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Mac OS X 10.7 institutional licensing

zorinlynx

zorinlynx

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 31, 2007
8,391
18,857
Florida, USA
I contacted our Apple sales rep, asking him how licensing will be done for Mac OS X 10.7 in institutional environment, especially since Apple IDs are only issued to individuals, not companies. I also inquired about the availability of physical install media and stand-alone licenses that don't depend on a download.

He responded today basically saying that he has no idea and will get back to me.

Apple, you are failing hard. Keeping us all in the dark about BASIC LICENSING PROCEDURES like this is not good for business.

So there ya go, not even Apple seems to know what they're doing when it comes to Lion. I think this is going to be the most botched OS release ever in Apple's history.
 
I apologize for this thread. You're right, he's probably going to get back to me. I'm just a bit pissed at Apple lately for having such a "fog of war" about how things are going to work and be distributed.

I wish they had a public roadmap of what they're up to, so that we could make planning decisions based on that. Other companies do, why not Apple?
 
zorinlynx said:
I apologize for this thread. You're right, he's probably going to get back to me. I'm just a bit pissed at Apple lately for having such a "fog of war" about how things are going to work and be distributed.

I wish they had a public roadmap of what they're up to, so that we could make planning decisions based on that. Other companies do, why not Apple?
Click to expand...

No need. Steve Jobs knows what you want, need and feel.
 
zorinlynx said:
I apologize for this thread. You're right, he's probably going to get back to me. I'm just a bit pissed at Apple lately for having such a "fog of war" about how things are going to work and be distributed.

I wish they had a public roadmap of what they're up to, so that we could make planning decisions based on that. Other companies do, why not Apple?
Click to expand...

So you are in enterprise and would upgrade all your computers to .0 version of new software?

Why don't you wait until official release, and test? Is testing against your company policy? :rolleyes:
 
So because Apple hasn't personally informed you of every detail of the release PRIOR TO the release, it's going to be the most botched OS ever, and the whole thing will automatically be awful. That makes sense. Seriously, I'm sure Apple appreciates your excitement about their software and desire to get an early jump on its release, but when you're talking about a business, it's often a good idea to wait a bit anyway just to make sure all the new software is compatible and there aren't game-changing bugs out of the gate.
 
Consultant said:
So you are in enterprise and would upgrade all your computers to .0 version of new software?

Why don't you wait until official release, and test? Is testing against your company policy? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Yes and no. That brings up another problem with Apple; once Lion is released you can't BUY systems with Snow Leopard preinstalled anymore. So for any new Macs we have no choice but to move to Lion.

We don't plan to upgrade to Lion right away; we just want to have some idea of how to buy it so we can start testing right away. Big difference. :)
 
zorinlynx said:
Yes and no. That brings up another problem with Apple; once Lion is released you can't BUY systems with Snow Leopard preinstalled anymore. So for any new Macs we have no choice but to move to Lion.

We don't plan to upgrade to Lion right away; we just want to have some idea of how to buy it so we can start testing right away. Big difference. :)
Click to expand...

You are 100% correct. Since it's looking like new MB Airs and Minis are on the horizon with the Lion release chances are they'll never be able to be rolled back to Snow Leopard. This a total headache for IT departments and can really force your hand in how quickly you end up having to adopt a new OS. Also the OPs questions are entirely legitimate as this App store distribution model is a total nightmare in the enterprise.

My hope is that Apple allows us to pull a DMG from the installer, distribute Lion ourselves and then true up our licensing after the fact. I also don't understand how Apple can feel that this information needs to be restricted. Typically enterprise licensing agreements are not the kind of thing that can just be dealt with once the product is released if you're in any kind of a situation where you may need to support the OS quickly.
 
Sadly, I think Lion marks the end of Mac OS--as a workstation OS, in an institutional/education/lab environment and in research. Jobs clearly has zero interest in the professional and/or workstation market; his vision for Apple is as an infotainment company. He wants to compete with and beat out the media cartels and simply collect kickbacks for every application/song/show/book sold.
 
If you are in IT, and are worried about this then you need to have your employer plunk down the $99 ('s worth of your local currency), and get you in the developer program so that you have early access to do your testing. That is both obvious and straightforward. $99 is a lot easier to justify than the $2000 or $3500 that the old dev programs cost, but even those were worth it to be prepared for deployment.

Being part of that program also gets you onto the NDA-friendly dev forums where people have already answered many of these sorts of questions with information provided in the labs at WWDC.

Note that none of that is appropriate to then share outside of those forums. But if you need it for planning, then get on it now.
 
^^^
Just having access to the beta builds to test them in an institutional environment does not address the fact that Lion is not being distributed on any sort of physical medium with a model that would be appropriate for a large institutional and/or lab setting.
 
Riemann Zeta said:
^^^
Just having access to the beta builds to test them in an institutional environment does not address the fact that Lion is not being distributed on any sort of physical medium with a model that would be appropriate for a large institutional and/or lab setting.
Click to expand...

Re-read my second paragraph. And slow down... Lion has not shipped. Don't jump to "the sky is falling" conclusions based on incomplete information.
 
zorinlynx said:
Yes and no. That brings up another problem with Apple; once Lion is released you can't BUY systems with Snow Leopard preinstalled anymore. So for any new Macs we have no choice but to move to Lion.

We don't plan to upgrade to Lion right away; we just want to have some idea of how to buy it so we can start testing right away. Big difference. :)
Click to expand...

You can easily boot as the super user and install snow leopard without any issues.

But what you are saying is effectively the same thing. If you now go and buy a windows machine, you'd get a windows 7 installation disk. How is this bit any different from the present-future mac situation?
 
Just create a new Apple ID account, and sign in with that ID onto all of your institution's computers, and buy and download Lion. Done. Pay once, download as many times as you like, as they've already said.
 
baryon said:
Just create a new Apple ID account, and sign in with that ID onto all of your institution's computers, and buy and download Lion. Done. Pay once, download as many times as you like, as they've already said.
Click to expand...

Isn't that for 5 users only?
 
baryon said:
Just create a new Apple ID account, and sign in with that ID onto all of your institution's computers, and buy and download Lion. Done. Pay once, download as many times as you like, as they've already said.
Click to expand...

We have over 5,000 Macs, there is absolutely no way this is an acceptable option. Further more until our licensing departments see the legal documents they're never going to believe that Apple is licensing an OS upgrade to our entire fleet of Macs for a grand total of $29.99.

larkost said:
If you are in IT, and are worried about this then you need to have your employer plunk down the $99 ('s worth of your local currency), and get you in the developer program so that you have early access to do your testing. That is both obvious and straightforward. $99 is a lot easier to justify than the $2000 or $3500 that the old dev programs cost, but even those were worth it to be prepared for deployment.

Being part of that program also gets you onto the NDA-friendly dev forums where people have already answered many of these sorts of questions with information provided in the labs at WWDC.

Note that none of that is appropriate to then share outside of those forums. But if you need it for planning, then get on it now.
Click to expand...
You're both right and wrong. Just because you can get to the DMG in the developer build of Lion does not mean that the TOS in the final build will allow altering the installer in such a way as legal. Being in the developer program allows you to test the OS but it does not offer any insight in any way when Apple completely changes distribution methods like they have in this case. Now I'm not assuming the sky is falling but it'd be nice to have a little more information on the matter. To this point neither the dev forums or our Apple enterprise representatives have been able to answer any questions on licensing.
 
Last edited:
Blipp said:
We have over 5,000 Macs, there is absolutely no way this is an acceptable option.
Click to expand...

There will probably be a better solution, but why would this be unacceptable? Before you had to manually install the new OS on each machine from a DVD, now you only need to sign in and click Download, and then it's the same install process as with a DVD... or am I missing something?
 
mrapplegate said:
How is Apple failing you? The rep does not have an answer and he is doing the needed research and getting back to you. Seems responsible to me.
Click to expand...
For a product that was announced how long ago? Apple should be able to answer simple questions like volume licensing agreements by now.

BLACKFRIDAY said:
You can easily boot as the super user and install snow leopard without any issues.

But what you are saying is effectively the same thing. If you now go and buy a windows machine, you'd get a windows 7 installation disk. How is this bit any different from the present-future mac situation?
Click to expand...

The difference is, if I go to Dell.com, I can order a computer with XP mode. I can still use a site license agreement from Microsoft to install Windows XP on all of my laptops. Even the ones that come with Windows 7 preinstalled.

With Apple, the day that Lion is released, you cannot install 10.6 (let alone 10.5) on any new hardware.

For the OP, if they want to purchase any new hardware in the fall, they need to know that 10.7 Lion is going to be compatible with their current infrastructure. This means asking questions now, and it's appalling that Apple doesn't know what's going on yet.
 
baryon said:
There will probably be a better solution, but why would this be unacceptable? Before you had to manually install the new OS on each machine from a DVD, now you only need to sign in and click Download, and then it's the same install process as with a DVD... or am I missing something?
Click to expand...

The single largest reason would be bandwidth. That solution requires us to download 20TB+ worth of data.
 
Blipp said:
The single largest reason would be bandwidth. That solution requires us to download 20TB+ worth of data.
Click to expand...

You just have to download it once. You can copy the installer to a flash drive and install it on as many Macs as you'd like. No need to access the dmg, even. The question remains how AppleIDs for institutions will work, though.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
For a product that was announced how long ago? Apple should be able to answer simple questions like volume licensing agreements by now.



The difference is, if I go to Dell.com, I can order a computer with XP mode. I can still use a site license agreement from Microsoft to install Windows XP on all of my laptops. Even the ones that come with Windows 7 preinstalled.

With Apple, the day that Lion is released, you cannot install 10.6 (let alone 10.5) on any new hardware.

For the OP, if they want to purchase any new hardware in the fall, they need to know that 10.7 Lion is going to be compatible with their current infrastructure. This means asking questions now, and it's appalling that Apple doesn't know what's going on yet.
Click to expand...

Why is that so?
 
BLACKFRIDAY said:
I have got Snow Leopard installed over Lion (I did that after DP3). :|
Click to expand...

That's because your Mac shipped with Leopard or Snow Leopard. Macs can run any release as long as it's the same or newer that it shipped with. So once Lion is released, Macs shipping in July will be limited to Lion and future releases.
 
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