Two iPhones, one MacBook & one iTunes account.

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I'm new to iPhones & macs & not very computer savy so please help. I need some clear & simple instructions to help with my problem. My husband & I both want to use our iPhones on the one Mac book pro with the one iTunes account. However we do not want each others contacts, calendar, or email. I currently have my phone hooked up. I also have my contacts in a group as I read that I needed to do that. My calendar is synced with the mac book. My husbands phone has yet to be hooked up to a computer/iTunes account. He has his contacts on the phone. So where do I go from here:
- how do I import his contacts to a group in the MacBook pro address book & not override my contacts?
- how do I sync his phone so we have our own contacts, calendar, & email?

We r happy to share music, apps etc but just want to have our own contacts, calendar & email accounts on our own phone.

I'm sorry there are already a few posts on this topic but none that addressed all my issues & none that were simple enough to understand. I would really appreciate it if someone could give me some specific instructions. Thank you in advance.
 

RavingMac

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I'm new to iPhones & macs & not very computer savy so please help. I need some clear & simple instructions to help with my problem. My husband & I both want to use our iPhones on the one Mac book pro with the one iTunes account. However we do not want each others contacts, calendar, or email. I currently have my phone hooked up. I also have my contacts in a group as I read that I needed to do that. My calendar is synced with the mac book. My husbands phone has yet to be hooked up to a computer/iTunes account. He has his contacts on the phone. So where do I go from here:
- how do I import his contacts to a group in the MacBook pro address book & not override my contacts?
- how do I sync his phone so we have our own contacts, calendar, & email?

We r happy to share music, apps etc but just want to have our own contacts, calendar & email accounts on our own phone.

I'm sorry there are already a few posts on this topic but none that addressed all my issues & none that were simple enough to understand. I would really appreciate it if someone could give me some specific instructions. Thank you in advance.

Not a problem at all. My wife and I do this.
I assume you each have your own log in on the MacBook Pro. If not, go to Settings>Users and set up a seperate user account for each of you. Then simply sync your iPhone. It is that simple.

Your phone will have a unique name and even though you share iTunes account, contacts, APPs and content are kept seperate. You will have access to everything purchased by either in the Store but can choose independently what you wish to download.
 

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I sync my wife's and my iPhone via the same user account and we both use the same Apple ID.

It's my computer, so the email and contacts on the Mac are synced to my iPhone.
Hers are synced to her yahoo account instead of the Mac.
Neither of us use the Calendar for events, so can't help there.
 
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Thanks alot for your help. I can't believe it's as simple as having our own users for the Mac book. It's great that we can both have access to the same iTunes content however not share contacts, calendars etc. I have another question though. If we both have access to all the iTunes content, is it saved twice on the hard drive? I'm just wondering if this will use up extra hard drive space. Also how do we both have access to the same iTunes content? Do I have to save the iTunes folder in a shared drive or something like that? Sorry my questions are so simple. As I said im new to all this!
 

RavingMac

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Thanks alot for your help. I can't believe it's as simple as having our own users for the Mac book. It's great that we can both have access to the same iTunes content however not share contacts, calendars etc. I have another question though. If we both have access to all the iTunes content, is it saved twice on the hard drive? I'm just wondering if this will use up extra hard drive space. Also how do we both have access to the same iTunes content? Do I have to save the iTunes folder in a shared drive or something like that? Sorry my questions are so simple. As I said im new to all this!
I am not totally certain about this, but I think if you have the iTunes folder in a shared folder there should be minimal (if any) duplication. However, you will have seperate backup files for your IOS devices which will mean additional disk space usage.
 
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I sync my wife's and my iPhone via the same user account and we both use the same Apple ID.

It's my computer, so the email and contacts on the Mac are synced to my iPhone.
Hers are synced to her yahoo account instead of the Mac.
Neither of us use the Calendar for events, so can't help there.

Will FaceTime work between your devices? I ask because I have an iPad and plan on buying her an iPad and I'm told using the same AppleID will not work with FT. I'm hoping I could buy an APP like Navigon for my iPhone and then synch BOTH iPhones to share it. Is that doable.

Thanks

Tom
 

RavingMac

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Will FaceTime work between your devices? I ask because I have an iPad and plan on buying her an iPad and I'm told using the same AppleID will not work with FT.

Thanks

Tom

It will work, but you have to have seperate email addresses and associate the FaceTime with that.
The details are a bit fuzzy to me now, I originally thought this would be neat to do, so I set it up and played with it a bit. But, haven't done it any since then.

And, we do share the same iTunes account.

EDIT: Definitely can sync the same APP to both devices. We do that all the time.
 
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I am not totally certain about this, but I think if you have the iTunes folder in a shared folder there should be minimal (if any) duplication. However, you will have seperate backup files for your IOS devices which will mean additional disk space usage.



My last Stupid question! How do u use a shared folder on a Mac? I put the iTunes folder on the drive called 'public' but there was no iTunes folder when I logged on as my husband. There was already a folder in it called 'drop box' so I then put it in there & it still wasn't there when I logged on as my husband. Any ideas? I really appreciate all this help. Thank you.
 

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