Stuart C. Mackey

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A Crash Course Understanding iTunes and App Store Ecosystem

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I am often asked (by family members and friends) a lot of the same questions when it comes to their new shiny Apple product, especially when they are trying to migrate from another platform such as Windows. I wrote this response to one such family member and thought it was worthy of a post.

Understanding iTunes and App Store Purchases

Apple, you've come a long way, baby! There was no Understanding iTunes and App Store in the '80's.
Apple, you’ve come a long way, baby! There was no Understanding iTunes and App Store in the ’80’s.

First, everyone logged in with the same apple ID shares calendars, documents, settings, and music. However, there was a family share option added a while back (http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/family-sharing/) that allows you to retain a lot of your own documents, but share purchases such as music, apps, and movies.

Documents on iCloud

On a Windows or Mac desktop, you know that you can save documents to your My Documents folder, and you can sort those files into sub-folders of your own design and system. The Apple Apps and all the apps from Third Parties that support it, instead store each Program/App’s files in a folder for that app. All Pages files are in a Pages folder, all Numbers files are in a numbers folder, etc. You didn’t used to be able to access those folder from anywhere but a while back they added the ability to access other app’s folders. But the specific app you want to open from has to allow that function. Some iOS apps have direct Dropbox access as well, so they can open any file in dropbox.
As mentioned above, if you and another family member sign in using the same iCloud account, you will essentially share one set of folders. You will all see the same Pages docs, the same Numbers docs, etc.

You probably know that you can use the “Open in… App Name” menu item. But you might not realize what exactly is happening. If you are in the Dropbox app, and choose to open a PDF, for instance, in a PDF viewer or editor app, what is actually happening (with some exceptions now) is a COPY of the file is being made and sent to that other app. In other words, if you modify the file and “save” it, a COPY is being saved into that App’s special folder.
But as I mentioned above, some apps have the direct ability in-the-app to open files form your Dropbox account. When saved, they are saved right back to your dropbox account. This needs to be supported/built into the app.

Apple iTunes Music and Movies

Any song, app, or movie that you buy with the iTunes music store or the Apple App store can always be re-downloaded for free. Movies can actually be streamed now without being downloaded to your device. The same holds true for “digital copy” movies, which is when a physical DVD or BluRay includes a special code to give you an iTunes version to accompany your physical DVD or BluRay. These also can be re-downloaded at any time. Any movies or music can also be accessed from any Apple TV that is logged into the same account.
One new thing they recently added is an Apple Music subscription.  This gives you complete access to the entire music library for a subscription, but once you stop paying the subscription, any songs you have will “expire” and no longer play. There is currently a 90-day free trial introductory period.
I prefer the Apple iTunes Match service since I owned a lot of CDs already. It took every CD I manually ripped into iTunes, and uploaded them to the cloud. Essentially, I don’t need to keep ANY music on ANY device (unless I need access to it when I don’t have an internet connection). Any song I’ve EVER had, I can see and play and it streams on-the-fly. It’s pretty inexpensive if you compare it to paying Dropbox to store it all.

 

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