Comments on: Apple puts family first with iOS 5 and iCloud

By: Glenn

Glenn — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:07:01 +0000

My mistake, to use shared reminders you need to be using the same iCloud which as the article says would not work for me since I don’t want the same calendar as my spouse and especially contacts. I would like to see the next version of reminders have the ability to share a list so you can do so with a spouse, with geo fencing included, yet keep your own lists private.

I also think in future you should have “you own contact information” such as address etc, which is then shared with your friends, colleagues or work makes, so if you move house, you update “your own contact information” and that is then pushed out to all your friends you have shared it with, but with the feature you so you can selectively only update certain contacts. It would save you having to tell all your friends your new address or them having to remember to update their address book.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:57:22 +0000

Question. Great article but I’m not aware you can sync reminders between other devices. I hope so, please advise how you can do it? Also, group texts, I don’t recall that either, I’d love to know how to sync Reminders as that is exactly what I have been looking to do, share lists with my wife

By: Ray Jacobsen

Ray Jacobsen — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:23:46 +0000

Sorry Darrell re-purchasing apps and music for each individual family member to have their own copy is not going to happen.

By: Javi Gallardo

Javi Gallardo — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 05:56:32 +0000

You are allowed -even encouraged- by Apple to create an additional me.com account in order to avoid data interference issues. All your family may keep using the same Apple ID for the Store, & separate me.com accounts for iCloud services!

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 03:16:38 +0000

I like that you can share your calendar with other family members and other Apple IDs. however now that they are shared they show up in the Notification Center and alert me even when I have them turned off. I would like the option of checking my fiance’s calendar without seeing it everytime I look at my phone.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:46:55 +0000

JD is exactly right. Families want to share some information between members and there’s no good way to do that. This article is completely of base and my assumption is that the author doesn’t have a family with 8+ ios devices like I do.

By: JD

JD — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:19:33 +0000

The impression given by this article is pretty much the polar opposite of the majority of other pieces I’ve seen. Things like iMessage and Find My Friends don’t really matter — any way Apple implemented those would have worked fine for families (and necessarily so, as those features have to work for arbitrary people). The problem is that family members’ devices need to have a relationship somewhere between “exact clone” and “completely unrelated”. You want to have some information shared, but many things shouldn’t be. Dad doesn’t want Junior’s rap music, Mom doesn’t want Dad’s work calendar meetings, etc. Apple basically says, if you want your devices to have a special relationship, make them use the same account, and that’s simply too much. They desperately need a way to allow families to share information in a more meaningful way. Note that this applies outside of just iOS — the iLife suite for example doesn’t support multiple users either. Apple’s view very much seems to be that each person will have their own Apple device, and the software is built with only that use case in mind.

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:17:46 +0000

How does a family memeber with an iPad communicate with a family member with an iPod if both use the same iTunes account ID? Are different IDs needed?