Second Hand Macbook Air and OSX Lion licenses

It gets a little complicated. You see, he purchased a license for all his Macs, when he upgraded to Lion. If he has another Mac computer, it may not be reasonable at all to "transfer" the license at all. I think that the seller would have to make an inquiry as to release it, if it is possible at all. So in that sense, you may be right that some formal agreement may have to be in place, if it possible at all. Nonetheless, the only people who can really sort this out is Apple. I presume that the unit in question did not come with Lion, and since you say it is still under warranty for almost a year, the "warranty" must be AppleCare. (for if it wasn't AppleCare, that would mean the computer is only 3 mos old, and comes with Lion anyway) I would contact Applecare and see if they can offer some insight. Make the contact under the premise that you are wanting to transfer the AppleCare ownership.

If you don't get a satisfactory answer abou the Lion transfer, I would reinstall the OS that the MBA originally shipped with, and buy the upgrade to Lion. $29.00 will buy the upgrade for yourself, and your Mac Mini, and you won't have any hassle with ownership interests. It will be all yours. I understand you are in Italy, so $29.00 may be a meaningless figure I have mentioned, but regardless, the cost in my opinion is rather nominal under the circumstances.

Aleponzo,

That changes things considerably. If the MBA came with Lion, then the license for the OS that came with computer is now yours also. As well, you should be able to re-install iLife should you start fresh with a reformat and reinstall of OS X.

You may want to contact Apple Tech support to make sure that if you do a complete recovery, using your Apple ID, that there won't be any problems or conflicts.

Here is the Apple Document that describes the reinstallation of Lion, on those machines which came with Lion originally. Also included is instructions on how to re-install iLife from the App Store.

Hi aleponzo,

There isn't unfortunately. This is a user-to-user discussion board and not a formal channel for arranging service, discussing policy, etc. If you require Apple's direct involvement you'll need to contact them directly via telephone, email, etc.

I'm sure there is, but you asked (and I quote):

aleponzo wrote:

Is there anyone from Apple

Not, is there anyone else on here. I was just trying to set expectations properly for you. You indicated no luck with Apple Support, what exactly did you do? I recently sold my 13" i5 MBA and with it my licenses. The new owner ran into the same issue that you did, he contacted App Store support (via email) and within 48 hours received detailed steps on how to resolve the issue. I never followed up with him further but he did acknowledge the issue was resolved with the assistance of the App Store support group.

I had the same problem here with a second hand MBA. Did a fresh install of Lion and was unable to "accept" the iLife applications. Additonally, you are completly unable to "purchase" them as well. I contacted support where they verified that I was the "registered" owner but I was still unable to complete the downloads. Apple had no real answer but speculated that the previous owner had never completed the install process of the iLife suite and that was causing the problem. Apples first soloution was for me to use the original owners itunes login info, login as them, and download the suite. I told them that was not acceptable as I would not be authorized for future updates according to the dialog box. They ended up sending me a iLife on disk which I was able to install easily.

I can report the same problem with the new (customer return) discounted macbook air. No luck with contacting any support in Finland. I will be traveling soon and will try from Poland. Fingers crossed that sth can be done.

I am haing the same issue as of tonight. Can you tell me what it is you did to finally get your iphoto, imovie, garageband, ilife,etc... ?

Thank you so much for any info anyone can give me! 🙂