Prevent iWork 2013 From Being Free

[Jacher]

My department has received a few of the new 2013 Retina MacBooks for deployment with our clients, and we've been dealing with a bit of the growing pains with the release of Mavericks and the Haswell OS build. The problem we have now is that the new hardware allows for iWork to be installed for free, and it notifies the user right away when they start the computer for the first time that they can install it. Problem is, the unit is owned by the institution the client works for, and so distribution of iWork needs to be controlled. We can't have half our clients be capable of using iWork, and the other half be incapable, and we can't have our clients making iWork be exclusively registered with their personal Apple ID.

So my question is, does anyone know how I can prevent iWorks suite from being seen as free on the app store? Or prevent the client from registering the iWorks suite to their Apple ID.

[spalmer]

Our Apple campus rep just gave a VPP presentation this week and showed us how to do this. Create a Configuration Profile on your JSS and go to the Restrictions section and click Configure. Under the Applications tab there is an item called "Allow App Store Adoption". This is checked by default. Uncheck this to prevent users from adopting apps that come free with your Mac.

I can't answer much else about it because I haven't had a chance to test it yet myself.

[Jacher]

I really hoped that this would work, but it appears to not do it. Pages, Keynote, and Numbers are still free on the app store.

[spalmer]

I just tried on a brand new MacBook Pro that came in last week. It does prevent iPhoto and iMovie from being accepted. It removes them from the Updates tab where it reminds you that you have a free copy waiting for you to Accept. You can still browse to them in the App Store and they still show "Accept" instead of "$9.99" (or whatever price they were) but when you click on Accept it doesn't do anything.

I notice that the iWork apps show "Free", like you mentioned, instead of "Accept". So it looks like this may be a bug on the App Store side. I plan on sending feedback to my Apple rep because it seems like the iWork apps should behave the same as the iLife apps.

I am guessing this also won't work for older Macs that have a previous version of iLife or iWorks installed (which are eligible for free upgrades) because the are marked as "Update" in the App Store.

[Jacher]

I emailed our regional Apple rep about it before leaving work today. Hopefully I'll find some answers from him.

[cdenesha]

any update? <curious>

[deej]

What is the actual key that gets created? Our ability to create Restrictions payloads in Configuration Profiles is currently broken, so hoping to implement another way.

[Jacher]

No update unfortunately, the regional rep did not email me back. I think we're deciding to just let it go since there seems to be no workable solution to the problem.