If there’s one question I hear more often than I would like, it’s “How do I create an iTunes account without giving Apple my credit card number? Why do they need that, anyway?!”
Yeah – I can’t answer the latter; they don’t really need it – they want it in order to save it and make it incredibly easy for you to purchase songs and movies with a single click (hello impulse buy!) when you see something that you want.
The point is that when you see your favorite band’s new single or album up on the iTunes store, the urge to click “buy now” will be so great that you click on it and instantly start downloading the music – no checkout process to make you stop and think “hmm…I heard it was horrible, though.”
But that issue aside, the fine folks at gHacks have uncovered a solid way to create an iTunes account without giving out your credit card number – you’ll need an iTunes account in order to do everything from activate your iPhone or iPod to download the free content from the store or use Genius.
So how do you do it? The solution is to use iTunes gift card codes and coupon codes – even if they’er expired or have already been redeemed. When they fail, iTunes will go through with the account creation process anyway, and will give you an option to finish setting up the account without any payment information at all. Pretty solid! …at least until Apple “fixes” it.