Lest anyone think the problem is solely with juggling accounts across different geographies, here are some examples of how broken the whole Apple ID user experience is, even for people whose digital life never leaves the US:
- It's impossible to merge accounts or move purchases from one account to another, even if they are associated with the the same credit card information
- If you have ever at any point used an email address as the alternate contact on an account, it becomes impossible to make that address the primary contact and ID on that account
- If your Apple ID was created with an Apple email address (e.g., ...@me.com, ...@mac.com), it's impossible to change that email address
Millions of people have content scattered across multiple accounts in part because Apple merged several formerly separate accounts (iTunes, Developer, .Mac, etc.) into the Apple ID system. Yet Apple has made it impossible to unify your user experience.
To add to the absurdity, several Apple services still demand that you create a new Apple ID in some situations (particularly when your account was created for a service that pre-dated the Apple ID system).
I've done this—I've even added a different rescue address to try to override whatever's in the database—and still get the message, "Your Apple ID cannot be the same as your rescue email address." ... Totally inexplicable.
No. That's the separate "it's impossible to merge accounts" point. (I have four separate Apple IDs for two countries.)
A lot of the bizarro stuff going on here, I think, is because accounts with different histories (e.g., what service they originated with) are still handled differently behind the scenes. It makes no sense, but things really do seem to be path-dependent.
- It's impossible to merge accounts or move purchases from one account to another, even if they are associated with the the same credit card information
- If you have ever at any point used an email address as the alternate contact on an account, it becomes impossible to make that address the primary contact and ID on that account
- If your Apple ID was created with an Apple email address (e.g., ...@me.com, ...@mac.com), it's impossible to change that email address
Millions of people have content scattered across multiple accounts in part because Apple merged several formerly separate accounts (iTunes, Developer, .Mac, etc.) into the Apple ID system. Yet Apple has made it impossible to unify your user experience.
To add to the absurdity, several Apple services still demand that you create a new Apple ID in some situations (particularly when your account was created for a service that pre-dated the Apple ID system).
And then there are the cross-border problems. ...