Can I have 2 iPhones with 2 separate Apple IDs access the same Library on a single computer?

Question

Here's our current set-up:
- Dad has a laptop with iTunes and his music, iPhone and iPad all running off of his Apple ID.
- Mom has a laptop with iTunes and her music, and iPhone running off of her Apple ID.
- 2 kids with new iPods that we haven't set up yet (getting them for Christmas)
We would like to create a SINGLE library with all family music and media on Dad's laptop, then use his laptop to sync all music, movies, audiobooks, podcasts, and other media libraries so that we can each pick and choose what gets synced to our devices without messing up any other data that is personal such as apps (with embedded personal profiles such as Evernote and Facebook), bookmarks, photos, iMessage, iCloud, etc.
We assume that we need to maintain our two separate Apple IDs, and potentially set up some for the kids so that they can have some personal apps on their iPods, but if that is not the case we would appreciate some direction.
Thanks. If you can offer a solution please be specific in the steps required.

Answer 1

Hi, we don't have two iPhones in the family as yet but as I understand it each device can have separate settings for syncing calendars and contacts. For example my iPhone syncs these over the air with the Exchange server at work so if/when my wife gets an iPhone it would be easy to have hers sync to Outlook on our computer
To make sure apps purchased on one device don't inadvertently merge with others turn off Automatically sync new apps from the apps tab when you connect your device.
The Apple support document How to use multiple iPods with one computer suggests a number of ways for managing the media content. I use method two (Sync with selected playlists) with a slight twist. Rather than regular playlists I set the grouping field to indicate which users should receive which tracks and create smart playlists based on the content of this field.
e.g.
"Alice's Tracks" is "Grouping contains Alice" + "Kind contains audio"
"Bob's Videos" is "Grouping contains Bob" + "Kind does not contain audio"
Tracks that both Alice & Bob want on their iPods have the grouping set to "Alice/Bob"
etc.
I currently manage our family's five iDevices using this system, each getting a different selection to suit their tastes and the capacity of their device. An advantage of using the grouping field is that it is stored in file tags (for non-wav audio files anyway) so that it is relatively easy to recreate the playlists should the iTunes library get trashed and need rebuilding. Also useful if you move files about manually as playlist membership is preserved when you delete & re-import the tracks.
So far we have managed everything with a single Apple ID, but that will probably change as the kids leave home. Managing app updates from multiple IDs is a pain as you have to manually sign in to each account in turn, however there are other benefits to each user having their own account.
tt2