Nightmare with Mavericks OS and iWork and iLife apps

TJ0214
New Contributor

Has anyone been able to solve this? We create a Thick image from a brand new machine that just has the an admin account and some other settings. We don't put any app store information in. When we apply this image to a machine it gives us all types of issues with the iLife and iWork apps. The error we get is this Application belongs to another Apple Account. What I have heard is Apple assigns these apps using the serial # of the machine it came off of? Has anyone been able to get this to work? What is the work around? I have tons of users with a new Mavericks image on their machines but unable to update these apps. Deleted receipt file, tried everything.

9 REPLIES 9

damienbarrett
Valued Contributor

What we've been doing is deploying our old VLA copy of iLife '11 to our Mavericks machines. End-users can then decide whether they want to install the new iLife '13 apps with their own AppleID.

Are you sure that when you're building your "thick" image (also called a monolithic image), you're not installing these iLife and iWork '13 apps with an AppleID? Please check again because I haven't seen any evidence of these apps being tied a machine's serial number. If you have a new-enough Mac, they'll be included on Apple's factory image and will be available for "adoption" to an AppleID. The same is true if iLife '11 apps are installed; the MAS will make the newer versions available for adoption/download.

bentoms
Release Candidate Programs Tester

Admin account + what settings?

Why not move to AutoDMG to create the base OS & then deploy the admin account & settings via imaging, MCX or profiles.

TJ0214
New Contributor

What is AutoDMG or should I look it up? Yes positive we are not touching the Apple store at all. We even deleted the MAS receipt off the new image and then tried. No luck. These are some of our older Macs that we have had to reimage because of issues that we staged with Mavericks.

alexjdale
Valued Contributor III

We also are still deploying iLife '11 for "bare metal" imaged systems. For new systems, we don't do bare metal, we apply apps on top of the shipped OS so the user gets the new iLife/iWork.

It's hugely annoying that there is no way for *us* to deploy it.

bentoms
Release Candidate Programs Tester

https://github.com/MagerValp/AutoDMG

Just drag in a "Install Mavericks.app" & click build. Base OS.dmg done.

We also deploy iLife via the MAS using our companies AppleID.

CasperSally
Valued Contributor II

We do a base image of Mavericks (built with casper imaging) with packages for each of the ilife and iwork apps. We got those apps from a mavericks machine that had the old suites installed and downloaded the new versions via generic Apple ID. Captured the new apps by dragging them to Composer without issue. We block app store for our students so them updating, etc isn't an issue here.

babaganouj
New Contributor II

CasperSally

Had used similar steps to make iLife and iWork packages but I had read some JAMF nation posts at the time saying to make fake receipts in the _MASReceipt folder which seems to be the only change I made.

mkdir -m 755 /Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/_MASReceipt

touch /Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/_MASReceipt/receipt

Original Post
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=8818

CasperSally
Valued Contributor II

Yea I read those too. I think that's helpful if you want users to not be prompted with company apple ID... but since we block app store it's a non issue.

tkimpton
Valued Contributor II