Apple Now Lets You Move Purchases Between Your 25 Years of Accounts (arstechnica.com) 17
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last night, Apple posted a new support document about migrating purchases between accounts, something that Apple users with long online histories have been waiting on for years, if not decades. If you have movies, music, or apps orphaned on various iTools/.Mac/MobileMe/iTunes accounts that preceded what you're using now, you can start the fairly involved process of moving them over.
"You can choose to migrate apps, music, and other content you've purchased from Apple on a secondary Apple Account to a primary Apple Account," the document reads, suggesting that people might have older accounts tied primarily to just certain movies, music, or other purchases that they can now bring forward to their primary, device-linked account. The process takes place on an iPhone or iPad inside the Settings app, in the "Media & Purchases" section in your named account section.
There are a few hitches to note. You can't migrate purchases from or into a child's account that exists inside Family Sharing. You can only migrate purchases to an account once a year. There are some complications if you have music libraries on both accounts and also if you have never used the primary account for purchases or downloads. And migration is not available in the EU, UK, or India. The process is also one direction, so you have to give some real thought to which account is your "primary" account going forward. If you goof it up, you can undo the migration. "The list of things you need to do on both the primary and secondary accounts to enable this migration is almost comically long and detailed: two-factor authentication must be turned on, there can be no purchases or rentals in the last 15 days, payment methods must be updated, and so on," notes Ars' Kevin Purdy.
"You can choose to migrate apps, music, and other content you've purchased from Apple on a secondary Apple Account to a primary Apple Account," the document reads, suggesting that people might have older accounts tied primarily to just certain movies, music, or other purchases that they can now bring forward to their primary, device-linked account. The process takes place on an iPhone or iPad inside the Settings app, in the "Media & Purchases" section in your named account section.
There are a few hitches to note. You can't migrate purchases from or into a child's account that exists inside Family Sharing. You can only migrate purchases to an account once a year. There are some complications if you have music libraries on both accounts and also if you have never used the primary account for purchases or downloads. And migration is not available in the EU, UK, or India. The process is also one direction, so you have to give some real thought to which account is your "primary" account going forward. If you goof it up, you can undo the migration. "The list of things you need to do on both the primary and secondary accounts to enable this migration is almost comically long and detailed: two-factor authentication must be turned on, there can be no purchases or rentals in the last 15 days, payment methods must be updated, and so on," notes Ars' Kevin Purdy.
finally (Score:2)
even partially possible and once a year is a welcome change. having multiple itunes store accounts was an accident and I'll be damned if I'm going to purchase those apps again just to get them "under one roof"
I sound angry but I'm moderately satisfied.
Re: (Score:2)
I sound angry but I'm moderately satisfied.
Well, everyone should be angry, at Apple. This mess was of their own making. Difficult to believe it took a friggin' trillion dollar company with thousands of engineers housed in a multi-billion dollar campus this long to finally come up with a solution!
Re: (Score:2)
Fair point. There's simply no money in allowing the convergence or merging of accounts. I wonder who got bored and did it in their "spare" time. I can't imagine there was enough pressure from users after all this time to finally do something.
25 years of accounts? (Score:1, Troll)
I gave up Apple in 1988
Thats more than 36 years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for letting everyone know you stopped using a service a third of a century ago.
I myself have given up on Blockbusters, Circuit City, Radio Shack, and Fashion Bug.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for letting everyone know you stopped using a service a third of a century ago.
I myself have given up on Blockbusters, Circuit City, Radio Shack, and Fashion Bug.
You forgot Fry's Electronics, Lehman Brother's, and Waldenbooks.
Can you now inherit Apple purchases? (Score:3)
I wonder if once an account holder dies and someone inherits their stuff, if you can use this to move all of "grandma's" movies to your account. As time moves forward that would seem to be a more and more common scenario.
Apple's fault (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, yeah. I forgot why I had to do it in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't "end up" with two Apple IDs. Apple made me create a separate account back in the MobileMe days, for some reason, and then that and the original Apple account became Apple IDs.
It's largely a problem of their construction.
They used to be iTunes accounts remember? You'd sign up with your Hotmail or gmail address, then share it with your family like how we do Netflix for example, so your wife and kids can use your music.
Then MobileMe/iCloud and mobile devices came along with email and individualized services, iMessage, documents, etc. so people made an account for that. Apple supported using separate store and cloud logins to account for that before they added family sharing. You'd log your family into the store account (your
Not yet in the UK, EU or India (Score:2)
Great (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, if you buy an older Macbook that's limited to an older version of MacOS, why can I only download the older Garageband if my account has had that particular version before? It makes no sense, it's free, why should I have to find some ancient account in order to download a working version of the software?
Arbitrary restrictions are lame
Re: (Score:2)
Arbitrary restrictions are lame
Yup, and they are a major factor on using the platform.
When iTunes became easier than pirating, the platform exploded. Same for Netflix and other sources.
They have learned people just abandoned their old accounts, have downloaded all the old crap and kept it on a network drive shared with family and friends. That small network piracy is one market they are hoping to recover, getting it back off personal storage and back to their cloud they control.
Yes it can help people recover abandoned media, but it is
What about Mac apps? (Score:2)
The support document talks about what happens to your iPad/iPhone apps but doesn't specifically say whether Mac apps come along as well. Some of the choices Apple made here seem odd, like replacing your Primary Account's payment method, Up Next queue and podcast data. I have an ancient Apple account that has some older Mac App Store purchases in it but for the last 10 years, I've been using my primary account. I hope I don't suddenly nuke, say, my Apple TV data since the secondary account has none.....
On Google (Score:2)
Does this mean an item is locked to one account for 12 months, or the migration activity can be performed once every 12 months?
While Family Sharing on Google is great, a lot of the smaller developers (and cheaper items) don't support it. Being able to move ownership to a different account will allow one to control/re-use abandoned items.
Apple deserves kudos for being the first to give their customers, more control.