iPAD and Multiple Users

[Wayne M]

Well, I just wanted to say that if you have an iPAD, and you have multiple users, or if you connect to someone else's computer be very careful.

ITunes is the primary culprit. When you connect to an iTunes account, and the iTunes is set to sync automatially, all of the information on iTunes will now become part of iPad. This could not only mess up your music, but also everything else on the iPad.

Here is the bad of it:

I have an iMac. While my son is staying with me I have set up a separate user account on the computer for him to use. It's a very simple process and keeps all of the data information for a user in their account. This means that iTunes has separate data information. Now, my son has an iPhone. Think how that interacts.

Back to the two accounts. When we returned from our last trip, our son had tried to shut our computer down by logging off. It could not be done since the administrators account had a password. He tried logging into his account, and again he could not shut down. He did not want to use the manual shut down of holding the power button. Not a nice thing to do with someone's computer. He just walked away. We came home, and I sat down at the iMac and never gave a thought as to who was logged in. We had some new APPs for the iPad and I wanted to sync them to iTunes. I did. Two days later I downloaded, from the iPAD an update for two apps. It asked for an iTunes store password, which I provided. It did not work. I tried several times and eventually I noticed that my son's email was the user ID instead of my email. Now how did that happen? It took some time and research to figure out that I had logged into his account when I synced the iPad to the iMac and it was logged in under his name.

The only way to get this off the iPad is to sign out and then log back in with the proper account.

Here's another kicker. My son received an email that he had purchased a new APP. (99 cents). He called Apple and informed them that he had never purchased the APP. They removed it from his account and then put a block on the credit card. Just for one 99 cent phone call. He could no longer download updates for his iPhone. He did not have Apple Care so they wanted to charge him to trouble shoot this. When he was talking to me about it, I then realized what had happened and we started communicating with Apple Care using my account, since basically it was all my fault.

IPad, iPhone, Itunes users, it took many, many emails (not the way to do it) and phone calls, and finally, it took over 3 weeks (yes 3 weeks of communications) to unblock his CC. Then he found out his wife's account with the same credit card was blocked. He has since straightened this out.

So, before you hook up to any communications device that can sync to an iPad, make sure it is set up in the manual mode where it needs user intervention to sync. Unless, of course, you are sure that you are the only user of the synchronization device.

As someone has stated before, if you use this information and find it beneficial, it's on a 10 cent charge. You can owe me. On the other hand, it's free information and I'm not greedy so you don't have to pay me.