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What exactly do you object to?
Upgrading Macs to new system software?
Not giving all your employees personal credit cards so they go on the App Store?
Having between 2 and 19 Macs in an office but no more?
Not wanting to throw away 15 copies of Lion?
Trying to make sure all your software is legal?
Criticising Apple?
Or maybe the lack of detail is because you're just trolling for this reply.
You can install on up to five Macs with a single AppleID. We have three Macs and two accounts. One of us bought Lion, signed in on all the machines and downloaded and installed it. This is the case with any app purchased through the App Store.
So if you have an AppleID for your business, tied to a business card, then you only need to sign in with that ID on all your machines and you can upgrade them all.
Sorry, but you're not correctly licensed to use Lion. According to Apple's EULA, you're effectively pirating it.
The pertinent bit:
(i) to download, install, use and run for personal, non-commercial use, one (1) copy of the Apple Software directly on each Apple-branded computer running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server (“Mac Computer”) that you own or control;
(ii) If you are a commercial enterprise or educational institution, to download, install, use and run one

(1) copy of the Apple Software for use either: (a) by a single individual on each of the Mac Computer (s) that you own or control, or (b) by multiple individuals on a single shared Mac Computer that you own or control. For example, a single employee may use the Apple Software on both the employee’s desktop Mac Computer and laptop Mac Computer, or multiple students may serially use the Apple Software on a single Mac Computer located at a resource center or library....
If you're likely to be audited for your software licenses, it would be a good idea to fix this before they come.
Edited 2011-07-24 12:17 UTC




Member since:
2005-07-07
This is an absolute shambles for small businesses, or any business with only a small subset of Macs.
We have 5 Macs running Snow Leopard here. What are we supposed to do if we want 5 licenses? Buy 20 licenses and discard 15 of them?
* The credit card company won't accept 5 people with individual Apple IDs attached to one credit card for fraud reasons. The Mac App Store license doesn't cover 1 purchase being used by 5 people concurrently on 5 different machines.
* I could order using my personal credit card and claim the money back. Then, who owns the license - me or my employer? What about the other software we may want in future? Employees buying their own work software is nonsense, so let's discard that option.
The situation is a mess, and how predictable the new Apple should ignore a vast swathe of its traditional customers. It's a particular insult to the small creative businesses that should be the lifeblood of Apple. The ones running Adobe products that Apple hates; the ones who invested in X-Serves that Apple canned; or the ones running FCP that Apple crippled. It's just another piece of evidence of Apple's blinkered consumer vision.
My bet is that Apple have received so many phone calls today (not to mention its forgotten-about resellers) that they'll back-track and lower the volume licensing to 5 or 10 copies.
If not... then they really don't give a crap.
Chris
Edited 2011-07-21 12:07 UTC