I’ve done this for many clients (especially my older ones). It’s a PITA to set up, and there usually is no way to exactly replicate the original conditions after the new change. I often get called in because a crisis (something’s no longer working or a new device/feature isn’t compatible) has forced the issue.
Sharing Apple IDs is a bad idea because Apple does not expect it and therefore at any time it can break. It’s no fun dealing with this problem when you’re under pressure.
For most of my clients, I strongly recommend keeping things as simple as possible – which usually translates to using as few services as possible. Here’s the usual set-up:
Email: whatever they’re currently using. If they need a new email address, consider using Apple’s email services.
Calendar: Apple, with shared calendar(s) as needed
Notes: Apple
Contacts: Apple
Messaging: Apple’s Messages app, to combine Apple’s service with SMS
If a client lives strongly in the Google universe, then all of the above should be Google. But under most circumstances, choosing a mix of providers for these core services is not worth the complexity. (The problem with complexity comes into play when you’re trying to troubleshoot something. Doubly so when you’re trying to troubleshoot for someone else, and triply so when you’re trying to troubleshoot for someone else remotely.)
The pain points are sharing Contacts and Photos. There are no good solutions; Apple expects each individual to have their own Apple ID and to share data on a piece-by-piece basis.
For contacts, this is okay. Once you get the contacts data set up on the new device, the changes are infrequent enough that simply Air-Dropping any new contact info is sufficient.
For photos, this is not great. Shared albums are the only way to go, but as someone else already pointed out, shared album images are not the same quality. Honestly, these days it’s usually pretty difficult to tell that they’re reduced quality until you zoom in a lot, but it’s still annoying. The work required to share photos this way is negligible if they’re already using albums. The only difference is they move photos to a shared album instead of a “regular” one. (Once the original sharing of albums is set up, of course. Which isn’t difficult to do.)
Photos is where I get the biggest pushback. But I can say that there’s often one person who sees the benefit of not having their phone filled with “irrelevant” images that their partner took in order to remember something. It’s a small but tangible benefit.
Once you’ve decided where all the data is going, the next step is getting it there. This is much easier to do if you’ve got a computer, and even easier if you’ve got a Mac. In fact, if there is no Mac available, it’s worth it to borrow one temporarily just to handle the Contacts data. Makes it so much easier.
