Apple ID. The single sign-on information used with all Apple products and services. Over the years, as Apple was implementing their Internet strategy, the poor Apple ID started off with many other names.

When I first got my Apple account, it was called a iTools.  Over the years, the services evolved and change names to .Mac in September 2002, to  MobileMe in June 2008, and finally to Apple ID in 2011. Hidden in a few lines of a press release, Apple announces that beginning with the operating systems coming in the fall of 2024 your Apple ID changes again. Now, Apple ID will be referred to as your Apple account. If you want to read more about this evolution, check this on Wikipedia.

In retrospect, Apple account probably makes more sense than all these other names that it’s been called over the years. Hopefully Apple account will become common in all the terminology that people use when they talk about logging into an apple device. But I still deal with clients, that when we have to look up their password in their password book, we have to look for .Mac, MobileMe, Apple ID, and now Apple account.

In an Apple Newsroom Press Release about features in the new releases, in the last paragraph, , Apple says,

With the releases of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and watchOS 11, Apple ID is renamed to Apple Account for a consistent sign-in experience across Apple services and devices, and relies on a user’s existing credentials.

So, beginning in September with the release of the new operating systems, we will begin referring to it as your Apple account.