Work iPhone

So work recently bought me an iPhone as my work phone. Whilst I’m happy with this (as much as I like Android, I find iOS to be better), it has led to a few head scratching moments.

Namely, as an Apple user for a fair amount of time, I’ve purchased a fair amount of apps on the App Store that I want to use on the work phone, but I’m hampered by the fact it’s linked to a new AppleID, one created with my work email.

Turns out it’s no problem - just enable family sharing and off I go! I’ve been able to download most of my previous apps with a few exceptions as family sharing has to be enabled by the developer.

  • Transmit seems to be the only app I use a lot that isn’t family sharing enabled. This does mean that I can’t really use my own sharing system for images

  • 1Password switched to a in app purchase model which means my purchase hasn’t been associated with my new work AppleID and therefore I can’t access the premium features.

  • iTunes Match isn’t enabled for family sharing so to use music, I’ll have to use something like Google Music or Spotify. Or only add my purchased music from the cloud (yes, I could use iTunes to sync music but really?)

I’m hoping that family sharing isn’t breaching my work terms of service for the phone (best check Monday) but I don’t think so as all it’s doing is linking my own purchases to my new phone. It thinks that my work phone is one of my family members, which technically, it’s me.

Setting it up was a doddle - just input the family sharing information on my iPad and I was ready to go after an email verification.

Cloud Storage

The perks of cloud storage crop again in this instance. I use YNAB and Day One a lot, both with Dropbox sync. By adding the Dropbox app and downloading the apps (both via family sharing), I was able to connect to both my budget and diary that I already had, regardless of what AppleID I’m using. Extremely handy as now I can update both where ever I am and with what device I have to hand and both will sync back to my device.

Obviously, syncing between iCloud is going to be more of an issue because I’ve not got the same AppleID but then, it’s not much that I use on the iPad and iPhone that need to sync with that so I don’t have to worry to much about that.