[magnio]

Had the pleasure of making an Apple account to join our company's developer team. I filled out the form on the website 7 times: Edge on Windows, Edge on macOS, Safari on macOS, using 2 different phone numbers. No matter what, Apple just refused to send the verification code to me. It only worked after I remember Apple is a dick to the web platform, then I managed to create one from the popup in the App Store.

[postalcoder]

Apple also makes it a biznatch to make a developer account separate from your personal account. In Apple's ideal world, multiple accounts should in no circumstance ever exist. I, in an ideal world, would agree with this. But we live in this world, where Apple bans accounts for redeeming legitimate gift cards.

[VerifiedReports]

And yet Apple CREATED the multiple-accounts problem for millions of people by implementing their idiotic "Apple ID must be an E-mail address" policy.

So of course people thought that when they changed jobs, cable companies, or whatever... they needed to create a new Apple ID with their new E-mail address. This was reinforced when Apple further stupidified their policy by requiring your ID to be a WORKING E-mail address (originally it didn't actually have to work).

After the outcry over people's App Store and other purchases being scattered across multiple IDs, Apple finally publicly and huffily declared that they weren't going to fix the problem they created by letting people consolidate accounts.

The moral: Don't force people to use E-mail addresses as user IDs. It's stupid on several levels.

[Someone]

> Apple finally publicly and huffily declared that they weren't going to fix the problem they created by letting people consolidate accounts.

They somewhat changed that. It now is possible to move purchases between accounts. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/117294. Looks quite cumbersome to do, and will not apply to everybody (“If an Apple Account is only used for making purchases, those purchases can be migrated to a primary Apple Account to consolidate them.”, “This feature isn’t available to users in India.”)

[jajuuka]

It's not super difficult if you have an Apple ID from many years ago that you bought media with and then have a different Apple ID that you use for everything. Which isn't that uncommon for anyone who used iTunes and bought music or media and then forgot their ID and just made a new one when they got a iPhone or Macbook. Was able to transfer all my purchases to my main account pretty easily.

The real downside is if you have two fully active Apple IDs. Then things like calendars, photos, email, etc are still stuck on the other account until you export it. Which can be a pain since you have to sign out of your main account, sign into the old account and export, then sign back into the main account.

[d0lphin]

What's weird, and I'm not sure if it's a documented or undocumented feature, but the account I am logged into on the App Store differs from the one logged into on the system. The system Apple ID is setup with Family Sharing, and the users are able to use apps purchased with the secondary Apple ID.

I haven't transferred the purchases or anything either. The two Apple IDs have different purchases on them, and those on Family Sharing are able to access both.

[VerifiedReports]

Interesting. But WTF is a "primary" Apple account? My original Apple ID isn't an E-mail address, so they forced me (and others in that situation) to create another one for iCloud because that one inexplicably has to be an E-mail address.

I use both for quite a few things. Which one is "primary?"

[Someone]

That text is badly written. They define that after mentioning it:

“At the time of migration, the Apple Account signed in for use with iCloud and most features on your iPhone or iPad will be referred to as the primary Apple Account.

At the time of migration, the Apple Account signed in just for use with Media & Purchases will be referred to as the secondary Apple Account.”

⇒ apparently you can be signed into multiple accounts at the same time ¿but I guess with only one account per feature?

But as I said, that page is badly written. So, maybe I’m understanding it wrong.

[VerifiedReports]

Thanks for the clarification.

Yes... because of the mess Apple made, I am always signed into two accounts. My non-E-mail one for all purchases, and the E-mail one for iCloud.

[xp84]

> of course people thought that when they changed jobs, cable companies, or whatever... they needed to create a new Apple ID with their new E-mail address.

This belief is rampant amongst 90% of the general public. I had to spend an hour helping a friend last week who had created a new Cash App account to do their taxes, because they didn't prefer the old email address that was on their longstanding Cash App account. So now they have to keep 2 Cash App accounts forever. And to make things more fun, they're obsessed with phone numbers there, so adding the phone to the second account pulls it off the other account.

Oh, and digression but I have to vent: their login process on the web is, in some order: an SMS to your phone, another numeric to your email, and your password. All in succession, on every login.

[VerifiedReports]

Thanks for the anecdote backing up my longstanding suspicion on that.

This is also why using E-mail addresses as user IDs is monumentally stupid: People will think that they need to use their E-mail password, too. So now any entity with this ID policy becomes a gatekeeper not only to their own site or service, but the user's E-mail account.

One poor security regime or disgruntled employee at one obscure Web site can now enable identity theft on a grand scale, by exposing E-mail addresses and passwords.

There's a reason that banks and brokerages don't employ this ignorant policy. It's disappointing that Apple set such a poor example by implementing it. Then they had to run around trying to mitigate the harm with 2FA and other measures, after high-profile "hacking" attacks on journalists and celebs.

[throw4r533233]

It’s also a huge pain for those of us who might regularly visit or live part of the year in another country.

I basically need two Apple IDs because switching the region for your App Store is very inconvenient if you have any subscriptions.

In the end, I have separate Apple IDs for each country.

[FabHK]

And Apple won't let you add all your "trusted phone numbers" to all those accounts. So, if you are in country A and your country B phone can't receive SMSs, and you get a new device, you can't log into country B account because 2FA via SMS does not work. (And no, you can't just make multiple accounts on a MacBook or other device that supports multiple accounts for non-SMS 2FA; login fails.)

[VerifiedReports]

Pff, Apple can't even keep your contacts intact if you go abroad.

I traveled to Australia and got a local SIM. Suddenly every incoming call was from an unknown caller, even though every one was in my address book. Apple is too stupid to handle international calling in the 2020s. I mean... WTF?

Then again, this is the same company that "helpfully" changes all your calendar appointment times when you travel to a different time zone... with NO WAY TO PREVENT IT. So if you go east, you're going to miss any events you set up in advance... including flights home.

[deaux]

> And yet Apple CREATED the multiple-accounts problem for millions of people by implementing their idiotic "Apple ID must be an E-mail address" policy.

Ironically they then relented only for India and China because market share too sweet, so all auth developers now need to update the assumption that Apple auth users have an email address. Worst of both worlds :)

[iqandjoke]

I help someone to setup Apple ID. His email address is already taken by someone else and user ID with that email cannot be created.

[fragmede]

Maybe in the 90's before Gmail came about so everyone still used their university or ISP email accounts.

[netsharc]

Hotmail came in the mid 90s, Yahoo Mail followed soon, I don't think Apple was cloudy at all back then.

I suppose those mail services were "cloud"...

[VerifiedReports]

Not sure what this is replying to...

[fragmede]

> So of course people thought that when they changed jobs, cable companies, or whatever... they needed to create a new Apple ID with their new E-mail address.

[malshe]

I am facing this issue right now. I need to create a separate developer account because I am risk averse. Do I need a new phone number for this? Online some people say yes, others say no. I tried creating the account several times but it just doesn't work. At this point I am planning to just get a prepaid SIM card from US Mobile for the phone number.

[xp84]

Apple will allow you to have multiple Apple IDs tied to the same phone number -- my kids' ones have my number on them. So for some purposes it seems fine to just reuse the phone number for a second account -- like for your kids, or for a "sandbox" account to use testing your app so that you don't have to use your real iCloud account.

However, for your purpose of avoiding Apple's capricious BS, I probably wouldn't go that route since if their braindead fraud systems or braindead employees decide you're a threat actor they could definitely default to "Ban account. Find all their evil backup accounts that have the same phone numbers or contact emails and ban them too."

[malshe]

Thanks for highlighting this. I did not think about Apple/employee potentially linking phone numbers of different accounts and banning all of them.

[jakejohnson]

I set up a couple developer accounts recently for my clients. Just use a new Google Voice number for 2FA. I had to live chat with Apple support to get past initial verification both times and after that setup went fine.

[malshe]

Thanks, that's great to know! I will take this route.

[realusername]

If you create your developer account in another country (or with a card from another country, who knows), the whole thing just crashes and the sign-in on the phone loops.

When encountering this, I updated the device which bricked the appstore, the device has to be fully reset if that happens.

[charcircuit]

>where Apple bans accounts for redeeming legitimate gift cards.

Is there any evidence of this happening with an actual legitimate gift card and bot one which was stolen or originally purchased via credit card fund.

[nake89]

Slightly off-topic, but stuff like this does not just happen at Apple.

When Cyberpunk 2077 came out, my wife bought it with her credit card and gifted the game to me. It was fine at first. I even managed to play through the game. However when coming back to the game a few months later (to see all the bugfixes), it was gone. I contacted the (gog) and they said it was removed due to automatic fraud detection and that the balance had been paid back to the original credit card (my wife's card, she had obviously not noticed this in her bank statement).

Point being automatic fraud detection systems can wipe out stuff you purchased even months after the fact (or in some cases lock your account)... It feels kafkaesque.

[direwolf20]

Since it's gog at least you could download the game and save it somewhere.

[charcircuit]

Using it would be copyright infringement since the license is revoked since it was refunded.

[pixl97]

I, along with every AI company, give exactly zero fucks about copyright infringement.

[TurkTurkleton]

Let me guess, you think GOG was perfectly justified in unilaterally taking away nake89's copy of--excuse me, I meant unilaterally revoking nake89's license to play Cyberpunk 2077--when they judged the gift transaction to be fraudulent, just because it could have been a conspiracy between nake89 and their wife to defraud GOG of the princely sum of eighty United States dollars[0]?

I don't dispute that GOG has the right, from a strictly legal standpoint, to revoke a license for any reason their terms of service allow, and that someone continuing to play a game after their license was revoked would be in breach of contract. What I do dispute is that this is a correct, fair, or desirable state of affairs, especially when the license in question was received as a gift and believed in good faith by the recipient to have been acquired non-fraudulently.

And in particular, if GOG wants the absolute and irrevocable right to prevent consumers from using products for which GOG has decided to revoke the licenses, they shouldn't advertise themselves as a DRM-free platform, nor claim that "Here, you won't be locked out of titles you paid for, or constantly asked to prove you own them - this is DRM-free gaming." -- advertising copy may not have the force of law, but courts tend to take a dim view of ad claims that are provably false.

[0]: the list price of the Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition on GOG as of this writing (though it is currently on sale for 38% off)

[wolvoleo]

True but if you never did then you're SOL

[avhon1]

https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/

> The card was purchased from a major brick-and-mortar retailer (Australians, think Woolworths scale; Americans, think Walmart scale)

[charcircuit]

>was already redeemed in some way

This is the important quote showing that the gift card was not legitimate.

[twelvedogs]

do you think that makes it ok? they walked into a store, tried to pay money to apple and as a result they had their stuff locked forever

apple recommended they only buy gift cards from apple, but they still sell them in stores...

obviously money is more important to them than the consumers but pretending apple have zero responsibility is silly

[charcircuit]

>they had their stuff locked forever

It was locked for less than a week.

>but they still sell them in stores

Unfortunately there are sketchy resellers that exist too.

[wat10000]

What matters is that the purchaser had every reason to think that it was legitimate and they were not the malefactor in this scenario, but they still got banned.

[charcircuit]

If you buy stolen property without knowing you still get punished by having the stolen property taken away. Just because you don't know, it doesn't mean you have not done anything wrong.

[twelvedogs]

this kind of stuff happens all the time across major companies with minimised support. sure your google account is likely to be there tomorrow but it's only a very good chance that it's not locked forever.

i would be surprised if there's any company with millions of users where .01 or .001 (still a LOT of users) just get screwed with zero recourse

[ThePowerOfFuet]

Yes.

https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/

[charcircuit]

That was already posted and it was not a legitimate gift card.

[muppetman]

Yes it was. He purchased it from a legitimate reseller 100% legally and correctly.

[sk7]

For Apple Business Manager, Apple forces you to create a separate new account.

[angulardragon03]

Yes - all ABM accounts are Managed Apple Accounts, not Personal ones. You can’t mix and match (they each have different features).

[direwolf20]

The two are related. Apple doesn't want you having multiple accounts, because it wants to ban you for redeeming legitimate gift cards, not just one of your personas.

[MrJohz]

I had a similar issue trying to create an Apple TV account. I already had an Apple account that I was using on my work laptop (first mistake - I should have created a work account there instead), and for 2FA, I needed to wait for a code to pop up on that laptop. It never came. There was an email alternative, but that also didn't work properly (maybe only on certain devices, IIRC?). Apparently in the settings you can request a 2FA code, though, so I did that... but that only had five digits, whereas I needed to give six for the code to work. Eventually I figured out that Apple had just forgotten to zero-pad the 2FA code out to six digits, so I needed to add a leading zero to make things work.

The worst part of this is that now my Apple TV account is linked to a laptop that I don't always have on me. And even if I did have it on me, I don't want to get a laptop out and turn it on just to do 2FA. I already have a TOTP app on my phone, just let me put everything in there and leave me be.

My experience with MacOS is generally that it's about as buggy as my home Linux setup. That's partly a testament to how solid Linux can be these days, but at the same time, it feels pretty damning considering only one of these operating systems is free (in any sense of the word). And that's not including stuff like the configurability of the whole thing.

[HexDecOctBin]

I had a similar issue when I first brought my iPad. Turns out, Apple doesn't like custom domains for emails. So, I had to make an Apple account with a Gmail account, then remove the Gmail account and add my email address with the custom domain.

Why? Who knows. Still remember my first experience after buying an iPad.

[cosmic_cheese]

Might've had something to do with the state of the various email security measures on the domain. I have an Apple account on a custom domain with Fastmail and it's never been a problem.

[HexDecOctBin]

Mine was also managed by Fastmail. And no one else has ever had a problem with it (including Apple when I added it after signing up).

[mmmlinux]

I couldn't make an account on the website Digikey outsourced all their 3d models to with my work email. signed up with my personal gmail account in less than 30 seconds.

This is not some Apple specific problem.

Also this was yesterday. Never did I get any of the 3 confirmation emails they claim they sent to my work mail.

[k12sosse]

You have to reach a human to make a Flickr account in 2025 if you use a custom domain. It wasn't too difficult, they gave me some reason about abuse. Whatever.

[afandian]

What does custom domain mean? Just an email provider other than the mainstream ones?

[gortok]

You purchase your own domain name and use that domain name as your email address. For instance, if I had an email address that was [e-mail]; the afandian.com would be a custom domain. It's not routed to @gmail.com, it's routed to @afandian.com. Now in practice you can have a custom domain and still have it managed by Google's Mail servers; but it's the domain name itself that sends up the flags.

[afandian]

Yeah that's what I thought GP meant.

It just seems like it should be so commonplace. It just seems ridiculous that it means

> You have to reach a human

[cvhc]

I and a friend (both are not Apple users) had the same issue about 2 years ago. I gave up after trying different (non-Apple) platforms, IPs and phone numbers. He was applying to Apple internship and ended up borrowing a Macbook to set up his account.

And talking about why I wanted a new Apple account... My old account was created with stupid security questions (like, What is your favorite dish) as a second factor, which I believe Apple has long deprecated. I forgot my answers and that blocked certain functionalities. Resetting the security questions requires answering the questions...

[happymellon]

I have a typo in my iCloud phone number.

I can't access anything without knowing exactly what I did wrong, presumably Apple never verified it when I created the account decades ago, but it's now part of the critical flow to log in.

[epolanski]

I kid you not, I was locked out of my apple account for 2 months because they kept not sending me verification emails.

Needless to say, I have not bought a single Apple device since 2020, the M3 max I have is from my employer and I only use it when out of home.

[SkiFire13]

The opposite happened to me: I got a new Mac and had to fill out my Apple account billing details to download apps from the App Store, but somehow the form on both the App Store and the web page didn't work. In the end I managed to do it through the Apple Music app on my Android (!) phone.

[nielsbot]

I seem to remember this happening to me, and I finally called them and they said something about a waiting period for new accounts? It might help to try calling their tech support for this as painful as that is.

[pjmlp]

Unfortunely Apple skills to write server software is inversely proportional to the fame they enjoyed thus far on client systems, as anyone using their Web APIs or backends can attest for.

[SwtCyber]

The people Apple most wants inside their ecosystem are forced through a web experience that clearly isn't a priority

[stratosmacker]

Yep same thing happened to me