Apple ID to Be Renamed to Apple Account, Disrupting Independent Documentation
Apple buried this note at the end of a press release touting new features coming to Apple services later this year:
With the releases of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and watchOS 11, Apple ID is renamed to Apple Account for a consistent sign-in experience across Apple services and devices, and relies on a user’s existing credentials.
Apple Account versus Apple ID feels like a distinction without a difference for most people, and I’m unaware of inconsistent usage on Apple’s part at the moment. The main awkwardness that remains is iCloud, which one might expect to have its own credentials but instead relies on your Apple ID.
Those who already understand what an Apple ID is probably won’t be confused by the change—the words are sufficiently similar. (Apparently, it’s not uncommon for consultants to work with people who have no idea what to enter when prompted for an Apple ID password, and changing the name to Apple Account won’t help that. Having separate passwords for Mac logins and Apple IDs also throws people.)
Take Control publisher Joe Kissell pointed out in a conversation that Apple ID and Apple Account aren’t precisely parallel, since an Apple ID was primarily an identifier—it’s an email address—whereas an Apple Account would have both a username and a password.
The real problem comes when tech writers document features across multiple versions of Apple’s operating systems. We’ll probably use both terms for a while before slowly standardizing on the new term. Blame Apple if you see awkward sentences like “Continuity features require that you be logged into the same Apple Account (Apple ID in pre-2024 operating systems).” Or maybe writers will compress further to “Continuity features require that you be logged into the same Apple Account/ID.”
Annoyingly, Apple’s own documentation efforts won’t suffer as much because the company publishes different versions of the same support article for each operating system version (see “Apple Launches Documentation Site for Manuals, Specs, and Downloads,” 25 March 2024).
Good catch!
I wonder if when talking about a ‘consistent sign-in experience’, Apple is referring to confusion amongst ordinary (non-techy) people. When helping people I often ask them if they’ve signed into their ‘Apple account’ because sometimes when I say ‘Apple ID’ I get a ‘huh’ in response. I only have anecdotes, but Apple presumably has data and maybe this has been an issue that comes up in Apple Store interactions. Because ‘Apple ID’ sounds like something specific, maybe people assume it’s something distinct from the account they’ve created for Apple/iCloud.
Can I put in my vote for the TidBITS style guide when this comes to pass* – I actually think a mix of the two approaches you’ve suggested sounds best:
I don’t think the ‘in pre-2024 operating systems’ caveat is necessary, it’s clear enough without. And I think that looks cleaner and matches what people see better than ‘Apple Account/ID’.
* I am fully aware that TidBITS is a benevolent dictatorship and my vote is meaningless.
My 2 cents…
“Continuity features require that you be logged into the same Apple Account (previously known as Apple ID).”
Both good suggestions!
I’ve just updated the article slightly with a comment from @joe about how Apple ID is an identifier whereas Apple Account is (presumably) the entire account, which has both an identifier (the username) and a password. You have an Apple ID password, but your Apple ID is an email address, not a password.
Adds to the confusion/nuisance of Apple IDs going from xxx to xxx@mac to xxx@me to xxx@icloud !
Those are only a subset of Apple IDs. My Apple ID is none of those.
That’s how your Apple mail address has changed. But you can use any e-mail address for an Apple ID. And in the past, you could use names other than e-mail addresses as well, but at some point, Apple forced me to change that in order to keep using it.
You know, all this time, I never realized this (simply because the ID is also associated with a password).
So often I’ve had complications with a customer’s Apple ID - for when they first signed up with Apple they used something like “[email protected]” as the ID string. Subsequent tries to authorize their ID got conflated with their real hotmail address -not realizing the id was a user name not an email address (confusing !) and got locked out continuously. I wish Apple provided better solutions for Apple ID problems. I recently ran into a problem where Apple wouldn’t verify a (long term .mac address user) Apple ID because it conflicted with some other “user name” - that they had assigned a me.com address - this cropped up in the last year- the user didn’t have a problem until something changed with address servers - Apple refused to let go of this other assigned “me” address or add it to the good one, or give us a clue as to what they thoughthe Apple ID was -even though they admitted it was an error - and there were Apple cloud services issues and verification failures - Apple’s solution: create a new Apple ID (oops Account!) for the user…then I suspect something happened on Apple’s end because the “data clog” (things like contacts were really slow (days!) to update, some services timed out) and verification notices went away mysteriously.(icloud generates an error) Still- Apple did not openly resolve this issue nor follow through with support or information for it… even though during a screen share - the problems were documented (bomgar not apple screen share because that didn’t work either!) and Apple closed the ticket as well. Weird. It’s one area where they can do better.