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My wife and I each have a Mac, and we each have our own Apple ID. In the past for OS upgrades I could pay one price for a family pack and upgrade both. How do I upgrade both of us to Lion without having to buy the upgrade twice, once from each Apple ID?
MacBook Pro 17" i7 8GB, Mac OS X (10.6.6), Time Capsule; Airport Express; 3gen iPod Nano; 32GB iPhone 3GS;
Good question. I'm wondering the same thing. This is one of many issues where Apple has become less friendly/a worse deal in the past year.
Carolyn, I don't see that any of those links answer the question.
Agreed: sorry, Carolyn, but how does any of that relate to my question?
I might have a solution: if I create myself an admin account on my wife's Mac, I should be able to use my Apple ID from that account and do the Lion upgrade for her machine.
In truth? It's only thirty dollars, but I'd just as soon work this out.
In my household we have three MacBook Pros and a MacBook for laptops and two MacMinis for home theater PCs. The family packs were of particular interest.
It's my understanding that once you pay for a single copy of Lion, every computer you have that's authorized under your Apple ID can download it, no limit on number. My concern was getting my wife's computer authorized under my Apple ID since we have different ones. I don't know why I didn't think of the multiple user account idea sooner.
If you have an account on each of your machines you should be good to go with the single purchase.
To be clear, I have an account on my MacBook Pro and the Mac Minis, not any of the other ones. I could add an account just for this, but think Apple could give us a better option than that.
I agree this is a problem. My wife and I have separate Apple IDs so I have not used the Mac app store since I would have to either create a separate account on her machine solely for sharing a few pieces of software or buy two copies. I have bought the family pack on OS upgrades before but now that's not an option. Apple needs to do better.
Her comments often come out of left field and I wonder what they actually have to do with people's questions!
I think that you guys are misunderstanding and mixing two different requirements regarding the MAS and the iTunes Store.
Regarding the iTunes Store, you can authorize a total of five Macs or PCs at the same time to use your purchased iTunes media; music, videos and audiobooks.
The software from the MAS can be installed on every Mac that you own or have in your control, which may include Macs issued to you and immediate family members by their place of employment or an educational institution. You do not need an account on every one of the Macs to install the software that you purchase. You only need to sign into your MAS account at the moment of installation of the software on that Mac. You will also need to sign into your account to execute a software update for the software that you installed on that Mac.
Don't think I misunderstood anything. My wife's computer's iTunes is authorized under her Apple ID, not mine. If I buy Lion under my Apple ID, her iTunes has no access to it. I would have to make a new account so I could have a new installation of iTunes that is authorized under my Apple ID. Is there a better idea?
Replace iTunes with App Store in the above, the point remains the same.
And, further...even if I could somehow install Lion from her account using my Apple ID, that means she can't get automatic updates to the OS from then on? I'd have to log into her machine every time?
Not good.
And, further...even if I could somehow install Lion from her account
using my Apple ID, that means she can't get automatic updates to the OS
from then on? I'd have to log into her machine every time?
I have explained to you that you could install Lion that you have purchased on her Mac. I explained that to do so you only needed to sign into your MAS account in the MAS app on her Mac. I also explained that to update Lion on her Mac would require that you sign into your account in the MAS app on her Mac again.
You write "every time" like it would almost be a weekly event. Mac OS X Snow Leopard has had 7 updates so far, and there will likely be one more. Leopard before it had 8 updates as well. Tiger had 11. I cannot see how taking a minute to open your account in the MAS app on your wife's Mac to allow her Mac's OS to be updated, perhaps 8 to 11 times over the life of a operating system, is this great hardship or inconvenience.
Lion family pack with multiple Apple IDs?
