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 Apple ID to Be Renamed to Apple Account, Disrupting Independent Documentation

   Adam Engst

   Apple buried this note at the end of a [1]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.

   Most users 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 Apple ID
   was truly 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 for awkward sentences like 'Continuity features require that you
   be logged into the same Apple Account (or Apple ID in pre-2024
   operating systems).' Or maybe we'll 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 '[2]Apple Launches
   Documentation Site for Manuals, Specs, and Downloads,' 25 March 2024).

References

   1. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/06/new-features-come-to-apple-services-this-fall/
   2. https://tidbits.com/2024/03/25/apple-launches-documentation-site-for-manuals-specs-and-downloads/

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