2nd Macbook Pro Entering Our Home (1 Viewer)

In a week or so, my wife will be receiving a 15" Macbook Pro. Currently, all of our iPhones and iPods are synched with my MBP and I have my iPhone doing nightly backups to iCloud.

I would like to have my wife's iPhone start backing up to iCloud (notes, calendar and photostream) and synching with her MBP for everything but music. She doesn't want to mess with managing music so all her songs and playlists will still be synched physically from my MBP since it contains our music library.

Will I be able to use the same iTunes account for both MBPs so we can get apps on both MBPs without buying them twice, yet sign my wife up for her own iCloud account so our contacts don't get all screwed up between phones during wireless synching?

Also, I use an external HDD for Time Machine and SuperDuper backups. Will I be able to use the same external HDD for her Time Machine and SuperDuper backups or should I pick up another one for her? I thought about using Time Capsule for wireless backups but I can't justify the cost.

This is exciting new territory for me!!!

Clinton,

First, congrats on your new 15" Macbook Pro. It is the same model I currently
own (the first retina MBP), and I can tell you that I absolutely love it.

It's hard for me to understand what you want to do simply because I don't know
if you are talking about one account or separate accounts.

Let me put it this way...

If you share the same login account for your Mac, then you will be able to download
the same apps without having to pay for them twice.

However, logic tells me that neither of you are using the exact same account as I
would suspect you have separate iCloud accounts for personal email, etc.

Now, I may be corrected on this, but I am again assuming that, no, you cannot
share your iTunes account (or apps) for both MBPs unless you both use the same
exact iCloud login details. I don't recommend it, as you won't be able to keep contacts
and other information independent of each other.

Yes, you could use the same HDD for SuperDuper backups as long as there is enough
space on the drive to back up both machines. I would recommend formatting the drive
so that you have two different volumes of which to back up to so you won't confuse one
backup with the other. I would suspect the same for Time Machine, but then again, just
as long as you have enough space.

SuperDuper is a great program. I am going to use it tonight to back up my iMac which
I do every few months.

Yes...the iTunes Store account and iCloud accounts can be kept separate. Your wife can have her own iCloud account while sharing the store account.

You can back up multiple machines to a single hard drive, but it will reduce the amount of space your own computer will have for its incremental backups.

Michael,

Thanks for the correction...I was not certain.

However, I am still a bit of a doubter here.

Apple makes it that easy for multiple people to log into the same
iTunes account thus making it easy to share apps?

Not saying you are wrong, but I thought that there would at least
be some safeguards in place to prevent unauthorized app use.

Thanks guys. We currently share the same iTunes account between iPhones so I figured I would be able to do it with MBPs. I'm constantly impressed with how simple Apple keeps integration, especially after years of frustration from Windows being convoluted and never working like it should, post-XP/2000. As far as the backups, I take a Time Machine backup every Friday or if I add new music or pictures to our libraries. I have a 1TB external USB drive so space isn't an issue.

Ron, the MBP my wife is getting is actually a model before yours. It's a fall 2011 which has never been out of the box. My wife's sister attended Full Sail University for her BA and MA. Part of the tuition package for her course of study each time was a MBP, unless she chose to opt out of it and save about $2k on tuition. She already had one which she had been using for school since she started and forgot to opt out her 2nd time around so she ended up with a 2nd 15" quad core i7 model she didn't need which sat in her closet until she rediscovered it last weekend while straightening up. It has never been opened and the box is still sealed. I checked the Apple online store and their refurb price for that model is $1500 after my company's employee discount but we're getting it for about half that. The only drawback is it is the last model before USB3 but my wife doesn't work with large amounts of data so external transfer speed is not a deal breaker for her. After getting it, I'm going to put a copy of Windows 7 on it via bootcamp (or I may go Parallels for hers, I haven't decided yet) and up the RAM from 4GB to 16 for when she starts college this fall to pursue her LPN.

Not that I'm the Apple expert...

My cousin and her husband have an iPod each, iPad each and an iMac. They share the Itunes...with separate iCloud.

Otherwise they each have a PC laptop(work) and Android phones. He didn't take the new iPhone because in his research, the Android market has better "expense apps" than the Apple store(he's a doctor and travels to various hospitals) and for her...the college she is studying from, their "online class structure" works best with PC/Android.

But...iTunes backs up all pictures, regardless of shot with the Androids(uses Androids Apple app sync???).

But back to the point...even though everything makes it back to the iMac(even off the PC laptops)...hers and his remain separate in iCloud.

Ronald Epstein said:

Michael, Thanks for the correction...I was not certain. However, I am still a bit of a doubter here. Apple makes it that easy for multiple people to log into the sameiTunes account thus making it easy to share apps? Not saying you are wrong, but I thought that there would at leastbe some safeguards in place to prevent unauthorized app use.

Click to expand...

Apple Home Sharing lets you share all iTunes purchase to up to five computers. And from there, sync data to all you iOS devices. This was a key feature for my wife wife and me, since we get everything the other purchases. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3819A limitation is in-app purchases aren't supported, it seems. I've not explored this enough, but I don't get my wife's Mighty Eagle purchases. Maybe if I logged out of my iCloud account on my phone and logged into hers.I'm not sure about syncing one iPhone to two different computers. If sync settings are computer specific, and not iPhone specific, it should work fine. But I've never been brave enough to try it I recommend you not have TimeMachine and SuperDuper on the same drive, but on separate drives if you can. Putting them on the same drive means they're not two different backups, but just one (granted, you get the ease of use of both types of backup approaches. But you don't get the added safety)

Good thought about the backups, Dave. After sleeping on it, I think I'm going to get a Time Capsule/Airport Extreme soon and just not worry about it. I'll still keep SuperDuper backups on a USB drive, though.

Here's what I am doing with the iTunes/iCloud setup:

Since my wife doesn't want to deal with managing music and photos, I will continue to manage the libraries on my mbp. I created an iCloud account for her and have her iPhone backing up to it nightly and photo streaming and syncing contacts, notes, etc... to her mbp. Since she doesn't care about mucking about with music and such, iTunes on her mbp is using my login credentials so anything purchased on my mbp can be downloaded to hers and vice versa. Music, ringtones and apps can still be synched from my mbp via USB. Everybody wins!

So far, I have updated Lion and all the bundled i-software to the latest versions and downloaded Mountain Lion this morning. Right now, I'm burning a bootable Mountain Lion DVD from the download. With any luck, I'll be teaching her Mac basics this evening.

Sounds good!