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General discussion

How many computers can I use Lion on? Do I need to use the

Aug 12, 2011 6:23PM PDT

Hello,My house has exactly 5 Mac's in it and I wish to upgrade all of these to Lion. In the past whenever I did an OS update I purchased the family pack instead of the standard edition which covered all 5 of the Mac's we own.Am I correct that now the 10.7 Lion edition in the Mac App Store for $29 covers 5 computers or is there a separate family pack available? Is there now just one version which covers 5 computers?The other question is how to go about the install. Two of the computers are in my home office but the other two belong to our children and when it comes to using the Mac App Store on all of those computers they are login into my Apple ID (me.com).The 5th computer is my wife's though and that computer is using her Apple (me.com) ID since she makes her own purchases from the Mac App Store, iTunes, and has her own me.com email on it so her computer is the one that is unique.Will the above present any problems? Will I be able to buy Lion and install it on the 4 computers on my ID and then have her buy her own copy for her computer or is there a way that I can get one version that goes on all 5 computers even though her computer is using a different ID for the Mac App Store?Thank you for your help.

Discussion is locked

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No
Aug 13, 2011 12:22AM PDT

No, each computer will need to have it's own copy of the software at $30 a pop. So you'll need a separate iTunes account for each one I would imagine. It may be worth calling Apple to find out the specifics. They may well allow you to pay $30 and install it on all 5 systems, but probably not.

What you could do is just burn a copy of the install DVD once you install it on one, then you just have to pay for it on the others, you don't have to actually download it 5 times. There are guides on how to do this all over the place if you do a quick search.

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Kind of a grey(ish) area here.
Aug 13, 2011 12:50AM PDT

When you download Lion, it puts the installer in the Applications folder on your Mac.
After it installs, it deletes the installer. Best to make a copy first.

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for a bootable DVD
Aug 14, 2011 6:08AM PDT
I would recommend Lion Disk Maker 1.3. Tried it and it worked.
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Why
Aug 14, 2011 8:41AM PDT

Why, when all you really need to do is just burn the image with Disk Utility? There's dozens, if not hundreds, of guides on how to do it, and really rather simple. No point in downloading a separate app that's a one off. How many times are you really going to use the app to make a copy of the Lion install DVD after all? Once... Maybe twice? Save some disk space and just use Disk Utility.

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it's small and free
Aug 14, 2011 9:29AM PDT

You just hit "burn" and it goes. Any other questions?