Apple ID is getting a rebrand starting with the release of iOS 18

The familiar Apple ID is getting rebranded

Last updated 1 week ago

Starting in the fall of 2024 with iOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and more, Apple is rebranding Apple ID to "Apple Account" across all of its services.

"Apple ID" as a term has been around for more than two decades. The company didn't make the change at the WWDC keynote, but instead dropped it in the tail-end of a press release on Thursday discussing feature changes to services coming in the fall.

"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," the company said.

Apple ID has been such a familiar part of using the Apple ecosystem for so long, that the branding is not often thought about. That Apple ID branding is such an integral part of everything to do with Apple now that it's hard to definitively say when it began.

Apart from the abortive eWorld in the '90s or the dealer-only AppleLink of the '80s, the first time users had to sign in to anything was with iTools in 2000.

Even then, that service was free so there was no registering of credit cards with it, and consequently less need for security. Then the iTunes Music Store came along in 2003, and now the sign in was more often, more formally, called Apple ID.

So, whether "Apple ID" has been used for 24 years or merely 21, Apple ID has been part of being an Apple user for decades. And, now, it's changing.

Rumors first started spreading about the change in February.

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13 Comments

rob53 3261 comments · 13 Years

About 6 days ago

Apple ID continues to be misunderstood by some Mac users. Users don’t know when to use their iCloud account password or their Mac login account. I’m not sure changing iCloud to Accounts will help. I know some people use the same account name and password for iCloud and Mac login but not necessarily users who’ve used Apple products for years.

Will Apple Account consolidate iCloud and Mac login or will they continue to be separate?

zoetmb 2654 comments · 17 Years

rob53 said:

Apple ID continues to be misunderstood by some Mac users. Users don’t know when to use their iCloud account password or their Mac login account. I’m not sure changing iCloud to Accounts will help. I know some people use the same account name and password for iCloud and Mac login but not necessarily users who’ve used Apple products for years.
Will Apple Account consolidate iCloud and Mac login or will they continue to be separate?

IMO, that’s not the biggest issue. It’s that Apple provides no way to consolidate iCloud accounts. There’s an issue going all the way back to the AOL days. When Apple made people change their IDs to not use AOL (I forget the exact circumstances), if you created a new AppleID with the same name, it got screwed up forever.

Also, if you created a second AppleID (I did so one time when my old ID stopped working (turned out it was an Apple server issue) and another time when I wound up with multiple AppleTV accounts), you could get signed in on another device to the wrong account. If you purchased apps under that account, they would not update when using the “regular” account. Luckily, most of those apps in my case were free apps and I could resolve the situation by deleting them and then reinstalling them and it even kept my data even though it tells you it won’t.

In fact, the entire password/keychain system seems screwed up to me. I have multiple entries for the same sites when there should be only one - the one with the latest password. I hope the new password system is more than a rename and new skin.

CheeseFreeze 1272 comments · 7 Years

Can I finally merge my Apple ID and App Store mail addresses?

Fidonet127 509 comments · 5 Years

Biggest issue is needing to merge IDs...... and we get a rebranding.

netrox 1449 comments · 12 Years

zoetmb said:

In fact, the entire password/keychain system seems screwed up to me. I have multiple entries for the same sites when there should be only one - the one with the latest password. I hope the new password system is more than a rename and new skin.

It's really the website's problem. I am so fed up with websites being so inept with implementing the correct login credentials. The credentials should provide clear information to password managers (in HTML) or stay in its domain rather than redirecting back and forth in URL confusing password managers. There's no excuse.