Apple ID Question

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If I have an Apple ID can I log into my Apple ID account from any Mac?

I’m not sure I’m asking this correctly, so here’s the situation. I have a Mac with only one account and I’ve used my Apple ID on that Mac. Can I use my Apple ID on another Mac that also has only one account – not mine – and an Apple ID – also not mine – and if so, how do I do it?

We can assume that the owner of the other Mac will give me permission to use their Mac.

Thanks.

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Nathan Parker

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DrBonzo: My answer is “No”. Or, more precisely, “no, according to my own experience”: I have my own Mac with my own account and also a government-issued Mac for telecommuting and connecting via VPN to the network of the nearby NASA Center where I do some of my computer work, as well as my work-related emailing. Therefore, this is “my” NASA Mac, so to speak. However, when it come to apps pre-installed on this particular Mac, for some unfathomable government reason, or maybe just “because”, they are registered in someone else’s Apple account (and a someone else I’ve never even heard of), and I cannot update them (not that I have any use for “Garage Band” when I’m on this Mac), because, of course, I do not have that account’s password. So the question becomes: “Could I access this person’s account if I knew the password?” Which seems to me, if the answer were “yes” (as I suspect it is), would be most problematic at a number of different levels.

Unless the person that owns the account, and even the Mac from where you are trying to access the account, is there with you at the time, helping you use it.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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DrBonzo

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@OscarCP – I’m thinking that you can’t change much on your NASA Mac because NASA wants (needs?) to have as much control over that Mac as possible.

Apple seems to make a big deal about being able to see your Apple ID from “all your devices”, so I would think they would want you to be able to see your Apple ID from almost any Apple device whether or not it belongs to you. Therefore I’m going to guess that the owner of the other Mac will need to set up an account – perhaps an administrative account – for me on their Mac. And then I think I should be able to use my Apple ID on their Mac.

What I really want to be able to do is the following: I have a program I purchased from the App Store downloaded and installed on my Mac. The license says I can use the program on another computer, and of course the other computer I want to use it on is the other Mac. (Fortunately, the owner of the other Mac wants me to be able to use the program on their Mac, too.)

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DrBonzo: I think that what “Apple” probably meant to say was that you can use the application in more than one Mac, as long all the Macs in question are yours. I also think that maybe you should send a direct message to Nathan Parker asking him about this and giving him also a link to this thread you have started. He should be able to answer your question, maybe as a comment in this thread, if anyone around here could. And, by now, I am also curious to know what he might have to say.

Also: yes, as you wrote, NASA needs to monitor and regulate how the computers that it furnishes to contractors and civil servants for their work are used, but this is not the case with those applications I mentioned: nobody shall ever update them, because whoever has the password to the account where they are registered, for all anyone knows, might be on a rocket to Mars as we speak, or has retired and now is living out his or her days fishing somewhere in Vanuatu.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Nathan Parker, DrBonzo

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DrBonzo wrote:

If I have an Apple ID can I log into my Apple ID account from any Mac?

I’m not sure I’m asking this correctly, so here’s the situation. I have a Mac with only one account and I’ve used my Apple ID on that Mac. Can I use my Apple ID on another Mac that also has only one account – not mine – and an Apple ID – also not mine – and if so, how do I do it?

We can assume that the owner of the other Mac will give me permission to use their Mac.

Thanks.

You can Disassociate the current Apple ID from the Mac and use your own.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/161943/disassociate-an-apple-id-from-a-computer

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Nathan Parker, DrBonzo

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I think the answer is “yes and no”. If you log out of your friend’s AppleID, you can log in with your own. However, as OscarCP indicated, there will be some things that you cannot do.

I have a friend whose husband set up their iMac. She has an administrative account on that machine, but she could not update any of the Apple apps (GarageBand, etc.) because they were associated with her husband’s AppleID. Each time she tried to do an update, a box popped up with her husband’s AppleID, and requesting his password.  The solution was to delete those apps (which, surprisingly, she was able to do), and then download them again, thereby associating them with her own AppleID.

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Nathan Parker, DrBonzo, OscarCP

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Here’s the bottom line with Apple ID’s:

1. You can login to more than one Mac with a single Apple ID. I’m currently using my Apple ID on both my newer iMac Pro and my older iMac.
2. One Mac local user account can only be associated with a single Apple ID. Therefore, if the user account you’re accessing is already signed in with an Apple ID, you’ll either need to logout from that Apple ID and login with your own, or better yet, create a second user account on the Mac under System Preferences, switch to that user account, then sign in with your Apple ID (that’ll make it easier to ensure there’s no data mixing going on. While signing out of an Apple ID generally clears all data associated with that Apple ID, it can sometimes take a bit, so if you quickly sign into another user account, data mixing could begin).

Nathan Parker

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Myst, DrBonzo

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In case anyone else is in the same situation as I was, here’s how things turned out.

I created an administrator account for myself on a MacBook Air running Mojave. While logged into that account I signed in with my AppleID that had been created when I set up an iMac running High Sierra (after entering my AppleID and password I was prompted for a 6-digit code that had just been sent to the iMac, and upon entering that code I was in my App Store account). I was able to see all the Apps I had purchased from the App Store with my AppleID account, and I was able to download and run any of them onto the MacBook Air. The owner of the MacBook Air cannot see those apps while logged in to their administrator account. However, both of the administrator accounts on the MacBook Air can see the Apps that came with the macOS (things like Pages, Preview, etc.) Both accounts are presented with the opportunity to update those Apps, although I could not verify that my new administrator account could actually update since there were no updates available for those Apps.

In short, it worked just as @Nathan Parker described above (no surprise there!)

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Myst, Nathan Parker

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