I have purchased some apps from the Mac App store and installed them on my personal computer. I would like to install them on a shared work computer. Unfortunately, I do not have admin access to the work computer, so I cannot do this the usual way.
I have copied the apps from my home computer to the ~/Applications
directory of the work computer, and attempted to run them, with mixed success:
- Some apps, when you run them for the first time, open a dialog box that says "Sign in to use this application on this computer" and prompt you for your Apple ID and password, after which they work fine. (Example: DayOne, and most free apps)
- Most apps will still show you this dialog box, but for some reason will not work, even after you type in your ID and password. (Example: BBEdit, Soulver, Twitterrific)
The question(s):
- Is there something I can do to make the app run?
- If not, what is it that is causing the app to refuse to launch?
Edit: When the app fails, it gives a console message "Exited with exit code: 173". If I understand correctly, this means that the app is not valid (which is to be expected when I copy it from one computer to another). However, the process by which the App Store validates the app, appears to not work when the app is not in the proper location. Furthermore, it seems likely that apps that do work, such as DayOne or the free apps, work only because they are not checking that the app has been validly purchased and would in fact work on any computer without any kind of validation.
The question remains, is there a workaround?
Edit again: I have no problem copying an app into ~/Applications
on my home computer, even for a different user. Because investigating (not to mention solving) this problem requires so much hassle (including two computers or at least a virtual machine), I am offering a bounty.
/Applications
and therefore requires an admin password. – Nathan Grigg Oct 5 '11 at 20:16