Auto-Registration!

[Roger]

How did Mellel do that? My hard drive crashed while on a trip to Mexico. Apple service in Mexico changed the HD for a new one. They said my old HD was completely unreadable. Good service under original warranty. So I'm reinstalling all my downloadable software on a clean OS install on a new HD. I installed Mellel and went to register it, and it was already registered with my name and registration code.

RapidWeaver did the same thing. But how do these apps know since this is a brand new HD with a clean install of the OS? Do they read the computer's Hardware UUID and then read my User ID, and if they both match, it does an automatic registration? Amazing and very nice! (however they do it).

[Ori Redler]

How did Mellel do that? My hard drive crashed while on a trip to Mexico. Apple service in Mexico changed the HD for a new one. They said my old HD was completely unreadable. Good service under original warranty. So I'm reinstalling all my downloadable software on a clean OS install on a new HD. I installed Mellel and went to register it, and it was already registered with my name and registration code.

RapidWeaver did the same thing. But how do these apps know since this is a brand new HD with a clean install of the OS? Do they read the computer's Hardware UUID and then read my User ID, and if they both match, it does an automatic registration? Amazing and very nice! (however they do it).

Hmm... I wonder myself how Mellel does this If your Mellel preferences were moved to the new machine, it's very likely that the info was preserved.

[Roger]

I don't see how the preferences could have been moved. NOTHING was able to be retrieved from the old HD. I installed Mellel on a new HD with nothing but the OS X 10.6.0 that the Apple service (in Mexico) installed. They did not even put iLife on the HD, saying I had to do that myself.

I do sync Preferences using me.com, but I thought that was only for system preferences.

Hmmm... I just checked my preference files (plist), and there are many preference files for programs that I have NOT yet reinstalled on this computer. So it must be because I sync'ed my preferences through me.com that Mellel's plist was transferred to this computer. What a nice surprise!

[Roger]

So, for programs that use a *proper* installation procedure (drag app file to the app folder), the plist files are preserved. But they will most likely be overwritten by applications that use an installation package. So, I will copy my plist files for those apps and the copy them back after the installation. Hopefully that will preserve my registrations codes (serial numbers, activation files, etc.) The reason I'm interested is that I'm in Mexico for 2 more weeks, and all my installation DVDs are back home, along with the serial numbers. If anyone is interested, I'll report back my findings.