Richii

Many years ago I got my first iPod. Actually, it was a raffle prize. Anyway, thanks to that, and then when the iTunes Store was launched in Australia, I ended up creating an Apple ID.

Over the years that same Apple ID was used for a few additional iPods of various flavours, a couple of Macs, and some iPhones. It's all been fine, until now. iOS 5 has really brought to a head some crucial shortcomings in the current system.

How it _used_ to work was pretty simple. You create an account with Apple, and you use that account to register hardware you buy, as well as make purchases from Apple's online store, iTunes, and the iOS App Store (and now the Mac App Store). While iTunes music is no longer encrypted, video is. iOS apps are likewise copy protected. I'm not super concerned about the DRM issues, as I've got pretty good backups, and the whole concept allows the apps / media to be copied to multiple devices.

Having a single account also made the little extra services simple, like a single login for the "Find my iPhone" service.

Then came along iOS 5, and the new features such as iCloud and iMessage. All of a sudden I'm faced with two other people in my family getting my documents and messages on their phones.

Now, it's true that iOS does allow you to use different accounts for certain things. For example, my apps and media are still purchased using the original account that we've had for years. Now, however, we each have a seperate account for use with iMessage and iCloud. And this does work.

So, what's the problem?

For starters, there's no way to mix and match which iCloud services belong to which account. It's all or nothing. This is a pain because I'd like to have some parts connected to the "master" account (eg Find my iPhone, Photo Stream) for all to share, but keep other parts (Documents, Contacts, Mail) linked to the private accounts.

This is exacerbated by the Mac / Windows side of iCloud. You can only sign in to one account. On the surface this makes sense - it's my computer, so I sign into my account. But I have now have three mobile devices using unique accounts for Photo Stream - how do I get all of them to save their pictures back to the computer?

What we need here is the ability to have a heirarchy of accounts. Create a master account that is used for purchasing, etc. Link the individual accounts as children. You could even have a little control panel that allows you to enforce various settings such as parental control over the sub-accounts.

Then, allow me to have a master feed for things like Photo Stream - if opted in, include the photos from the child accounts in the stream.

Take it even further, and have a definable purchase limit on the child accounts. That way I could let my daughter buy her own apps and music, but with a pre-set limit per week, month, whatever. On the back end the purchase is actually made against the master account.

The original system was fine when all it was used for was purchasing content. Now that the Apple ID is used for much more they need to revisit how it works, and give more flexibility and control to the end users.