Is it possible to share an iPad?

Question

My husband and I both have our own iPhones. He has his own Apple ID , as do I.
Is it possible to share an iPad? He & I both travel for business, but not together & not at the same time. It would be great if the one who has it could use their own Apple ID account & iTunes content, etc.
I would rather buy just one iPad2 now & wait for the 3 for the other one.
Can it be set up on one account and then changed to another?
Even if it would have to be restored each time we switched, it might be worth it.
Thanks for you help!

Answer 1

It is certainly possible to connect a single iPad to two unique Apple ID's, because we're doing it.
As we are using it, the music, movies, and apps installed are available to both users. I'm not sure how it might be different by sharing the Apple ID accounts with iPhones, however.
I'd suggest leaving the 'home' screen pretty much as it comes, and then adding named folders for your apps. iOS suggests names for application folders based on Genre, but you can easily edit the folders once created.  For example 'Bill's Music Apps', 'Jennifer's Photo Apps', and so on.
Purchase an iPad with 64Gb memory, and you can easily store the all the apps either of you would use as well as a combined music, movie, and photo libraries. A feature length movie does take up about 4Gb, so you'd probably want to remove them once you've watched them. Mark for deletion on the iPad, then it will free the iPad memory next time you sync to iTunes on a computer. If you don't choose 'erase file' on the computer, the movie will still be there.
Apps are organized by iTunes by platform: iPhone, iPhone and iPad, and iPad only, but every app of any platform I've downloaded so far has played on the iPad 2, even some older ones from my son's iPod Touch 2G.
My wife and I 'share' her 64Gb iPad 2. She uses it primarily for email, weather, and web browsing. She has a few songs loaded, but doesn't really use it much for music yet. I'm still converting her vinyl album collection to mp3s and then uploading it from my computer. Haven't really created any playlists yet.
I use it her iPad to test-drive lots of free apps, photo apps, reference apps, games, and a few magazines I subscribe to.
Before you ever connect it to a computer, be certain to disable the 'automatic sync' in iTunes.
For simplicity, when you first connect and register it, choose one of the two existing account Apple ID's. Then connect it to the other Apple ID.
When connected to a computer, you can simply drag content from each of your individual iTunes accounts to the iPad shown in iTunes.
When you want to add an app or music, simply sign-in with the applicable ID.  The iPad doesn't get confused when updating apps, and asks for the appropriate Apple ID and password for whichever account loaded and installed the app.
I'm not sure how iOS 5 and iCloud will affect this arrangement, if at all.
We have unique email accounts on a 3rd-party POP3 servers, and the iPad Mail app allows you to select which inbox you want to view, as well as 'all inboxes'
Message was edited by: kostby