Apple software licensing questions - Leopard

[MUrhino]

Hi all! Happy Turkey Day! So I'm running OS X 10.4 and was wondering if I upgrade to Leopard, could I install my old version (Tiger) on another computer (i.e. my parents) w/o any legal problems? Is there an upgrade version of Leopard and a full version? Would I have to have the full version to give Tiger to my parents or is it even a big deal. My mindset is I paid so many thousands of dollars for the hardware, If I buy one software disc, it's going on all my macs. Thanks for the your help!

 

[robbieduncan]

All retail copies of Leopard are effectively upgrade versions as you can only install them (legally) on a Mac which already had a version of Mac OS on it. Having said that they are all also full versions: they do not check for an existing install of Mac OS on install.

The legal position of your Tiger license will depend on what sort of license it is. If you purchased a retail copy of Tiger then this can be transferred to your parents without issue. If it is a copy of Tiger that was supplied with a new Mac then it is licensed for that Mac only and cannot be transferred to any other Mac (and in this case the restore DVD is locked to that class of hardware).

 

[MUrhino]

Okay, well my PBG4 came w/ 10.3, so Tiger was an upgrade for me and I could essentially pass that on to another machine w/ no problems, while I upgrade my machine to Leopard. Does that sound correct? Can you skip an OS upgrade? That is to say, could I upgrade Mac OS X 10.3 straight to Leopard skipping the Tiger upgrade? Thanks for your help robbie!

 

[robbieduncan]

Okay, well my PBG4 came w/ 10.3, so Tiger was an upgrade for me and I could essentially pass that on to another machine w/ no problems, while I upgrade my machine to Leopard. Does that sound correct? Can you skip an OS upgrade? That is to say, could I upgrade Mac OS X 10.3 straight to Leopard skipping the Tiger upgrade? Thanks for your help robbie!

That all sounds perfectly fine to me as long as you only have 1 install of your Tiger license and 1 install of your Leopard license. You are completely free to skip upgrades if you want: you can install 10.5 on any (supported) machine you like, no matter what version of OSX is on there. I personally installed my copy on a totally blank hard-drive...