do the update. Other admins who try get the useless error message.

The fix on Big Sur's Mac App Store is to cast your gaze down to the bottom left corner of the App Store window. There you see a user name. Click on the user name and you'll see an "Account" screen. At the top of the "Account" screen is a "Purchased by" drop down with the user name of every family sharing member [1]. Switch between Accounts here to find who has the "update" for the problem app. Then update. Continue until all apps are updated.

It will be interesting to see if this is handled better in Monterey. I can imagine several potential fixes!

[1] As every Old will repeat ad nauseam, the Google web was much better 20 years ago.

Apple's Family: The many surprises of creating an Apple ID with age 13 or under

(You can skip the rant to get to the tech details)

<rant>I frequently berate Apple for the radioactive-feces-infested-dumpster-fire that they’ve built out of Family Sharing and Parental Controls / Screen Time / Restrictions [1] … but my latest experience has added a note of sympathy for the engineers who offend Tim Cook and are HR assigned to work on this prior to leaving Apple.

Apple has built something insanely complicated. The intersection of user interfaces, regional rules and restrictions, content licensing, DRM, functional requirements, iOS, macOS, iCloud, sync, multiple OS versions … heck, there probably time zones in there too. At this point they might as well give up and throw a neural network at it.

Whatever your day job, be grateful this isn’t what you work on.

Things are almost as bad on the consumer side. There’s a reason I seem to be the only person alive trying to make remote Screen Time work. (It’s a book project, I don’t have a choice.) With some effort I’ve come up with practical recommendations for caregivers (example) — but they assume the software actually functions. In practice I have run into a wide range of bugs and weirdness, particularly since iOS 13 was released.<rant>

Among the many complications Apple contends with into are rules about how many devices and how many users can be a part of a Family for the purposes of both DRM management and remote Screen Time. These are poorly documented, but as best I can tell the limit is 5 family members and somewhere around 10 devices (it’s not clear how multi-user accounts on macOS are treated or Apple TV). Our family has five members so we’re pretty much at the limit and I think we’re at the absolute device limit as well.

I say “think” because it’s not clear that there are error messages, I think things simply break.

So the baseline situation is pretty bad, even before one runs into bugs with handing down devices between family members.

I made things worse though. For a book project I added a test account — sphone4all@icloud.com. That pushed us up to six family members and probably hit or exceeded our device limit. Since my test phone is an iPhone 6 [2] it can’t upgrade to iOS 13 and is no longer useful for the book project. So I decided to try to remove it.

That’s where my next set of problems began. I’d make the mistake of creating the book account with an “age” less than 13. Ages are important in Apple’s Screen Time world. Basically:

Age 18 or more: independence, controls stop working, can purchase ad lib, can be Organizer. (Basically at age 18 you need to remove children from Family.)

Age 13: non-vulnerable status but subject to controls, cannot be Organizer. Age 13-18 is the range for Screen Time and content sharing. If you are the caregiver for a vulnerable adult (ex: cognitive disability) and need Screen Time support you need to periodically adjust their birthdate so they are over 13 and under 18. (We need legislation so Apple supports cognitive disabilities they way they support visual disabilities.)

Age 12 or less: vulnerable status. See below for the special rules.

I’d blundered by creating an iCloud ID for a “child” account with a current age of < 13. These vulnerable user accounts are special:

• They cannot be deleted by users. Only Apple can remove them. They can only be shifted between Family Organizers (supports divorce, parental death remarriage, etc). If a child should die, the grieving parents will need to work with Apple support.
• The birthdates cannot be changed. (Of course.)
• Since they cannot be deleted the Organizer iCloud ID they are associated with cannot become a non-Family ID.
• Since the Organizer ID must stay a Family ID the payment method cannot be removed from it.

That last bullet point is important. It’s a bit weird, but Apple documents how to create an Apple ID that doesn’t have a payment method. You can use it to buy free apps and tunes.

You can’t, however, turn that Apple ID into a family organizer:

If you're the family organizer for a Family Sharing group and want to share purchases with your family, you're required to have at least one payment method on file. A payment method is also required to set up accounts for children.

If you have an Apple ID like that, and you try to make it a Family Organizer in macOS Mojave iCloud despite the warning, you’ll get this helpful error message:

“There was an unexpected error”. Yeah, Apple was serious about that “requires a credit card” warning, they just didn’t code the error handler response for those who ignored it. I figured given the kludgy workaround Apple documented that the warning was obsolete. Wrong.

Why does Family Sharing require a payment method? I suspect Apple’s hacked together back ends can’t prevent some purchases even when there’s no payment method — and Apple doesn't want to get stuck with the tab. Another possibility is that it’s needed as part of Organizer identity tracing in case a vulnerable child family member is at risk.

So, what do you do when you have too many kids and you need to dump one that’s under 13?

The only recourse, short of phoning Apple support, is create another full Apple ID (age over 18), make it a Family Organizer, and transfer the sub-13 to that “Organizer”. You need hardware to create a full Apple ID, but if you have a Mac you can do it just by adding a system user. I did that to upgrade a limited Apple ID I’d created long ago to a full Apple ID. I then tried to use this fake parent/Organizer without a payment method, which is how I got the “unexpected error”.

After I added a real payment method and confirmed iTunes could see the account change I tried to again make that Apple ID the Organizer for a new family. This took a while. At first the macOS Mojave iCloud Preference Pane would simply display a blank window. After about five minutes it worked. I presume a back end system got updated.

From there I hopped through the transfer process between the macOS account for my new Organizer Apple ID and my iPhone that currently managed my faux 11yo. Some of the screens i saw are illustrative:

I got an error message during the process saying the request had expired, but it went through anyway. I think I got that errant error message because I backed up a screen to do a screenshot. Yeah, this stuff is fragile.

So it appears for now that I’ve moved my fake 11yo from my true Family to a new fake Family where it will sit for another 2 years. Then it will turn 13 and I can vaporize it (I’ve created a future task :-) and then I can remove the payment method for the fake Organizer.

Once I get my strength up I may try to contact Support about some of the other problems with our Family Screen Time, like that handed down device still stuck to my daughters account (or I can just wait until she’s 18 and exits).

Now I need some Scotch, but it’s still a bit early here ...

- fn-

[1] Extending the existing Family Sharing to enable remote Screen Time management was a fatal error.

[2] The iPhone 6 can’t move beyond iOS 12, but Apple is still supporting iOS 12 on it, and since iOS 12 is superior to 13 in several ways the 6 is arguably now a better phone than the 6s.

See also:

• Two new discoveries in iOS Screen Time (parental controls): Age 13 and Apple ID incompatible with Screen Time
• Screen Time old device bug: Dev used device ID as key, forgot Apple ID
• iOS 12: "family sharing" is still for children only -- ask to buy disabled at age 18 in US

Apple Manage Devices / Associated Devices is still kind of broken

If multiple devices share a Store Apple ID they will show up in Apple ID Devices. They will also show in iTunes (for that Store Apple ID), Apple’s current documentation states iTunes is the only way to see and manage this list. “You can have ten devices (no more than five of them computers) associated with your Apple ID and iTunes at one time."

And you thought iTunes was dead!

You have to remove devices manually from this list after you stop using them. If, like me, you use the same Store Apple ID on family devices it’s easy to hit the limit.

The interesting bit is these two lists are different and they don’t synchronize. They are presumably on two different databases.

The applied.apple.com list is current and shows 8 devices. I think if you sign out of a device you’re not using this list will be updated.

The iTunes managed list is not updated when you sign out of a device. You have to update it manually. I think it still supports iPods. It had one of our devices that was no longer active on it, but it also had an old iPhone 4 we use for music only that runs iOS7 [1]

iPod support explains why the iTunes managed list can’t be automatically updated. I don’t know what happens if you exceed the limit on one list but not the other.

- fn -

[1] The iCloud My Devices display supports “iOS 8, macOS Yosemite … or later …”

iOS 12 Family Sharing: Purchase Sharing supports changing Apple ID and UI could support future multiple Apple IDs.

One of Apple’s “original sins” is the proliferation of Apple IDs and the inability to merge or manage them. I have four that I know of with cryptic and fungible relationships between Apple ID and product ownership. (The worst bugs in the software world are data model bugs.)

In iOS 12 Family Sharing there’s now a setting for Purchase Sharing with an associated Apple ID. Mine is set to my Apple Store ID which is historically distinct from my iCloud ID (many old timers have this unfixable issue). If you tap on this Apple ID it rings up a dialog that allows this to be changed (there’s a bug here — tapping on it doesn’t always work. I had to leave the screen and return to it to enable tap). When I tapped it switched the default to my iCloud Apple ID.

I believe this is a new control. It will be interesting to see what happens when I migrate other family devices that use this iTunes Store ID for purchasing.

At the moment only one Apple ID can be used, but this UI could support multiple Apple IDs. The screen also displays a payment method that cannot be changed, it’s presumably defined by Apple ID.

This is something to watch.

PS. The ten year history of this mess is one reason I recommend Spotify over Apple Music for families.

See also:

• Move your Apple product records from one Apple ID to another Apple ID 11/2014
• How to delete your iCloud account and Apple ID 6/2017 (not)
• iCloud Family Sharing storage: What happens to Alice’s photos when Bob drops her from the Family? 10/2017. Wonder if this has changed.
• Apple’s Apple ID fiasco is getting worse — declining support for Apple Store ID that is not iCloud ID 11/2017 Then it seemed to reverse. I don’t know where Apple is going with this.
• Apple has a new problem with DRM and device management 3/2018 This will be interesting to retest.
• Converting from shared store ID to Family Sharing - and what didn’t work 4/2018. That was a fiasco - largely because family sharing only works for children.
• Apple ID Hell: Apple’s identity mismanagement - back in 5/2012
• Apple’s messed up Apple ID system: what are they smoking?! - 7/2008. Ten years ago.
• My Apple purchase records jumped from true AppleID to one I've never used. This is what I think happened. 7/2012. I think they were missing a ‘foreign key’ between two or more database systems.
• Apple's identity and account system is screwed up. Again. 10/2008
• Apple ID associated purchase records have jumped again: partly back to my old Dev account 7/2014

Two possible bugs in iOS 11.3 to watch out for: enable purchases by Touch ID, change iTunes & App Store account

Our kids' phones were setup to use my Store Apple ID (it’s an old practice — see a blog post about undoing this). The phones were set to require the Store Apple ID password prior to purchase. When our kids wanted to buy we’d enter the Store Apple ID password for them. Touch ID was not enabled for purchases. 

After the 11.3 update two of the phones had Touch ID enabled for purchases. Normally you need to enter the Apple Store ID to enable this. One child (special needs) ran up a $10 bill which he paid for. (He gleefully shared his new power with us.). On one affected phone I turned it off again, when I turned it on the Store Apple ID was requested as expected. (Another phone I migrated to using its own Store ID, a third device wasn’t affected.)

On 1 of the 3 phones the Store Apple ID was changed to the user’s iCloud Apple ID. The problem was recognized when my daughter was unable to view movies not on her phone — it took me a few minutes to figure out what happened.

It’s interesting how much behaviors varied between the 3 devices.

Apple has a new problem with DRM and device management

Today one of the family iPhones died. I went to remove it from our quota of devices (you can have a maximum of 10 devices associated with a family account) in iTunes Mange Devices.

I couldn’t. 

There’s a 90 day time limit to change associations, which I don’t recall being enforced for removal, but here you go…

Except it’s not 90 days, because the grayed out non-removable devices were associated as long ago as May 2016.

Things are broken in two ways.

1. What does Apple want us to do with a wiped or lost or broken device?

2. The items I can’t remove are years old.

PS. Yeah, I hate Apple too. But really, everybody does.

Update: I reviewed Apple’s support document. If you have a working device you can remove the device from the DRM control list — but only through one very obscure screen. Logging out of iTunes doesn’t do it. Otherwise device removal requires iTunes, which, for me yesterday, showed this error.

Today I rechecked, and all the devices with “1 day remaining” are still “1 day remaining”. It’s broken.

Once this type of blunder would have been a bit of a deal, but now we’re so numbed by Apple’s quality collapse even I can’t put much energy into it. All the money in the world can’t replace culture, and Apple’s culture is broken.

Update: Added to Apple Discussions, asked @AppleSupport on Twitter.

Update 3/23/2018. On my second Apple Support call the “Senior Advisor” and I found a fix. We think iTunes, or the database it accesses, is broken/deprecated. From my Apple Discussion post:

We have a fix. On my second try with Support I called iCloud support and was escalated to the "Senior Advisor" level. Andrew and I worked the problem and found that you now need to work with https://appleid.apple.com/account/manage. There's now a section called Devices that lists devices signed into. In my case it listed all 10 devices that use the same iTunes Apple ID, so by "signed in" it means "signed in with Apple ID for iTunes/DRM".

Click on device and you get a remove option.  If the device is in use and signed in then it may reappear. You can restore a device that you have removed by signing out of the iTunes Apple ID, then signing back in again.

The iTunes Manage Devices (Account:View My Account:iTunes in the Cloud:Manage Devices) screen did not update after doing this, it still showed the device I removed. I think it’s mostly broken. (Mostly, because I was able from there to sign my iPhone 8 out of iTunes and that reenabled the Remove button, albeit with the broken ‘1 day remaining’ screen, and after signing it back in the Remove button is still active.)

PS. It’s not clear if Apple is still using the 90 day limit for switching Apple IDs. It doesn’t show up in the new iCloud UI.

PPS. Maybe iTunes in the Cloud is using a different database than iCloud to manage DRM, and that the two databases are supposed to synchronize. The iTunes database may be on the way out, so it didn’t get updated when it needed to be…

Life with Apple: Podcasts move to streaming only

In a move that feels as inevitable as death and taxes, Apple has made podcasts effectively streaming only. The same thing is likely to happen to all media, Podcasts just went first.

Until recently macOS iTunes and iOS Podcasts.app supported both file based sync, including Playlists, and streaming based distribution with an unreliable sync of podcast metadata.

With iOS 11 iTunes playlists are no longer represented in Podcasts.app. You can still create Playlists in iTunes made up of local files and/or cloud references, but they stay in iTunes. The Playlists were the main way I organized listening to my large collection of file-based In Our Time podcasts and my medical education podcasts. No more. I’m now dependent on the very limited (ok, crap) organization abilities of Podcasts.app.

Apple has long had problems with video that moved to an iPhone from both iCloud and iTunes. iBooks synchronization is a mess too if you mix non-Apple store ePub with streamed iBook.

This is ugly and going to get worse. We’re moving fast into the DRMd hard data-lock rental-only future.

Update: Many good threads on this in Apple Communities. They reminded me to leave feedback. Stations are not a substitute for playlist sync, but even on their own they are missing a key filter — limit to on-device items.

iTunes purchased movies showing only a handful of my purchased movies

iTunes on my Mac shows 138 movies of which 135 have purchase dates. Those 135 were purchases from Apple starting in March 2009.

If I visit those 135 in iTunes some allow me to download, some invite me to purchase again. One old SD movie allowed me to download and that worked on my iPad and showed in the Purchased list after download.

My iPhone seems to show about the same number (though it doesn’t count for me).

My new iPad shows only 24 movies as purchased. Both devices have the same iTunes account. When I view my devices in iTunes (we’re at the 10 device limit) both my iPad and iPhone show up under the same Apple Store Apple ID.

One possibility is that the purchased list on my iPad is only showing HD movies. I can’t tell from iTunes which are HD and which are SD; we almost always buy SD when it is available. Some 3+ GB files are probably HD and they don’t show up.

Something is broken in Apple DRM land. I have a private message into Apple Twitter support and an Apple Discussion post …

Update: The “something that is broken” thing is the user interface. Apple Twitter support pointed me in the right direction.

When I view Movies in TV.app on my iPad there’s a subtle top left drop down called “Library” that on tap shows a hidden filter that defaults to Recently Added.

When I change that to Movies I see them all.

I was fooled by the "See All" link to the right of "Purchased Movies" that displays when the hidden Recently Added filter is active. The “Purchased Movies” heading should really be “Recently Purchased Movies” when viewed in this mode. It shows 4 recently purchased movies, and “See All” shows all recently purchased movies.

Modern bugs: server, client, and DRM. Also transient.

Another reason why we can’t have nice things.

My son's iPhone had access to some of our cloud media (TV) library, but not all of it. The UI looked like a mixture of age restricted on-device media, downloadable off-device media, on-device media missing normal display icons, and off-device media that wasn’t shown at all.

iTunes sync displayed odd alignments; it saw on-device media that did not show in iOS manage storage. His device requested App Store credentials multiple times, usually displaying the iOS 1 style dialogs seen when things are broken in iOS 9’s hacked together authentication frameworks.

An hour or so later things were more or less back to normal. Signing out of the App Store completely then re-authenticating might have helped. Or perhaps an old school iTunes sync or two. Or maybe an asteroid fly-by.

iOS flash style corruption? (There’s probably a reason Apple wants to retire HFS+ for something that’s Flash friendlier.) Problems with Apple’s DRM servers? Bugs in iOS? Bugs in iTunes?

Most likely all of the above. Sooner or later I’ll have to wipe and restore this phone, the iPhone equivalent of a visit to the dental hygienist. Reminds of me of Windows 95 really.

Modern bugs: emergent, complex, transient, common, and disruptive.

Beware: iPhones with mixed FairPlay app ownership may no longer backup/restore as expected

Ran into this with a friend’s devices. He was syncing his and his wife’s iPhones to iTunes under Lion. Not sure how old iTunes library was.

When his wife’s iPhone 6s had to be replaced he found he couldn’t restore from iCloud backup or from his old iTunes backup (Lion OS, I didn’t check his iTunes version). He tried to create a new iCloud backup but that removed  the old one and created a 0kb backup. I couldn’t get iCloud backup working either.

Probably relevant: they had mixed app ownership, some purchased under his Apple store ID, some under her Apple store ID.

I created a backup to a fresh user account iTunes instance on my El Cap machine (but, significantly, my machine is authorized on my App Store ID). Restore seemed to proceed — but app restore didn’t complete from the iTunes backup. Instead it slowly proceeded via iCloud then left apps in dim icon status.

I believe I got things working by signing them up to Family Sharing. Then apps downloaded from iCloud, but not from iTunes.

At the time I write this I’m still investigating media rights and have yet to attempt another iCloud backup.

I wonder if Apple quietly updated its backend DRM rules.

DRM is nasty stuff.

Update:

1. The iCloud backup problem was an unrelated bug. “The Last Backup Could Not Be Completed” bug has many causes, but sometimes it’s just the wrong error message. Instead of saying “buy more storage” (which is what I usually see) iCloud Backup gave a useless error message and quit. I excluded her 5.1GB of images and it resumed.
2. Her new phone has no media. I think I know what happened. She gets her media from a non-DRMd old school iTunes music library. If you backup, as we did, from her phone to a Library on my computer there’s a DRM conflict. Apple’s iTunes DRM is device based, not (AFAIK) user account based. So my Mac wasn’t authenticated to hold her music (maybe I could authenticate, but that’s scary). I think the music got backed up, but iTunes could’t display/handle it, so it wasn’t part of the restore. The bug here is absence of an error message, simply media free restore.

Can I send an iTunes gift card to someone in another country? How about buy an app through iTunes?

No.

At least not as far as I can tell between the US and Canada. Unless you have both an Apple ID and a credit card and a billing address in the other country.

In my case I’m trying to buy Picmatic.app, a $2 app, for my father’s (Canadian Apple Store) iPad. I think the only way to do this from the US is to have someone in Canada buy an iTunes gift card (contrary to Apple’s weirdly dated online documentation this works for apps too) and send me the card number. Then I can enter the information.

I don’t think I can buy an iTunes Gift Card in the US and use that; cards are country store specific and Apple IDs are country specific (changing countries is a royal pain — yeah, DRM sucks).

Anyone know differently?

The curse of DRM - can't read new book because Adobe E_ACT_NOT_READY

This is why we should all loathe Digital Rights Management in books. I download the EPUB version of a Google Play book I bought and I got this when I launched the .acsm file

The E_ACT_NOT_READY error message is a longstanding Adobe Digital Reader problem. It can have many causes, from a server outage to authorization problems. In this case I attempted to deauthorize my account and I got an error message that deauthorization failed.

The next step is to quite Adobe Digital Editions and “Navigate to /Users//Library/Application Support/Adobe/Digital Editions and drag the activation.dat file to the trash.” You then have to attempt to download again — by launching the .ascm file. This worked for me.

In my case I think the bug is related to restoring to a new machine from backup. The Adobe authorization is machine specific. Adobe forgot the use case of doing a restore from backup, so their code hangs and produces a default error message. The app should simply request authorization for the new machine. I suspect I deauthorization failed because, of course, I wasn’t using the original machine. So I suspect I have a ghost machine authorization in my Adobe account — another ubiquitous but subtle DRM problem (most often seen with iTunes authorizations) that occurs in iOS as well as OS X and Windows. It’s a fundamental problem with DRM tied to a specific device that is not immortal.

I checked my Adobe ID Profile, and there is no way to view authorized devices or deactivate them. I bet some users run into an activation limit.

I still think the slow/stalled adoption of eBooks is because of Apple/Adobe/Amazon DRM. In Emily’s words “English majors buy books. English majors don’t tolerate stupid software.”

We should be doing watermarking DRM instead and it should be a part of the EPUB specification.

Audiobooks not showing in iOS 8.4 iBooks? That's because they're still like Movies used to be. Also, The Great Courses.

Decades ago I talked about a personal dementia prevention solution. A dementia test application would be hidden in the OS, but about once a year it would randomly launch. Once it appeared I’d have to complete it — or a lethal shock would be administered. Fail the test — get the shock. The shock would look like an accidental short-circuit, so life insurance would pay out.

I like to think ahead.

I’m pleased to report that today we do have a dementia test, though we’re still working on the electric shock. The test, of course, is Apple’s iTunes and related iOS apps. If you can make them behave then you’re still a potentially viable worker; not yet ready for the Soylent factory.

I gotta admit, things are getting a bit worrisome. For example, today’s audiobooks adventure. It started when Emily decided to pick up some lectures from “The Great Courses” (which we once new as the “Teaching Company”, indeed that’s still the corporate name). We started listening to these about 25 years ago, playing cassette tapes while driving our Mazda 323 cross-country and spritzing ourselves with water spray (no air conditioning).

It’s been a year or so since we bought from them — these days I mostly listen to In Our Time Podcasts [1]. We got one of their 80% off flyers [2] though, and it was hard to resist tormenting the kids with automotive education. So we bought a few. The distribution is a bit complex — DVD or CD (for most lectures you really only want audio, but we did DVD for the $40 photography class) or “Windows” / “Mac” files [3] and (usually) supplemental streaming.

What they don’t mention is that many of their lectures can be purchased from iTunes for less than the CD or audio file download costs in iOS friendly Audiobook format. That’s a lot more convenient than their other options, and cheaper too. So I bought two lectures that way, a short history of London (#3 and I are visiting in October) and Daily Life in the Ancient World [4].

That’s when the dementia test showed up. It’s been years since our last audiobook purchase (viz: In Our Time) and everything has changed [7]. It took a couple of Google searches to figure out that Audiobooks were now tucked away in an obscure corner of Apple’s brutally neglected iBooks.app. Some dungeon-chained Apple product manager decided they could be considered a kind of “Collection”. [5]

Okay, but I’d purchased them and they didn’t show up. Why was that? My Movies and Music and book-book purchases show up in iCloud. Why not these audiobooks? Google found me some documentation, the same team that decided an audiobook was a kind of “Collection” introduced an obscure control as an attribute of a particular Collection called “Hide iCloud Books” (even though these aren’t, you know, Books. Do you see a trend here?)

So I turned that Off, so they wouldn’t hide. That’s a double negative I guess.

Except they still didn’t show up.

This began to remind me of the old days, when we’d have one chance to buy music or videos and everything was managed and backed up using iTunes. Yep, it’s just like that, unchanged from 2013. Download to your phone, and it stays on your phone [6]. No iCloud joy, no freedom from iTunes, you need the old beast still.

Just audiobooks mind you. And, of course, it’s not documented.

Apple must be a desperate place to work these days…

- fn -

[1] Still using Apple’s awful Podcasts.app. Podcasts.app and iBooks.app should chasten those who clamor for iTunes to be be divided into separate apps. Be afraid.

[2] Their pricing is a bit nuts — high list prices and large discounts. Do look for discount codes and the like before purchasing, though the iTunes audiobook prices are often quite reasonable

[3] Their audio/video file format recommendations are bit odd, but I didn’t have time to dig into it. Does Windows 10 still prefer wmv?

[4] I’ve chatted on app.net about writing a book that would describe a ‘day in the life’, from pooping to earning money to playing with kids across history and geography. So I’m looking forward to this one.

[5] Collections used to be sort of meaningful in iBooks, but that ended a year ago.

[6] Well, not quite. If you go to your iTunes purchase record, click on problem and say you had trouble downloading, the purchases are added again to the download list. I had my original purchases, but tried that as an experiment.

[7] Very much for the worse. Audiobooks had a large regression with iOS 7. iOS 8.4 is, in some ways, a partial improvement on iOS 7. Which mostly shows how bad iOS 7 was. Tim Cook has failed to rescue Apple’s long ailing software engineering.

[8] It no longer works to manage iPhone content from both iTunes and iOS. It never worked well, but these days it doesn’t work at all. iTunes can’t synchronize device and desktop states. So if you use Audiobooks, and you have any hope of sensible software behavior, you probably need to go all iTunes for media management.

Update 8/13/2015: Audiobooks not being synchronized to iPhone

I thought I was done, but the Audiobooks wouldn’t sync to my iPhone. That turned out to be a side-effect of an iOS/iTunes bug with photo sync from Aperture. The Aperture photo sync bug causes iTunes sync to silently fail (no UI indication) prior to Audiobook transfer. Removing photo sync let the process complete.

 

iOS 8.3 took away one of my favorite parental controls

With iOS 8.3 Apple made an undocumented change that will make a few kids happy.

No, not the post-update dialog that will lead many parents to unwittingly enable 15 minute authentication lifespans for purchases. Apple documented that feature. Here’s where you undo any mistakes by they way:

The real change is that users no longer need to enter the App Store account password to reinstall any app that’s been previously purchased with that account on any device. There’s no setting to revert back to the old behavior of managing a reinstall very much like an initial installation (respect password settings as above).

Why does this matter?

Well, let’s assume you install YouTube on the KidPhone and late find some highly educational porn. In the old days you could just delete YouTube and be done — assuming your user doesn’t know the App Store account password. Now users can simply download it again.

Now imagine the problem if you do old school App Store/iTunes credential sharing like we do — we each have our own iCloud accounts, but our FairPlay DRMd material is all associated with my App Store credentials. Yeah, everything can be installed. It’s a good thing I’m not into S&M apps.

I don’t know how this works with Family Sharing, the change is too new to see much commentary. For old-school families like ours there are 4 options based on this screen …

Your options are:

Install Apps	Deleting Apps	Result
Off	On	App Store disappears so can’t install or update. You can’t update from iTunes either, so this setting is a pain in the butt. You need to go through the restrictions dialog to do app updates. User can delete apps which is convenient.
On	Off	App.net@ronnie suggested this one. User can download anything, but they can’t hide contraband. So if they install forbidden apps they get banished to “Install Apps Off” which is painful for everyone.
Off	Off	As option 1, but can’t remove apps. I can imagine limited use cases.
On	On	The default.

For now I’m going with Install On and Delete Off, with the warning that forbidden fruit will lead to App Store removal.

I’d love to see a fix from Apple but it’s going to take a lot of complaining. I’m not holding my breath.