Installed Affinity photo and designes as admin on Mac but other users can not use affinity

[Suna]

Hello together,

I´m new to Mac and Affinity. I purchased Affinity Photos and Affinity Designer for Mac and installed them as admin. Now I can use them only as admin but not with another account on the same mac.

Could anyone help me to solve this problem?

Thanks!

Suna

[R C-R]

Where did you install them? If they are installed in the default location in the root level Applications folder then they should be available in every user account. If you are unsure which folder is the root Applications one, it is the same folder where Apple provided apps like Calculator, Calendar, Chess, & many others are installed.

Note that there may also be other Applications folders inside user home folders. By default, any app installed in them will be available only in that account.

[Suna]

Hello,

 

thanks for your answer. The application is avaiable in every user account but I am asked for a product key in every account, accept for the admin account, where I entered the product key.

Hope, that there is a solution.

[Suna]

I found a smilar post in the mean time, but deleating the licence file did not work for me.

Any other ideas?

 

[Dan C]

@Suna, welcome to the forums

Please see Walts post in the thread you have linked - 

I can confirm that licenses are written on a per-user basis, installing the app on an admin account will not provide a license file for other user accounts. I hope this clears things up.

[Suna]

Hi Dan,

thanks for your answer.

Does that mean, the other users can´t use Affinity?

Or can I just reenter the same product key in every account?

Thanks for your help!

 

Edited July 16, 2020 by Suna

[Dan C]

Affinity licenses are sold on a per-user basis - ie you, the user, purchases a license for yourself to use the app on as many computers that you own or personally control. 

Will you be the only person using this Mac? If so, please install the app for your user account.

If you're not the only user of the Mac, are you installing the app in an admin account so other people can use the software?

[Suna]

Hi,

so if I have an admin account and a further user account I can just reenter the same key?

Is it possible to install affinity in the admin account and let other people use it in their own accounts?

[Dan C]

3 minutes ago, Suna said:

Is it possible to install affinity in the admin account and let other people use it in their own accounts?

No, not only is this not possible it breaks the license agreement, as explained above this is a user license, so only the user who purchased the app can use it.

Providing your key, or an unlocked app to another user terminates this agreement.

Please take your time to read through our licencing information here - https://affinity.serif.com/licence/

[Suna]

Hi Dan,

thanks for the info.

Best,

Suna

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Dan C said:

No, not only is this not possible it breaks the license agreement, as explained above this is a user license, so only the user who purchased the app can use it.
{...}
Please take your time to read through our licencing information here - https://affinity.serif.com/licence/

In that licensing information, in the "Your Rights and Permitted Use" section there is this:

Quote

3.The licence granted to you is limited, non-transferable and non-exclusive. Except to the extent any rights cannot be excluded by law, you are permitted:

(i) if you are a private individual, to download, install, use and run for personal use, one (1) copy of the Serif Software directly on each computer running macOS (“Mac Computer”) that you personally own or control. Commercial use is permitted but only use by you and not by any other users of any Mac Computers that you own or control. For example, other members of your household that use your Mac Computers may make personal use of the Serif Software whereas, if anyone other than yourself needs to make commercial use of the Serif Software, the other user will need to make a separate purchase.v

So according to the underlined part, it would seem that if the software is not used commercially by anyone, then other household members explicitly  are permitted to use the software on any Mac computer that the purchaser owns or controls without breaking the license agreement. On those computers, they should be able to do while signed into their own user accounts. Otherwise, they would have to use the purchaser's user account, which seems like a very strange requirement considering that the license does permit them to use the software for their own personal use.

Regardless, it is not necessarily true that only the user who purchased the app can use it.

[Cecil]

How do you share your product key on MAS?  Apple allows five family sharing...I understand only one for commercial use Affinity software, is Affinity...Serif against Apple’s family sharing!

4 hours ago, Dan C said:

No, not only is this not possible it breaks the license agreement, as explained above this is a user license, so only the user who purchased the app can use it.

Providing your key, or an unlocked app to another user terminates this agreement.

Please take your time to read through our licencing information here - https://affinity.serif.com/licence/

 

[Dan C]

4 hours ago, Dan C said:

No, not only is this not possible it breaks the license agreement, as explained above this is a user license, so only the user who purchased the app can use it.

Providing your key, or an unlocked app to another user terminates this agreement.

Please take your time to read through our licencing information here - https://affinity.serif.com/licence/

My sincerest apologies - I need to clarify this statement as I'm referring to Commercial use of the application, and I see this was not clear initially.

28 minutes ago, R C-R said:

So according to the underlined part, it would seem that if the software is not used commercially by anyone, then other household members explicitly  are permitted to use the software on any Mac computer that the purchaser owns or controls without breaking the license agreement

That's correct, thanks R C-R. Again, apologies for this not being clear in my above post.

8 minutes ago, Cecil said:

Apple allows five family sharing...I understand only one for commercial use Affinity software, is Affinity...Serif against Apple’s family sharing!

We're not against Family Sharing and we do support this feature through the Mac app store - I hope my above comments can clear this up.

[Cecil]

4 minutes ago, Dan C said:

My sincerest apologies - I need to clarify this statement as I'm referring to Commercial use of the application, and I see this was not clear initially.

That's correct, thanks R C-R. Again, apologies for this not being clear in my above post.

We're not against Family Sharing and we do support this feature through the Mac app store - I hope my above comments can clear this up.

@Dan C it did Dan, my post was posted before your clarification.

[Suna]

Hi Dan,

I´m still not sure, if this licence model is, what I need and I have to clarify this with other people.

But thanks for your help anyway!

 

 

[R C-R]

@Dan C, there is one thing that as yet is still not clear (at least to me!) about the Affinity Store licenses:

If the purchaser owns or controls the computer(s) & thus can ensure that every user of said computer(s) will use the Affinity software only for personal use, then entering the product key in each of those user's user accounts on said computer(s) should be permitted according to the licensing terms, right?

If that is correct, then who should enter the product key in each of those user accounts? How could it be done in a way that compromises neither the privacy/security of any user account nor the need to keep the product key confidential, even from those other users? 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Suna said:

I´m still not sure, if this licence model is, what I need and I have to clarify this with other people.

It would be good to know if you are acting as a private individual, or as a member of a business or educational institution. And, similarly, the others who use the computer. The license terms are different for individual private use than for commercial or educational use.

[walt.farrell]

24 minutes ago, R C-R said:

If that is correct, then who should enter the product key in each of those user accounts? How could it be done in a way that compromises neither the privacy/security of any user account nor the need to keep the product key confidential, even from those other users? 

If you own the computer and are the administrator, is there really any privacy of the other accounts and their information from you? (The answer, as far as I know, is no. Everything is available to you unless it is encrypted with a key that you don't know.)

Alternatively, if the other users are your family members, perhaps it is safe to share the product key with them so they can use the application, as the license allows.

 

[R C-R]

20 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

If you own the computer and are the administrator, is there really any privacy of the other accounts and their information from you?

I don't know about Windows but on Macs running modern versions of the Mac OS, even admin users only have limited access to items in the home folders of other user accounts. There are provisions for users to grant other users access to specified folders, a per user 'public' folder that anyone can access, etc.; but admin accounts do not have complete access to other accounts, if that is what you mean.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

I don't know about Windows but on Macs running modern versions of the Mac OS, even admin users only have limited access to items in the home folders of other user accounts. There are provisions for users to grant other users access to specified folders, a per user 'public' folder that anyone can access, etc.; but admin accounts do not have complete access to other accounts, if that is what you mean.

That is what I meant. If MacOS has locked down superusers that's interesting. Especially since generally superusers can set all the security permissions

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

That is what I meant. If MacOS has locked down superusers that's interesting. Especially since generally superusers can set all the security permissions

In current & recent macOS versions, the "root" superuser is disabled by default. An admin user can enable it & then log out of their admin account & into the root account, but what I am asking is how Serif suggests entering the product key in non-purchaser user accounts without compromising any user's privacy.