You need to understand that an Apple ID is not (or may not be) the same as an iCloud Account, which is not (or may not be) the same as an iTunes Store Account. An Apple ID is the credential set you use for accessing various services by Apple. Once you have an Apple ID, you can associate it with different services from Apple.
Anyone can create an Apple ID by visiting My Apple ID. Once you have an Apple ID (or more), you can choose how you would wish to use it.
For your case, you need three Apple IDs to keep things simple:
- One Apple ID shared between all the members of your family for content purchases from the iTunes and App Stores
- One individual Apple ID for your wife for iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime
- One individual Apple ID for you for iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime
Here's how you would use these Apple IDs on the devices and PCs:
iTunes Store Purchases - In the case of a family (and specifically for you), you would have one Apple ID whose credentials are known by all family members so that all content purchased from the iTunes and App Stores can be shared across all devices.
- You configure this on your iPhone, your wife's iPhone and your infant's iPod Touch under Settings > iTunes & App Stores menu option.
- You configure this in iTunes on your PC as well as on your wife's PC from the Store > Sign In... menu option.
iCloud Services - In almost every case, this would be an individual Apple ID so that Find My iPhone, Mail, Calendar, Reminders, etc., are segregated by user.
- You configure your Apple ID on your iPhone under Settings > iCloud.
- Your wife would configure her Apple ID on her iPhone under Settings > iCloud.
- You do not configure this in iTunes on the PCs. However, if you use the iCloud Control Panel for Windows, you can configure it there.
- You do not configure this for your infant at this point in time.
iMessage - In almost every case, this would be an individual Apple ID so that each person receives and manages messages intended for that person.
- You configure your Apple ID on your iPhone under Settings > Messages.
- Your wife would configure her Apple ID on her iPhone under Settings > Messages.
- You do not configure this anywhere on your PCs.
- You do not configure this for your infant at this point in time.
FaceTime - To avoid confusion, this would be an individual Apple ID for each person.
- You configure your Apple ID on your iPhone under Settings > FaceTime.
- Your wife would configure her Apple ID on her iPhone under Settings > FaceTime.
- You do not configure this anywhere on your PCs.
- You do not configure this for your infant at this point in time.
On content sharing between devices, you can use an account with up to 10 devices. Here's what iLounge says based on Apple's policy about "More than five family devices sharing a single iTunes account":
Actually, the limit of five devices per iTunes Store account only applies to authorizations for computers using iTunes. Apple actually allows you to have up to ten devices authorized in total for features such as iTunes Match and re-downloading previous purchases from iTunes in the Cloud, up to five of which can be computers running iTunes. So in other words, you could have anywhere from 10 iOS devices and no computers up to five computers and five iOS devices or any combination in between. You can view the number of devices that have been authorized for these features by going into your iTunes Store account information from within iTunes and choosing the Manage Devices option.
To share calendars, see iCloud: Share a calendar with others.
To share reminders, see iCloud: Share a reminder list.
regarding getting your SMB sharing connection from linux working...
Samba no more, mount.cifs needs extra options, "nounix,sec=ntlmssp"
Don't use the linux gui to connect, have bro open a terminal and try these commands
(and dig my ascii art!)
=^..^= `·.¸¸ ><((((º>.·´¯`·><((((º>
amitsbrother@linux:~$
amitsbrother@linux:~$ sudo apt-get install cifs-utils
...
amitsbrother@linux:~$ mkdir /mnt/mavericks_smb
amitsbrother@linux:~$ mount.cifs //172.17.8.212/smb_share /mnt/mavericks_smb/ -o user=amitsbrother,password=trustno1,nounix,sec=ntlmssp
amitsbrother@linux:~$
amitsbrother@linux:~$ mkdir /mnt/mavericks_smb_dup
amitsbrother@linux:~$ mount -t cifs //172.17.8.212/smb_share /mnt/mavericks_smb-dup -o username=amitsbrother,password=trustno1,nounix,sec=ntlmssp
Once this is working, you can create a script for your brother to automatically mount when it is executed from the gui. Basically, the script is just the mount point creation, and the cifs connection to the smb server... so 2 or 3 lines including the shebang.
Make sharing work now with no passwords
To make it super simple, I'd enable web sharing on the Mac, and put the files you want to share to the Linux box in a folder in ~/Sites/a_folder/ . Then give your brother the address that it tells is your personal web sharing address in the Sharing Preferences pane when you enabled Web Sharing. Tell your brother to open a browser and put in that address; it will give him a directory listing as long as there is no index.html file in there. He can download files with his browser. This is one way sharing, from the Mac to the linux box, and will work fine as long as there are no files over 4GB (unless apache fixed that issue and didn't tell me about it). I believe directory listing is enabled by default on the Mac apache2 server.
To share in the other direction, from linux to Mac, you could do the same from the Linux box:
sudo apt-get install apache2
You can enable directory listings on the Linux apache2 server with instructions here. Those instructions inadvertantly also cover how to get the apache2 server up and running. Then you need the ip address of the Linux box, and the relative location from the apache root to see the files in your Mac's browser.
This shouldn't take 5 minutes to set up 2 x 1-way sharing through browsers on both boxes, and relieves you from hacing to trouble-shoot the slightly more complex task of installing and configuring netatalk or running SMB sharing from the mac and getting the linux client to mount it, which isn't always a "it just works" situation, like running 2 apache2 servers is.
Best Answer
Joan, try this (it worked for me):
Hope it works!