The Mysteries of the Apple ID

At the request of a few subscribers, this month we take a look at the Apple ID and what it means for business.

It might seem obvious to many of us and is often taken for granted, but we often get asked by individuals and businesses alike "why do I need an Apple ID" when planning deployments or setting up individuals Apple devices.

In the many years that we've been dealing with Apple's devices, the Apple ID remains the most complex thing about the simple to use devices. Originally starting out as a login for the iTunes Store, they've evolved into a personal digital identity for a range of services, and if you don't use it correctly, it can cause a whole range of issues that lead people to believe that these new and invaluable services are floored and worthless.

Your Passport

Your Apple ID is like a passport that identifies you to each of these services and presents you with your data and services, and you should treat it like you treat your own passport. This is the most common issue we see when dealing with Apple ID problems. Many years ago in the days of the iPhone 4 and iOS 4, before iCloud, iMessage and Family Sharing were available, the Apple ID was purely used to access your library of applications, music and movies. This lead many people to share their Apple ID with their family, friends and colleagues in order to share their content.

Access to Millions of Apps, Movies and Songs

Many businesses also subscribed to this idea, why pay for 100 copies of Tom Tom Navigator for iPhone at $79.99 each when they could buy just one copy and install it on all of their devices saving thousands of dollars?

More businesses than we care to admit also used a single Apple ID for Apple devices that the IT departments setup for their staff in the hopes of trying to prevent the spread of unauthorised applications being installed on them. Admittedly the controls available to a business to prevent this were clumsy and immature at the time, but this lead to hundreds of devices running the same Apple ID, and only by visiting the IT department to get a tech to type in the password could you get a new application deployed or updated.

iOS 5 and the birth of iCloud

In 2012 Apple launched iCloud, and iMessage along with the iPhone 4S. These services allowed you to synchronise content from your iPhone to your iPad for example without having to tether to a computer running iTunes. It also allowed you to upload your photo's from your iPhone when connected to a WiFi network to your other devices. This is when the problems started to arise and we still commonly see the fall out from this event now in 2017.

After everybody rushed out to get the new iPhone 4S, or upgrade their iPhone 4 to the new iOS 5, wives started to get the text messages meant for their husbands. Kids found out that the photo's of their party they held at the weekend whilst their parents were away synchronised to all of the households devices.

It didn't stop there though, businesses started to find out what level of damage sychronising the Numbers spreadsheets with annual bonuses for the staff on the CFO's iPad could do when the employees found those same spreadsheets appearing on their iPhone's all because they were using the same Apple ID.

Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate...

End users were confused, and businesses started to fear the Apple ID. This simple identity certificate had caused so many headaches, Contacts from hundreds of staff had now been merged, and what's more when Sharon deleted all the entries for people she didn't know in the contacts app from her iPad, Matthew couldn't understand why none of his contacts were on his iPhone any more and then spent hours entering them back in only for them to disappear 2 days later and hundreds more to be there in their place.

In many cases this lead to companies banning the use of iCloud, and disabling iMessage all because they didn't take the time to understand what the Apple ID was, and ignored the warnings in the Terms and Conditions of use they tapped 'Agree' to when un boxing their shiny new devices. In most of our consultations for Mobile Device Management deployments with businesses today, one of the first items on their agenda is to block access to iCloud followed closely by blocking access to the Apple AppStore, turning an increasingly powerful business tool into an expensive telephone.

No longer user first, business last

With iOS 8 in 2014, Apple introduced Family Sharing, and started to release many API's that allowed Mobile Device Management vendors to really turn Apple's products into devices fit for business first.

Family sharing at its most simple allows up to 6 individual Apple ID's from the same region to link their ID's together under one Family group and share all of their Applications, Music and Movies. This negates the need for individuals to share their Apple ID in order to allow their kids watch a movie on their iPad.

Apple then followed up with the Apple Volume Purchase Program (VPP) for business, and the Device Enrollment Program (DEP), these services in conjunction with a Mobile Device Management (MDM) platform like AirWatch is where businesses finally get the controls that they've been wanting all these years. With Apple DEP & VPP integrated into AirWatch, businesses no longer need to worry what Apple ID is being used on a device, in fact they don't need an Apple ID on a device at all in order to deploy their business applications, they simply purchase whichever Apps they want through VPP, and with the AirWatch set to deploy the applications to DEP enabled devices, they just appear with no input from the end user at all!

Used correctly, the Apple ID and it's associated services can give you and your business a lot of benefits, increases in productivity and improve your employees experience.

If you'd like to know more, or your business is struggling to understand how the Apple ID effect you, we'd be happy to help you!