Mac/iPod deauthorizing itself

[redbird]

When I went to sync my iPod a little while ago, I got an error message saying that the computer was no longer authorized for this iPod, and would I like to authorize it. I said yes, and gave it my password, and it put it through and told me that I had now authorized four of the five allowable computers. A few months ago, the same thing, with "three."

Clearly, this is not going to end well. I believe, from checking this last time, that I can tell it I am deauthorizing some of these nonexistent or overlapping machines (I think my dead PC is one of them). But does anyone know how to prevent this, or why it's happening? All the Apple pages I found last time were just "here's the fix/workaround" with no ideas of why it was happening.

Comments

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

The only way I know how to prevent a recurrence is to authorize a single machine, rather than multiple machines. Which rather defeats the purpose of the feature, but it has worked for me and several others.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

I de authorised all machines and started again.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

It's ok, because as fjm says, once per year you can deauthorise all computers and start again. As we do actually have (more than) five Macs, this is critical for us. Wish there was something similar for Adobe, where I managed to hit the 'we'll never authorise this software again' limit with CS2 and had to have a long and tortuous phone call with them. And it had only ever been used on my own machines. Have I mentioned before how much I *hate* Adobe and in particular their customer service? (Yes. Yes I have).

The Mac App store, bless its cotton little socks, authorises for the entire household's Macs. So I would like to see that become standard, oh yes, and be the way that iTunes works as well.