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mohmandm

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 9, 2004
75
0
east lansing
A bunch of friends and I want to get Tiger... We are wondering if buying the family version and using it between the five of us is legal. This is seems pretty obvious but if we bought the single version, would we have the chance to get in trouble from sharing that? Any help would be great
 
Duff-Man says....this has been covered multiple times already - please learn to search the forums before creating new threads! Thanks. Now to answer.....if you simply wwere to go to Apple's website and look at the Family Pack page you will see:

* Family Pack Software License Agreement allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on up to a maximum of five (5) Apple-labeled computers at a time as long as those computers are located in the same household and used by persons who occupy that same household. By "household" we mean a person or persons sharing the same housing unit such as a home, apartment, mobile home or condominium. This license does not extend to students who reside at a separate on-campus location or to business or commercial users.

So I would guess that answers the legaility for you.....oh yeah!
 
mohmandm said:
A bunch of friends and I want to get Tiger... We are wondering if buying the family version and using it between the five of us is legal. This is seems pretty obvious but if we bought the single version, would we have the chance to get in trouble from sharing that? Any help would be great


The chances of getting caught if you buy a single copy and install it on 5 machines is about zero. But keep in mind it is illegal and morally wrong. If everyone did this why would Apple even bother the make a new OS to lose money? If you are a student why dont you just fork out the $70 and get it with the educational discount? Then you are perfectly legal and still going to be able to sleep at night. And the family pack is for "Families" with more than 1 machine in the "family". Limited to 5 machine in the Same household.

Help keep Apple making new and state of the art software by supporting them and not ripping them off. It's only $70, not like its $700.
 
MacAztec said:
I buy a single version and install it on about, 7 computers every time.

Great. It's because of practices like this that i have no doubt Apple will go to license activitation like Adobe did.
 
Oh well. I don't feel like I am robbing them. I still paid the $130 for the software.

Kind of like you ordering digital cable, but the cable company saying that you need to pay the $40/month for every television in the house.
 
MacAztec said:
Oh well. I don't feel like I am robbing them. I still paid the $130 for the software.

Kind of like you ordering digital cable, but the cable company saying that you need to pay the $40/month for every television in the house.

you know, i felt this way about microsoft.. and i still feel this way about cable. But apple definitely makes a superior product that deserves to be paid for. A lot of my issue with software is the expense. as a college student i am broke, what can i say... my school offered Windows XP for $15 and office for $45.. i made one machine totally legal. granted i still have a few that aren't.. but regardless i'm atleast attempting to fix things. However with my mac i have nearly everything totally legal.

hey.. i had to use DVD Studio Pro for a very small project.. it was totally done in iDVD then imported into DSP so i could make it loop over and over and over.. it was a slideshow for a wedding.. we didn't want anyone having to restart it every 10 minutes.. i wish i had a friend with it so i could've easily did that.. however it has made me want to purchase the production suite... i'm anxiously awaiting the day i can fork out $500 for it (edu discount).. they got a potential buyer outta me there.. however DVD Studio Pro is now gone and if i need it again i'll buy it, just a last minute thing i needed to do .. meaning it was supposed to be done the next day and even if i coulda bought it, i wouldn't have gotten it in time anyway :p

regardless i feel bad about it and wish i really could buy the app right now.. i would then proceed to buy a dv cam and go to town on trying to create some killer movies and stuff :p

point is.. buy the damn family pack.. that's 5 machines for $199.. or $165 if you use the amazon rebate. that at least makes 5 of them totally legal and gives apple more of the money they deserve.
 
MacAztec said:
Oh well. I don't feel like I am robbing them. I still paid the $130 for the software.

Kind of like you ordering digital cable, but the cable company saying that you need to pay the $40/month for every television in the house.

Look, no offense macaztec, but what you "feel" in the matter is pretty irrelevant. As the ipod halo effect leads to more mac sales and more osx sales, Apple will realize it's getting ripped off by users who "feel" they have a right to ignore the user license agreement. then, here comes activitation

Logik is right, just get a 5 pack
 
cgratti said:
The chances of getting caught if you buy a single copy and install it on 5 machines is about zero. But keep in mind it is illegal and morally wrong.

I have one machine and a student discount, so this thread doesn't apply to me fortunately.

However, just becuase apple's EULA limits how many computers you install it on, I wonder if it is legal for them to say you can only install it on one computer, or >5 if you get a family pack. Of course, I am talking about circumstances where you own all of your computers, and aren't trying to split the costs among friends.

So seriously, can apple say you can only install it on one computer? If so, why is this different than music companies not being able to say the same thing? I know that the fair use concept is often abused by those who make copies of music for friends, or buy stuff rip and sell it again, but what about simply having the same cd on multiple computers. Can they just include an EULA and make it "illegal" by fiat?

Also, I agree that it is immoral to share amongst friends, but I don't think you can say simply breaking a EULA is immoral a priori, or illegal. you may be liable for damages but that doesn't necessarily make it illegal. The DMCA might make circumventing protection measures illegal, but the software doesn't have them, as far as I know. So is it immoral to install tiger on your PB and PM just because apple says so? Would it be immoral to install tiger from someone else's disk if you bought one but it became scratched?
 
MacAztec said:
I buy a single version and install it on about, 7 computers every time.

Thank you thank you so much for posting this public forum :mad:

And do please get the family pack ;)
 
If you happen to be the only person using the computers in your home, I think it's a little ridiculous to buy multiple copies. I have a desktop, a laptop, and an old G4 I use to serve out renders, I'm not paying extra for 3 copies of OS X or a family pack for that. If you actually have multiple people using machines simultaneously, then I can see the point for a family pack.
 
MacAztec said:
Oh well. I don't feel like I am robbing them. I still paid the $130 for the software.

Kind of like you ordering digital cable, but the cable company saying that you need to pay the $40/month for every television in the house.


You paid 130.00 for a SINGLE-USER LICENSE.

And it has nothing to do with freaking cable.

Christ there is some stupid crap on this board today.
 
kevinuaa said:
So is it immoral to install tiger on your PB and PM just because apple says so? Would it be immoral to install tiger from someone else's disk if you bought one but it became scratched?

No, its not immoral in my opinion, as you have bought it and installed it on your own machines, but it IS illegal. If I had 2 Macs, I'd install it on my 2 machines, but NEVER on my friends machine.

However, I DO NOT find it immoral to buy a family pack of Tiger and install that on my Mac and on 4 friends' computers, or on my brothers' Mac (if he had a Mac, that is :( ), even though he lives on campus at University and not with me or my family. I am paying extra so that I can install it on more than one machine. Why does it matter if my 'lil brother lives at University? Its not robbery. Its not even Apple's business where my brother moves. Its just a very arbitrary rule. Hey, if my brother moves again, he should uninstall his version and we should be required by law to buy another version of Tiger for him!! Wouldn't Apple LUUURVE that!!!! ;)

I don't mind paying Apple, and I don't want to rob Apple of money. I'll pay for the family pack if I want to install it on more than my own machine, but if my brother moved out of the house, his family licensed version of Tiger STAYS ON HIS MACHINE!!! I'll pay Apple for Tiger. I'll definitely pay for a family pack if I need to, but if it happens to be on my brother's computer, or on the computer of my very close cousin's machine, then so be it.
 
Could somebody take a camcorder with them when they see the new Star Wars flick?

I don't feel like waiting in line, fighting the crowd, or paying for a ticket.
 
Sun Baked said:
Could somebody take a camcorder with them when they see the new Star Wars flick?

I don't feel like waiting in line, fighting the crowd, or paying for a ticket.
I hope you're being sarcastic.
 
mohmandm said:
A bunch of friends and I want to get Tiger... We are wondering if buying the family version and using it between the five of us is legal. This is seems pretty obvious but if we bought the single version, would we have the chance to get in trouble from sharing that? Any help would be great

Other people already answered but I'd like to drive the point home. Stealing OS X is a really bad idea. There is no chance you will get caught, because OS X has no anti-piracy features built-in. (Total opposite of Windows.) But the family-pack license does not apply to you and your friends.

If you are all students, then buy student licenses. These are usually 40% off. If you're not students, then you should be able to afford the entire package.
 
MacAztec said:
I buy a single version and install it on about, 7 computers every time.

Great job, bastard. You might just make the world a worse place for us all.

Look at Windows... there used to be no anti-piracy in there. Then everyone started stealing it. Thus comes about the extremely strict NO COPY thingy in XP that makes my life hell as it doesn't like my hardware configuration, etc.

MacAztec said:
Oh well. I don't feel like I am robbing them. I still paid the $130 for the software.

You didn't pay for the software. You paid for a license to use the software. That license is for one computer only. The software belongs to Apple.

Sun Baked said:
Could somebody take a camcorder with them when they see the new Star Wars flick?

I don't feel like waiting in line, fighting the crowd, or paying for a ticket.
I don't mind paying for the ticket, but those concession stands KILL you with their prices. :rolleyes:
 
iGary said:
You paid 130.00 for a SINGLE-USER LICENSE.

And it has nothing to do with freaking cable.

Christ there is some stupid crap on this board today.

You know the thing is that it is NOT a single user license but rather a single computer license. So if you own 2 macs that you and you alone use you'd have to pay for 2!!! licenses. I know I would not do that if I had 2 macs.
And not having a Edu family pack for students who own more than one mac sucks too.
Anyway, installing it on friends' computers is just wrong. Installing it on 2 of your machines that only get used by you, is fine. My 2 cents.
 
Diatribe said:
And not having a Edu family pack for students who own more than one mac sucks too.
If you're a student with more than one Mac you can, of course, get the family pack (even with EDU discount) and install on all your Macs, nomatter where you live, even student housing...

What you may NOT do is share it with fellow students, even if you share (student) apartments with them (on university, that is, if you share apartment with students privately it's more of a gray area and you probably can share a family pack...)
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
If you're a student with more than one Mac you can, of course, get the family pack (even with EDU discount) and install on all your Macs, nomatter where you live, even student housing...

Unfortunately you cannot since there is no EDU family pack.
 
macaztec, you are clearly a self-minded twit that has no appreciation for the hard work that the apple programmers have put into developing tiger. go back to using windows.

on a lighter note, i will be purchasing tiger at the apple store for my powerbook with the edu discount.

catch that tiger!
 
Interesting as Always

I recognize some of the members on the thread, so you may also recall my feelings about the ardent backlash people face when bringing up issues such as this one... oh well.

I agree with the rest of you that if you have a group of friends, not living in the same household, they should acquire Tiger individually. Now let's look at this in a different way: tilt the sphere a little and consider this: I once shared a townhouse with a girlfriend, a good college friend, and a graphic design student. We had known each other for years and did everything together. Our own families lived thousands of miles away. During that period of my life, that WAS my family, and our household. At that time, I had a PM G4, my girlfriend had an iBook, my roomate had a Pismo and the student had a shiny new iMac. Four computers, one household. Damn right we would buy the family pack and save some money.

These are just my thoughts, and my way of trying to be fair, while keeping a balance between what I want, and what I can realistically acquire.

I now own the two macs in my signature. I have preordered Tiger, just like I preordered Jaguar and Panther. Tiger will be installed on both Macs. I see the EULA not as the tedious and verbose work that it is, but as a simple agreement with Apple. I have paid for a Single User License. Our computers are not users, we are. I use both my Macs and no one else. I never give out the OS to friends, and never install and sell without discs. Apple keeps their end of the deal: they keep developing wonderful software, and I keep paying them 130 dollars a year. They ask they I use it myself and not share it with non-buyers, and I do.

There have been numerous threads on this subject, and yes, members should search the forums before starting new threads. But please, must you all descend like vultures on Prometheus everytime the subject is brought up. Down Armies of Jobs, Down!
 
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