I bought a new M4 Mac Studio and migrated my account (and apps) from the older Mac Studio. PL8 was one of the apps migrated. It has ben about a month since migration and I just got an error message saying that PL8 could not contact the authorization server. You can’t get farther than that - the app beachballs and has to be force quit. I contacted support and they responded quickly that the issue was using the Apple Migration assistant for PL8 and told me how to delete the PL8 key and re-authorize, which worked fine. The migrated PL8 was working fine up until the authorization error. Support said the issue was caused by Migration. So, if you get a new Mac and want to run PL8 on the new Mac don’t use the Migration Assistant - remove the copy from the old system and install (and authorize) on the new system. Just make sure you have some authorizations left. (Support was very helpful and responded quickly.)
Migrating to new Mac hardware has (so far) never been a problem here.
PhotoLab and other DxO apps have simply asked to activate the new installation and after that, the apps worked as expected.
My experience is relatively old though and yours indicates that activating the apps on the new Mac did not work properly. I’d not attribute this issue to Migration Assistant but to DxO not having adapted their own new authorisation process to macOS’s tighter security requirements yet.
The lesson to be learnt here is to delete the .key file(s) so that the apps can be activated properly - with a working internet connection and spare activations!
Caution: Not using the Migration Assistant can cause several other issues with macOS apps and security management, e.g. for secure notes and Mail.app, in which I had to manually rebuild the ±40 smart mailboxes that were lost when I “clean installed” a new Mac without Migration Assistant. Just copying a few files doesn’t necessarily work any more with macOS. Most things are packed into databases now - and a few things can’t / don’t use iCloud.
I wasn’t suggesting that Migration Assistant not be used - just handle PL8 separately. Support did say that MA isn’t always a problem. I might have been unlucky or there is something about the Mac Studio (and my hardware configuration) that caused issues. (I have also seen this issue for my iPhone - I had a couple of financial apps fail after migration to the new iPhone16 from my 14.).
No problem, I did understand that you reported DxO’s feedback.
The issue with MA and “handling things separately” is, that it’s difficult or even impossible to exclude items with such granularity, specially if one doesn’t know in advance what to exclude. Moving the old license files out of the way can easily be done after the migration - and for all user accounts if one uses more than one, e.g. for testing.
I’ve used Carbon Copy Cloner (and its granularity) for many years, mostly to create bootable backups and to prepare a volume for a macOS update. From macOS 11 on, security has changed and things got more complicated. When I test upgrades, I first clone the current prod. volume to a new volume (on the same Mac) and then upgrade the new volume to e.g. Sequoia. Staying on the same hardware does not require new activations though. I keep my photo archive on a separate volume, which does not need to be cloned or duplicated. Saves a lot of drive space for tests like this.
Judging from what Support said I suppose the best approach is to just use MA and see if there are any issues. If there is, then Support will tell you what to do. DxO Pure Raw 5 apparently survived the migration - at least it hasn’t flashed an error message yet. I asked about putting a warning in the Help/FAQ documents and they said the solution they gave me wasn’t always the correct approach - so contacting support was the way to go.
If the activation key is somewhere pc/mac based, and that is the situation, then how can another party as DxO change that key???
George
The activation/key files are written by the respective DxO apps and on Mac, they are located here:
/Users/ … /Library/Application Support/DxO/Licenses/
Move the respective *.key file up one step and launch the app, it should now ask to enter the license.
If there are several user accounts, this needs to be repeated for each account.
Yes, that is what I was told by Support. It just forces the app to open the authorization dialog again - so the app still has to be authorized to use.
PL allows 3 installations on 3 different pc’s. In the registration key some info of the used pc must be included. In that case the migration to another pc would make the registration key voided. And he must registrate it again, be it directly or after a month. Leaves me with the question is it a new registration or a re-registration. Or how many registrations of the 3 he has left.
George
I assumed I had one left but specifically asked Support to reset it if I didn’t. Support didn’t comment and the authorization worked, so at least one install was available. I think three installs will be plenty for most users which likely install only on one system. I happen to have installs on two systems so that can be limiting.
First I think it’s not possible to migrate to another pc without re-installing/re-activation. In the registration key there is a link to your hardware, and that is changing.
If you have PL installed on 2 pc’s and re-installed one installation you have nothing left.
George
Yes, I think that that’s it. A while ago, the DxO shop account also listed the number of activations used/total, but that info vanished a short time afterwards. Still, a new computer means a new activation.
The license files used to be clear text and they contained a signature that linked the license to the hardware. Copying license files to other volumes of a computer always worked, but copying license files to a different computer never let apps work without additional authorisation.
License files of current DxO apps aren’t clear text any more, but they still won’t work on a new computer, at least that is what I see on my Macs.
Now, if we can run an app on a new computer and without having to enter the license key, then this must mean that the app is not properly checking the license (against whatever hardware info is used) when the app is started. That would, imo, be a design/programming flaw and as a PO, I’d want to have it fixed or advertised as an extra grace period 