My husband and I have been using MobileMe to sync our family calendar and contacts between each other. He is on a PC using outlook (watch my eyes roll) and I am on a Mac using iCal and address book. We use a unique Apple id for the MobileMe (lets call that family Apple id), however we each sync our iOS devices to our own computer using our own personal Apple ids. We have bought music and apps separately for years. I am concerned about maintaining multiple Apple ids in the new environment and also concerned about our ability to continue sharing this single calendar and address book.
Is there a way for me to transition to iCloud with my husband and I using our unique Apple ids and ditching the family Apple id altogether? If I do that will one of us only have read access to the calendar instead of both having read/write access which we have now?
We really don’t have much else in MobileMe – I already copied everything from my iDisk to another hard drive for now. Also, we previously tried google calendar to solve our problems but ran into a lot of event duplication (pretty sure outlook was the culprit).
Am I over thinking this?
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Emily Hansen
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How Do I Transition My Multi-platform Family From MobileMe To iCloud?
Comments: 3 Responses to “How Do I Transition My Multi-platform Family From MobileMe To iCloud?”
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Probably, yes (over thinking it).
:)
Mostly likely you will be able to continue as before.
Since you are just using calendars and contacts, it should be easy. Both of those (iCal and Address Book) work by using a list of accounts. Check the prefs for those two apps. So you can simply transition to using the new iCloud accounts. And you can have multiple ones.
Now there are so many factors, so it is hard to say for sure, but I don't think you will have any problem just using iCloud as you have used MobileMe before.
I would actually like to drop the "family apple id" so my question really can we make it work as before without the 3rd id? Keeping track of multiple id's is not my favorite. I really wanted to simplify. I may answer my own question here, but maybe I should backup the calendar and address book files and just experiment with using individual ids vs. individual and family. I can switch between icloud and MM until June or something right?
Yes. Experimentation will probably lead you to the best solution. Backup first.
I guess you can do calendars without a shared account as one person can create a shared calendar on their account and everyone else can use it. But then everyone can see and alter other calendars for that person too.
Contacts are harder because there is no middle level. With calendars you have Account > Calendar > Event. But with Contacts you just have Account > Contact. Groups are really just organizational, I think I don't really use them.