Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Snow Leopard Family Pack To Save Money?

V

vchalupa

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 24, 2008
77
0
I've been wondering about this for a little while now and was hoping to get some answers.

I want to upgrade to Snow Leopard from Leopard and everyone knows the upgrade is going to be $29.99. I was wondering if I could find 4 other friends and buy the family pack for $49.99 instead and split the cost for 5 licenses. So that way it would only cost about $10 for everyone to upgrade.

Is there any problem with this? Will this be possible even though these machines are owned by different people?

Thanks in advance
 
vchalupa said:
I've been wondering about this for a little while now and was hoping to get some answers.

I want to upgrade to Snow Leopard from Leopard and everyone knows the upgrade is going to be $29.99. I was wondering if I could find 4 other friends and buy the family pack for $49.99 instead and split the cost for 5 licenses. So that way it would only cost about $10 for everyone to upgrade.

Is there any problem with this? Will this be possible even though these machines are owned by different people?

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

That violates the spirit of the Family Pack license. The idea is that you buy it to upgrade up to 5 Macs in your household, not separate domiciles...
 
If you're going to violate the license by sharing it with friends, why bother purchasing a family pack in the first place? It's simple piracy.
 
This is like the 5th time I have read this question, and I don't understand. Most OS updates from Apple are $129, this one is $29. If you really can't spend $29 on a new OS to get it legally, maybe sticking with Leopard would be the best option.
 
ITASOR said:
This is like the 5th time I have read this question, and I don't understand. Most OS updates from Apple are $129, this one is $29. If you really can't spend $29 on a new OS to get it legally, maybe sticking with Leopard would be the best option.
Click to expand...

That's not the point. I'm more than willing to spend the $29 for the upgrade but I figured if I could save some money, then why not? It just seems silly to spend three times as much money on an upgrade when it could possibly be done for much cheaper. I was just curious to see if it was possible, that's all. It's not like it's going to stop me from getting the upgrade.
 
r.j.s said:
While physically possible, it is a violation of the SLA.
Click to expand...

Speaking for SLA violations, I wonder what steps Apple have incorporated in Snow Leopard to prevent hackintosh users from upgrading their non official systems. Kinda pisses me off when hackintosh users hi-jack Mac OS for their systems.
 
UltraNEO* said:
Speaking for SLA violations, I wonder what steps Apple have incorporated in Snow Leopard to prevent hackintosh users from upgrading their non official systems.
Click to expand...

It will be interesting to find out on Friday. Something tells me the upgrade disc will not work on a Hackintosh.
 
r.j.s said:
It will be interesting to find out on Friday. Something tells me the upgrade disc will not work on a Hackintosh.
Click to expand...

I'm kinda hoping there's low-level software embedded to search out and seek the new Hardware UUID hex codes, now added to the system identifiers.
 
UltraNEO* said:
I'm kinda hoping there's low-level software embedded to search out and seek the new Hardware UUID hex codes, now added to the system identifiers.
Click to expand...

Now, remember that SL has location-technology to set the clock among other things. A conspiracy theorist (not me :D) might expect a personal visit from the EULA/SLA enforcers. :p
 
dborja said:
Now, remember that SL has location-technology to set the clock among other things. A conspiracy theorist (not me :D) might expect a personal visit from the EULA/SLA enforcers. :p
Click to expand...

HEHE... *knock, knock*

:eek:


Any hackintosh users out there tried the pre-release on their box? :D
Does it work?? Curious....
 
dborja said:
That violates the spirit of the Family Pack license. The idea is that you buy it to upgrade up to 5 Macs in your household, not separate domiciles...
Click to expand...

It specifically states household? Wow. How annoying thorough.

To the OP: I understand what you are trying to get across, and yes, it is possible to do that. Illegal? Not sure, you did pay for 5 licenses, 5 licenses is 5 licenses is 5 licenses, which were legally purchased. I'm pretty sure Apple has plenty of other law suits to attend to then a group of friends who just want to install Snow Leopard.

As far as not being able to scrounge up $29, some people (college students specifically) barely have enough money. You old folks realize how much tuition costs now, as well as books?
 
Markov said:
It specifically states household? Wow. How annoying thorough.

To the OP: I understand what you are trying to get across, and yes, it is possible to do that. Illegal? Not sure, you did pay for 5 licenses, 5 licenses is 5 licenses is 5 licenses, which were legally purchased. I'm pretty sure Apple has plenty of other law suits to attend to then a group of friends who just want to install Snow Leopard.

As far as not being able to scrounge up $29, some people (college students specifically) barely have enough money. You old folks realize how much tuition costs now, as well as books?
Click to expand...

From http://store.apple.com/us/product/MAC_OS_X_SNGL -

"About the Family Pack

The 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 household. By “household” we mean a person or persons who share the same housing unit such as a home, apartment, mobile home, or condominium, including students who are primary residents of that household but reside at a separate on-campus location. This license does not extend to business or commercial users."

It is pretty clear. While you're right that Apple does not have the resources to crack down on small-time violators, it is about doing what's legal and not about what we can get away with. Understood that not everyone can easily spring the $29 but most companies exist to make money; as a programmer and small business, I sure would not like people violating my means of income. With enough violations and loss of revenue, companies such as Apple may resort to revenue protection schemes such as validation keys like Microsoft does; we wouldn't like that would we? It's a pain in the behind. You have to admit that Apple's honor system policy is much better than the "guilty until proven innocent" validation systems.

(Now getting off the soapbox...)
 
UltraNEO* said:
I'm kinda hoping there's low-level software embedded to search out and seek the new Hardware UUID hex codes, now added to the system identifiers.
Click to expand...

Hardware UUID was always present, thats how Time Machine etc works. Only in 10.5.8, they made it visible in System profiler for some reason. It is very easy to change it anyway.

UltraNEO* said:
Any hackintosh users out there tried the pre-release on their box? :D
Does it work?? Curious....
Click to expand...

Of course it works, sometimes I think it even works better than a Mac on compatible systems. We have support for hardware not even present in real Macs; HDMI/VGA, SDHC card reader (way before it was in latest mbps), fingerprint reader, etc... Also less limitations from Apple (less than 2 year old Macs that were advertised as 64-bit can't run 64-bit SL kernel?!)
I wouldn't leave hackintosh for a real Mac. Its fun to use and learn OS X internals, plus much better Windows support, with things like SLIC 2.1 BIOS support (no stupid activations).
 
You all talk about legality, which of course is important and doing what the OP suggest is illegal, but what about the other aspect? Am I the only one that thinks it's crazy to buy an OS and have to share the physical disc with 4 others? I mean if something goes wrong with your system, of if you decide you wanted to do whatever that requires the OS disc, you would have to find the friend and have him give you the disc (sure doesn't sound like a problem when you're all in college, but what about next year or the year after that?).

To me, $29 (or the $44 i payed) is so worth it for that aspect alone. Do yourself a favour and buy your own disc, not only is it the legal thing, but it's the best thing if something would ever go wrong.
 
Markov said:
It specifically states household? Wow. How annoying thorough.

To the OP: I understand what you are trying to get across, and yes, it is possible to do that. Illegal? Not sure, you did pay for 5 licenses, 5 licenses is 5 licenses is 5 licenses, which were legally purchased. I'm pretty sure Apple has plenty of other law suits to attend to then a group of friends who just want to install Snow Leopard.

As far as not being able to scrounge up $29, some people (college students specifically) barely have enough money. You old folks realize how much tuition costs now, as well as books?
Click to expand...

Honestly I totally agree with you. As a college graduate facing plenty of college loans on the way I was almost not going to upgrade. I was thinking about splitting the family pack but decided against it because it would have taken more work to find 4 other people interested in the upgrade. If I was still living in a dorm I would have just done it and no one would have been the wiser. If your short on cash just go do it, people are going to give you crap about the cheaper cost but you already paid a little hardware premium just to run the OS. It's not like you are buying it and installing it on a hackintosh, you paid for 5 and you got 5, apple is not going to investigate. Illegal? most likely not. Dishonest? yes, but not everyone is a saint, and apple is still getting its money. Did anyone complain when people shared their 2 extra license that came with Microsoft Office for Mac?
 
So I have a Macbook and an iMac. I need to get the family pack to upgrade both of these right? Just purchasing one single upgrade disc and using it on both machines is not sufficient / will not work ?
 
Nebulosity said:
So I have a Macbook and an iMac. I need to get the family pack to upgrade both of these right? Just purchasing one single upgrade disc and using it on both machines is not sufficient / will not work ?
Click to expand...

I will work, but it's against the licence agreement (which is 1 computer for the $29 version, and 5 computers in a household for the $49 family pack).
 
Molnies said:
I will work, but it's against the licence agreement (which is 1 computer for the $29 version, and 5 computers in a household for the $49 family pack).
Click to expand...


Ok cool I have no problem buying it, just curious. Coincidentally, my local Apple store in Annapolis MD is re-opening because of renovations on the 28th. Guess I'll be making a trip there Friday morning! Thanks for the info
 
Markov said:
As far as not being able to scrounge up $29, some people (college students specifically) barely have enough money. You old folks realize how much tuition costs now, as well as books?
Click to expand...
If you can't afford it, you can't have it. It's as simple as that. The purchase of Snow Leopard isn't required to continue using a Mac. It will function perfectly fine with Leopard.
 
really looking forward to SL!

but before I buy a Family Pack ( and an up-to-date version for the new Mini) what would happen if I have a family pack licence and mistakenly try to install it on a sixth computer? will it work?

One thought on this is of course piracy, but also it might happen that one machine gets stolen or breaks down –then, what is the procedure to migrate my 1/5th licence to another new machine?

thanks for any info on this!
 
icanboogie said:
really looking forward to SL!

but before I buy a Family Pack ( and an up-to-date version for the new Mini) what would happen if I have a family pack licence and mistakenly try to install it on a sixth computer? will it work?

One thought on this is of course piracy, but also it might happen that one machine gets stolen or breaks down –then, what is the procedure to migrate my 1/5th licence to another new machine?

thanks for any info on this!
Click to expand...

Physically, you can install on a 6th Mac.

There is no awkward activation key procedure when migrating licenses. Just install on the replacement Mac.

The license is all based on the honor system. It relies on YOU making sure that the family pack SL is installed on no more than 5 Macs IN your household. Mac OS X is so reasonably priced and painless with respect to not having to deal with activation keys and such that we, as users, should not hesitate in keeping up our end of the agreement. With enough abuse and loss of revenue to Uncle Steve's company, they may be forced to mimic Micro$lop's revenue protection schemes (activation keys, etc.). We wouldn't want that would we?

Sorry for the soapbox speech. It's not particularly aimed at you; it's an attempt to preempt other justifications to violate the license...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back