[moki]

I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this -- I've been playing around with Pages from the iWork package today -- great program, very nice little word processor and light duty page layout program.

However, I'm having an issue. When I first ran it, it asked for my serial number, which I dutifully entered, and then asked me if I wanted to register it with Apple. I said "Sure, go ahead" -- and happily used the application for a while.

However every time I launch it, it is asking me to enter the serial number -- it's as if it doesn't "take" -- has anyone else encountered this?

This is on a dual 2ghz G5 running 10.3.7 (soon to be 10.3.8). I do not have FileVault turned on.

[juanvaldes]

first I've heard of it.

Should we even bother with level 1 tech support here moki?

Completely delete iWork and all pref files and try again. Maybe the pref file didn't write properly.

[torifile]

I think it's karma for using a REAL piracy prevention scheme on your programs.

[OptimusG4]

Try deleting /Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork.plist and relaunch either app. (not your personal library, the main one).

[MacGorilla]

I manually added the serial number to that plist file and that solved the problem.

[moki]

Originally posted by MacGorilla:
I manually added the serial number to that plist file and that solved the problem.

thank you sir -- will give that a shot. Weird stuff.

[juanvaldes]

Originally posted by torifile:
I think it's karma for using a REAL piracy prevention scheme on your programs.

totally.

On the plus side it only took a week and shear luck that I was able to get a license for EV:Nova.

[Big Mac]

I hope Apple doesn't get heavily into the practice of online serial number checks. The company is flying high and obviously doesn't need to hassle customers in the hopes of procuring extra bucks from a small percentage of us. It makes sense for a small company like Ambrosia to be concerned about piracy. Apple doesn't need to start getting heavy-handed.

[moki]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
I hope Apple doesn't get heavily into the practice of online serial number checks. The company is flying high and obviously doesn't need to hassle customers in the hopes of procuring extra bucks from a small percentage of us. It makes sense for a small company like Ambrosia to be concerned about piracy. Apple doesn't need to start getting heavy-handed.

Well, I'll tell you one thing that is universal -- software developers, myself included, HATE having to write serial number schemes/piracy protection. It just sucks. It is not enjoyable to do, and it takes away from your time working on the actual product.

It's a shame that it's a necessity, but unfortunately it is.

[moki]

Well, I found a solution. Looks like a bug in the iWorks package... it tries to write a preference file to:

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork.plist

If it doesn't have permission to write, it writes the files to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork.plist

...but when it's starting up, it only looks in /Library/Preferences for the file. The solution for Apple would be to either:

a) Look in both places for license information
b) Request admin privileges to write to /Library/Preferences/ if they are needed

All I did was copy com.apple.iWork.plist from ~/Library/Preferences/ to /Library/Preferences/ and it works fine now.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by moki:
Well, I found a solution. Looks like a bug in the iWorks package... it tries to write a preference file to:

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork.plist

If it doesn't have permission to write, it writes the files to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork.plist

...but when it's starting up, it only looks in /Library/Preferences for the file. The solution for Apple would be to either:

a) Look in both places for license information
b) Request admin privileges to write to /Library/Preferences/ if they are needed

All I did was copy com.apple.iWork.plist from ~/Library/Preferences/ to /Library/Preferences/ and it works fine now.

Yep, seen the same thing. Coworker who had like 5 accounts on his machine, a few without admin permissions, encountered the same issue. I told him he was schizo, they were 5 permutations on his own name and he logged in to different ones at different times!

[MacGorilla]

Alot easier than manually editing the plist file.

[mrgaskell]

I am having trouble with an upgrade from FCE 2 to FCE HD. It will not take my original serial number. Anyone have issues or a work around for that too?

[juanvaldes]

sounds like a simple 'oops' bug. I trust you reported it?

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by juanvaldes:
sounds like a simple 'oops' bug. I trust you reported it?

The sort of bug you'd have expected any competent QA team to find.

[theolein]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
The sort of bug you'd have expected any competent QA team to find.

A bug like this on most machines would have been found by the QA team, I think. The fact that Pages can't write to /Library is perhaps the problem. Stuff like this should be handled by an installer which does have sufficient permission, or perhaps they screwed up nicely and the app only checks the ~/Library if the /Library plist is not there.

Strange though. Don't tell me Apple's dev team runs as root the whole time.

[beverson]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
I hope Apple doesn't get heavily into the practice of online serial number checks. The company is flying high and obviously doesn't need to hassle customers in the hopes of procuring extra bucks from a small percentage of us. It makes sense for a small company like Ambrosia to be concerned about piracy. Apple doesn't need to start getting heavy-handed.

I might be wrong, but I don't think iWork actually does an online serial number check/registration/activation. If they did, there probably wouldn't be a "Register Later" button. I think it just needed the serial number to start up, and then it wanted you to send personal info to Apple immediately afterwards. Did make me sit up and take notice, but I'm convinced it didn't call home or anything.

That being said, I don't have any hard evidence to back this up -- I didn't try to click "Register Later" nor did I try and capture the packets that were sent to Apple and see what was in them. These are just educated guesses.

[maxintosh]

After a few times, "Register Later" turns into "Never Register"

[ralmqvist]

Here is Apples take on it:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300715

"To avoid being asked to register again if you switch user accounts, be sure to install and register iWork using an admin user account instead of a standard user (non-admin user) account. You'll only be asked to register once if you register from an admin user account."

[moki]

Originally posted by ralmqvist:
Here is Apples take on it:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300715

"To avoid being asked to register again if you switch user accounts, be sure to install and register iWork using an admin user account instead of a standard user (non-admin user) account. You'll only be asked to register once if you register from an admin user account."

Unfortunately, there is still a bug. The account that I used to register it *is* an admin account. It still did not have explicit write permission to /Library/Preferences -- when I copied the plist file there, the Finder asked for permission via the security framework. Pages never does this; it looks like it assumes it has write permission to /Library/Preferences -- which may or may not be correct.