Opps! Um…. GOOD NEWS!

Ok this is more than a bit unusual. According to the support documentation at Apple, the latest version of iWork ‘09 does not come with any serial numbers when purchased in store.

Hmmm… Why would Apple do this?

The obvious answer is to simply reduce labor costs by avoiding the printing distribution of unique license keys/codes with each Box or CD/DVD. These have historically been done as a separate card or a sticker that a worker would affix to the purchased material in some way.

BUT… Could it be that their license paradigm has caught up with them?

Here is the Apple Support Page: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3396

Apple has historically offered their software product in two flavors – ’single’ purchase and ‘family’ pack (ok there is a third – free/bundle with system purchase). Both of which required a license string/key to register and install. These systems have been in place for sometime and the system fundamentally works – seamlessly. With access to the Internet becoming more pervasive than ever, registering software should be a breeze for Apple.

There is skepticism that there is a desire to allow the customer base to copy their product in order to encourage upgrades to their pending online service iWork.com. This is akin to loosing revenue to gain bragging rights. This approach works if your pockets are deep enough, and you are looking to kill your competition (e.g. Microsoft, Google, Sun, etc.) – both of which Apple has plenty of, and a passion to do. While this seems like a long shot, we see it as an unlikely reason by Apple. It just does not make sense to cripple one revenue stream for another that has yet to emerge or prove to be a viable model. Hello common sense.

One interesting hypothesis that was floated was that this some some effort by Apple to enhance the “convenience for the end-user” and this “outweighs concerns about software piracy at this time”. While this ‘feel good’/’sensitive’ approach sounds nice, it is 100% Pure Business Rubbish! Apple is in business to make money also.

Gut-Check
Apple still needs to cover their investment to develop, market, produce, deliver and support these tools. Never forget that Microsoft is also in control over their Operating System and the Office tools that run on it (e.g. excel, word, powerpoint, etc.) – do you think for one second that Microsoft would ‘give’ something that valuable away, or tolerate mass piracy of their tools. HECK NO!

Something, or someone, has failed in their processes with that product not having a license string/key properly distributed with the physical product.
Best Guess: someone screwed-up when the software went to a ‘gold’ release. Apple probably did not realize it until 1-Million+ CDs were made and in the stores with a product/show announcement too close to do anything about it.

What if Ntiro-LM Hosted Licensing were used?
If Nitro-LM was used for the registration and licensing, a failed manual licensing process would not have even occurred. Nitro-LM licenses for a product like iWork could have been easily defined once, and the entire product could have been activated on-the-fly to a customers already registered account upon a successful credit card transaction on-line. It really could have been that simple.

For added security, key areas of the software could have been encrypted, preventing the software from simply being redistributed, the decryption keys would be delivered with the license over the Internet. This approach gives customers the ability to maintain control, understand who is using their software, limit and monitor usage over multiple machines, and never be put in a position of writing a support page about human error.