My wife and I have different Apple ID's however when we purchased IPhone 4s and set up our accounts our contacts and apps merged!!! how do we prevent this?

Question

My wife and I recently purchased IPhones (4S), we use an iMac and an IPad 2, we have separate Apple ID's but when we fired up our new phones and began setting up the systems, our contacts and applications merged. Since then I have disabled ICloud from my phone and my iMac until we can figure out how to avoid this crossover of information. Are we overlooking something?

Answer 1

Hi Shadow,
The apps are forever tied to the Apple ID that they were purchased under. Your iCloud accounts are also Apple IDs, so although you can sync the apps to your individual device via iTunes, you will be syncing them to the devices, not to iCloud.
Since you are still purchasing everything under one Apple ID, then I'm presuming that they live in a single iTunes library on your computer or Mac? If that is the case, then you would just want to:
Hook up a device to the Mac or computer
Select the device when it shows up under devices
Once selected, the Device Profile screens display to the right - click on the Apps tab, and select which ones you want on that device.
Also check all the other profile pages to make sure they are set up to sync the things you want to sync to that device.
On the info page, you will see that you can sync Contacts & Calendars via iCloud or via iTunes. If you want a single source for contacts & calendars for both of your devices, sync them via iTunes. If you want your own sets of contacts & calendars, sync them via iCloud.
Do you have iCloud set up on the computer or Mac? If so, which iCloud account are you planning on using?
Some of the decisions you will want to make will depend on how you have your computer or Mac configured in conjunction with iTunes. One Apple ID, but one or two User Accounts for the computer or Mac? iCloud on the computer or Mac? What do you want to share and to not share?
Post back with any questions.
Cheers,
GB