Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

biscuit · Oct 13, 2011, 04:58 AM

Hi,

Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this.

I have a funny problem with an old MobileMe account and iCloud. I have an {myname]@gmail.com Apple ID that I've used for everything for ages. I signed up for a MobileMe trial last year and snagged [myname]@me.com, which I was quite pleased about.

I let the MobileMe trial expire but I still have the login and password details. I've now set up iCloud with [myname]@gmail.com, but when I try to set up mail via that account I'm told that [myname]@me.com is taken. I know it's taken; it was taken by me!

I understand that you can't merge two accounts, but that's not what I want to do. I want to kill [myname]@me.com so that I can reuse the name for my [myname]@gmail.com Apple ID.

I guess I could start again with iCloud using [myname]@me.com and keep [myname]@gmail.com for iTunes purchases, but that seems unnecessarily complex.

Is there any chance that I can resolve this?

Thanks,

biscuit

Waragainstsleep · Oct 13, 2011, 05:40 AM

This would be a matter for Apple to deal with. I suspect you'll be out of luck but you never know.

biscuit · Oct 13, 2011, 05:48 AM

Hmm, somehow I've managed to move [myname]@me.com to iCloud.

I guess this leaves me in the separate iTunes/iCloud accounts situation.

Oh well, never mind.

biscuit · Oct 13, 2011, 05:55 AM

Thanks Waragainstsleep.

Apple's documentation makes it pretty clear that you can't merge accounts or transfer purchases. I thought I might be in a different situation because I wasn't bothered about keeping the old @me.com account as an account per se.

Anyway, now that I've transitioned the @me.com account to iCloud, I fall squarely into one of the situations described here.

Since my @gmail.com ID was my main ID anyway I'll likely just stick with that. Just a shame I can't keep the @me.com address neatly in one place. I never used it anyway though.

biscuit

biscuit · Oct 13, 2011, 08:40 AM

I did a Live Chat with an Apple Support person just now.

It seems you can't relinquish a username in MobileMe/iCloud even if you want to. So I'm stuck with two Apple IDs. Not sure if I could have done something about it before I "accidentally" transitioned [myname]@me.com to iCloud.

I guess now it comes down to how much I want to use [myname]@me.com. Answer: not that much to bother with two accounts.

Waragainstsleep · Oct 13, 2011, 09:03 AM

Apple has guidelines in that doc to use one ID for iTunes and one for iCloud, can't you transition the MobileMe ID to use for email and keep the gmail for iTunes?

biscuit · Oct 13, 2011, 10:35 AM

Yes, I probably could use the @me.com for email and syncing of data and then use the @gmail.com account for iTunes purchases etc.

But TBH it seems like too much hassle. I don't actually use the @me.com address for anything at the moment, I just wanted to keep the username.

I should also mention that my wife and I share the @gmail.com Apple ID for iTunes purchases. We'd also like to share calendars etc. so I think I'll just leave it how I have it.

biscuit

jspeciner · 11:53 AM

I'm glad I found this thread because this is the exact scenario I'm dealing with. I too contacted Apple last night, via Express Lane chat for MobileMe and I actually got quite a different response than what's being discussed here - it was encouraging for this situation. Here's the excerpt from the chat that's important - after explaining details similar to the OP's the rep told me this should be possible, from there I confirmed:

Jason:
Ok... So you're telling me that at some point tomorrow I should be able to go into iCloud settings in Lion, tick Mail, enter xxxxxxxx, and it will accept it as my iCloud email address associated with my Apple ID of [email protected] and not say that it's already taken and I should use one of the suggestions...?

aparicio:
Correct. This is not something that is happening on your end but we have a lot of customers attempting to do the same with accounts that are available and they are getting the same error you are. So i do apologize for the inconvenience but this will be resolved by the morning.

Jason:
No need to apologize... So the rational as to why it's available is because it was only a trial MobileMe account that was never used for anything else? As opposed to a MobileMe account that was "current?"

aparicio:
Correct. Because the account was closed and not current we are having this issue. Not all closed accounts are having this issue but about 40% of our customer doing the same as you are.

Basically, as I understand it Apple is already killing off previously expired MobileMe accounts... I've also seen that they are allowing expired MobileMe accounts to register on iCloud, so I'm wondering if the combination of the two is what might be causing this problem (at least a problem from our perspective).

biscuit · Oct 13, 2011, 12:13 PM

Interesting, thanks Jason.

In that case my suspicion that migrating the old @me.com address to iCloud was a bad idea is probably correct.

I didn't even really mean to migrate it. I just noticed that I still had a MobileMe preference pane, so I thought that if I went into that and entered my MobileMe details while logged into iCloud with my @gmail Apple ID the two would magically combine. Instead I ended up migrating it to iCloud via Safari, which was interesting because I don't think I'd been able to do that up until that point.

I take it you didn't migrate your old MobileMe account to iCloud Jason?

biscuit

jspeciner · Oct 13, 2011, 12:28 PM

Originally Posted by biscuit

I take it you didn't migrate your old MobileMe account to iCloud Jason?

Actually, I couldn't... I did attempt to, using the www.me.com/move site, but when I entered my @me.com account info it said that my account is an expired trial that can't be reactivated. So basically, not only is the @me.com address not available for me to use in iCloud with my @gmail.com Apple ID, but I'm also locked out of my @me.com account. This is something that Apple has to resolve and I'm going to be on them to get it resolved... It's not so much that we're trying to get this free service to work better for us, but it's more of the fact that we've spent thousands of dollars (at least I have) on their hardware on the premise that "it just works" and it needs to just work!

biscuit · Oct 13, 2011, 03:28 PM

Oh right, I see. I can log into iCloud with my @me.com account, so we're not quite in the same boat.

I hope you can get it resolved. Be sure to post here if you do.

turtle777 · Oct 13, 2011, 04:35 PM

It's only a matter of time until Apple will allow / manage to merge accounts.

Plus, having separate iTunes and iCloud Apple IDs makes sense in many cases.

E.g., if you have multiple computers and users, but they all want to participate in the same Music and Apps, you'd want to use ONE Apple ID for iTunes across all computers, but use individual iCloud Apple IDs for mail, calendar etc...

-t

jspeciner · Oct 13, 2011, 07:29 PM

Alas... A second chat with Apple led to a "senior advisor" explaining to me that I ~~had a miscommunication with~~ was lied to by the other advisor. No dice. This is honestly really messy... Like really, really messy and they're going to have families using 3, 4, even 5 various Apple IDs for all of these different things... One for iCloud, one for iTunes in the Cloud, one for iTunes Match, on all of these different devices. It's safe to say they didn't think this part through... at all.

turtle777 · Oct 13, 2011, 10:22 PM

Originally Posted by jspeciner

Alas... A second chat with Apple led to a "senior advisor" explaining to me that I ~~had a miscommunication with~~ was lied to by the other advisor. No dice. This is honestly really messy... Like really, really messy and they're going to have families using 3, 4, even 5 various Apple IDs for all of these different things... One for iCloud, one for iTunes in the Cloud, one for iTunes Match, on all of these different devices. It's safe to say they didn't think this part through... at all.

Uhm, yeah, I fail to say how it would be even possible to provide different email accounts, calendars, bookmarks etc... for various members if you only had ONE Apple ID.

Really, the system is not that bad once you understand it.

-t

Macfreak7 · Oct 15, 2011, 04:06 AM

In a similar situation. Here's my post from another thread, which is probably more suitable for this thread:

~~
This has seriously become an issue for me, especially since I have multiple devices. I initially had an apple id that was linked to the itunes store with a primary email address which was @mac. I used this for all my App store/iTMS/MAS purchases. At some point came along mobile me which started using the @me version of the @mac email address to create a new apple id for me.

So now I have two apple IDs with the SAME primary email address. iCloud requires an email as an apple ID, which is a problem when trying to use services like Find my Friends or FaceTime, or GameCenter cause I can't use my original apple ID which is not an email.
To complicate things Apple seems like they want you to associate a particular email with a particular device. I guess this is needed for services like FaceTime and now iMessages.

This is all far too complicated for my liking. I wonder why they can't just merge the two IDs into one.

BTW, here's some documentation for others in the same boat. Apple IDs and iCloud
~~

biscuit · Oct 20, 2011, 09:43 AM

I haven't given this much thought for the last week or so, but I think it'll work out for the best. I'll have my gmail ID for purchases and I still have the separate me.com account for syncing etc. All I have to do is set up a new iCloud account for the wife.