Posted on by Xevious

Apple ID Troubles

In mid July I was trying to buy some Apps or Music from the iTunes Music Store. It seemed like every day I was getting a message that my account had been disabled for security reasons. It was really annoying. I was having to change my password for iTunes every day. It was really annoying. I tracked the problem down to my Apple TV. I had recently updated the software on my Apple TV. There was one small change in the Apple TV software that it now does not allow Apple IDs to contain a space. The space key is not even on the on-screen keyboard. The result is that my Apple ID which contains a space could not be entered.

After a trip to the Genius bar and a call to 800-MY-APPLE, I was given two options: (1) restore the software on my Apple TV back to the factory default, or (2) change my Apple ID. I like my Apple ID and don’t really want to change it. I really do not want to mess with downgrading my Apple TV. Neither option was really appealing. The support rep said that Apple Engineers were aware of the problem and hoped to have a fix in some future update by had no guess as to when such an update might be coming.

I decided that I would go ahead and change my Apple ID. This means that I will have to make changes on several computers and iPhones where I use my Apple ID. So I go into iTunes and try to change my Apple ID. Nope – that doesn’t work. Inside iTunes, you can only change your Apple ID to an Apple ID that is formatted like an email address. I did not want that.

I managed to find the web equivalent of the iTunes account management screen. On this screen I was able to change my AppleID to something that was not and email address although I did have to come up with a new password.

https://myinfo.apple.com

What is still lacking is a way to merge Apple IDs into a single account. I tried to set up Apple IDs for each of my kids. The idea was that I would be able to give them an allowance and let them buy what they wanted. The problem with that idea is that each account is completely separate. If I wanted to buy a song and share it with each kid they had to have the account and password that matched the song. This would be unworkable. I quickly abandoned this idea and the other iTunes accounts that I had created.