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Upgrading to Mavericks - can I use the same disc twice

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hania1

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 15, 2014
6
0
Hi,

I've got an iMac and a MacBook. Both came originally with Leopard. Some time ago I purchased Snow Leopard in order to upgrade to Mavericks on my iMac. Now, can I use the same SL installation disc to upgrade to Mavericks on my MacBook as well?

Not sure how the license works in such a case. I'd appreciate your help.
 
H

hania1

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 15, 2014
6
0
Exactly :) I need Snow Leopard on MacBook as well.

I'm a girl btw.
 
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Eithanius

macrumors 68000
Nov 19, 2005
1,541
412
satcomer said:
Then he us going to buy a 8G thumb drive drive the find a friend that has access to the Mac App Store. Then use the free program DiskMakerX and put it's output on the thumb drive.

Also you could follow Apple's advice Creating a bootable OS X installer in OS X Mavericks.
Click to expand...

Complicated enough... Would you wanna be her friend and share your Apple ID with her...?



To the OP, the person above is in a way correct, but not necessarily applicable to you.

My bet is, you can use the same retail disk on both machines (albeit the legal crap that says one copy per machine but who cares when the target OS is Mavericks). Once done updating both machines to SL plus 10.6.8 update, download your copy of Mavericks using your Apple ID.

I assume you did not copy the Mavericks installer out from your iMac...? That could save time re-downloading it for your MacBook...
 
H

hania1

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 15, 2014
6
0
Thank you very much guys for all your suggestions.

Eithanius said:
My bet is, you can use the same retail disk on both machines (albeit the legal crap that says one copy per machine but who cares when the target OS is Mavericks).
Click to expand...

This is exactly what I'm wondering about. If I installed Mavericks, does it mean that my previous OS is still there on my machine? Or is it that the new OS always replaces the old one? If the latter is the case, there should be no problem with the license, but I'm not really sure how these things work... technically.

Eithanius said:
I assume you did not copy the Mavericks installer out from your iMac...? That could save time re-downloading it for your MacBook...
Click to expand...

No, unfortunately, I didn't.
 
E

Eithanius

macrumors 68000
Nov 19, 2005
1,541
412
hania1 said:
This is exactly what I'm wondering about. If I installed Mavericks, does it mean that my previous OS is still there on my machine? Or is it that the new OS always replaces the old one? If the latter is the case, there should be no problem with the license, but I'm not really sure how these things work... technically.
Click to expand...

It always overwrites the old OS, unless of coz you are running dual partition of your HDD and use SL to update Mavericks onto a blank partition... That's what I do with my setup...
 
YanniDepp

YanniDepp

macrumors 6502a
Dec 10, 2008
555
132
Legally, no. Morally, it's a grey area. Technically, yes.

Since Lion, OS X has been sold through the App Store. The licensing for that is "buy once, install it on any Mac you own or control". (For personal use - there are bulk licensing deals for companies with hundreds of Macs).

Snow Leopard was sold on disc, on a "single license" or "family pack" basis. It's actually an identical disc, just with a green "Family Pack" sticker on the box. There's no activation or serial numbers, so you can go ahead.

Here's the difference between OS X and Windows. Microsoft make their money from selling Windows. They need people to actually pay for Windows, or they don't get any money. That's why they have serials and activation. Apple make their money from selling Macs, and they make a lot of money from every Mac sold. So Apple care (a lot) about people installing OS X on PCs and Hackintoshes. They really don't care about you using a Snow Leopard disc you've bought, on two Macs you've paid for, just because it's the only way you can upgrade to a newer OS that's free anyway.

Discussing piracy isn't allowed on the MacRumors forums. But I don't think the moderators will even care about us discussing this. It's that much of a non-issue.
 
jbarley

jbarley

macrumors 601
Jul 1, 2006
4,023
1,893
Vancouver Island
Eithanius said:
You missed my point... There is no Mac App Store from Leopard...
Click to expand...

Actually I didn't, but I could have been clearer.
She could download the installer using her account on her iMac and then create the usb boot pen drive from there, no need to get a friend with a Mac to do it for her.
 
H

hania1

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 15, 2014
6
0
YanniDepp said:
Discussing piracy isn't allowed on the MacRumors forums.
Click to expand...

Hey, many thanks for your long reply, but wait a minute, I didn't come here because I wanted to discuss piracy in any way! If I wanted to be a pirate, I would've done what I wanted to do without asking anyone if I could do it.

Here's the thing: The single-user license says that the OS can be used on one computer at one time. So, I believe, as apperently there's no Snow Leopard on my iMac now, I can still use my SL installation disc to install and use Snow Leopard on some other machine, like My Macbook? But please correct me if I'm wrong.

After all, people sometimes do sell their installations discs when they got a newer OS, or give them away to someone else, and I never heard of it being illegal (?)
 
YanniDepp

YanniDepp

macrumors 6502a
Dec 10, 2008
555
132
hania1 said:
Hey, many thanks for your long reply, but wait a minute, I didn't come here because I wanted to discuss piracy in any way!
Click to expand...
My point was that this isn't piracy. What you're doing is fine.

If you could ask Tim Cook, I'm 100% sure he wouldn't be bothered, and he'd thank you for having multiple Macs.

As for your question, it totally depends on the EULA. Not that it matters here. Upgrade one Mac to Snow Leopard, start the Mavericks installer, then upgrade the other Mac. That way, you're only running Snow Leopard on one Mac at a time anyway.

You couldn't do that with Windows, though. When you buy a Windows upgrade disc, you're essentially swapping the old Windows for the new one. So if you upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 8 with an upgrade disc, you've given up that Windows 7 license and can't put it on another PC. I don't know if they block the key though.

The liberal licensing of OS X, as long as you're running it on a Mac, means you should go right ahead and do this.
 
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