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Comment by kylec | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, it's really weird that the @apple.com email you get when you start isn't usable as an Apple ID. I didn't want to sign into my personal account on my work computer for a BUNCH of reasons (privacy being one, but beta software messing with my data was another) so I created a new free iCloud account. But it struck me as VERY odd that Apple would want their employees minging their work and personal data on their personal accounts.

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It was a similar story at Microsoft: for a long time we couldn't reliably use @microsoft.com e-mail addresses as MSAs ("Microsoft Accounts", the then-new name for Windows Live IDs), so we were all told to create a new non-@microsoft.com address for stuff that needed an MSA - I don't remember the guidance for if we could re-use our pre-existing personal addresses or not but I know that some people did, but most people created new @outlook.com addresses.

IIRC, they did iron out the problems eventually, and finally came-up with a semi-decent UX for normal (non-MSFT) people that had an Office 365 ("Organizational account") with the same e-mail address as an MSA - but I think internal MSFT accounts still have issues? My information isn't up-to-date fwiw.

FWIW, I never had access to any "real" internal resources via my new @outlook.com MSA address - the only things it did have access to was things like MSDN Subscriber Downloads[1] and as a backup/recovery e-mail address for my @ms org account.

[1]: Oddly enough, I retained access to the MSDN Subscriber Downloads area, including full ISOs and Product Keys for about 2 years after I left the company, I only lost access because that was when they moved everything over from "MSDN Subscriber Downloads" to "My Visual Studio" which changed everything.

@microsoft.com accounts work fine now. But yeah, I remember it, and it was a hassle.

Might be a side effect of how broken their "company" managed Apple ID system. You can create managed Apple IDs at business.apple.com with such access, but the accounts are _extremely_ limited in functionality[0].

0: https://support.apple.com/guide/apple-business-manager/what-...

It’s far easier to blend. Otherwise you’re carrying multiple devices. To each their own, but you’re going to have a hard time debugging anything or living on your own new features if there’s zero personal real data in use.

I assume they do this because they are uber paranoid about product leaks.

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