Registration on 10.1.x

All of Stick Software's products that use registration codes use a standard registration panel to allow the user to enter their registration codes. Unfortunately, a bug in OS X 10.1.x apparently causes this registration panel not to work properly for some users. This bug was fixed in 10.2, and so users on 10.2 or any later system do not need to concern themselves with this issue. Unless you believe that you are being bitten by this bug, you don't need to worry about this; it may not affect all users, even on 10.1.x systems. You will know you are hitting the bug if the registration code you enter doesn't seem to be remembered by the application. There may be other symptoms as well; it may even lock up the application in a state in which you are unable to quit, in which case you must use OS X's "Force Quit" facility.

There is no easy workaround for this bug, and so we had two choices: completely redesign and rewrite the registration panel to avoid the bug entirely, or put up this notice to help users register their applications without using the registration panel. We apologize for this unfortunate situation, and suggest that you upgrade to a more recent OS X release if possible. This is an example of the compromises and difficulties that become inevitable when running on an out-of-date release, and while we wish to continue supporting users on systems as old as 10.1.5, doing so is not our top priority.

So this web page shows you an alternate way to enter your registration codes that avoids the registration panel of the application, and thus avoids the bug. This alternate process requires the use of the Terminal application, which is part of OS X and may be found at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal. Terminal provides a command-line interface to you, in which many things can be done for good or for evil. It is important that you type the commands given below very exactly; every space, punctuation mark and upper/lowercase distinction matters. The best thing to do is probably to copy and paste the commands given into Terminal, rather then trying to type them exactly.

Registering in Terminal

Step one is to quit the program that you are trying to register. Having the program running may interfere with the registration codes being correctly recognized by the program. If the program you are registering is a screensaver, such as Fracture, then the application to quit is System Preferences.

Then find the product in the table below that you want to enter your registration code for. Then enter the commands listed into Terminal, exactly as they appear, but replacing <name> with the name given for your registration, and <code> with the code given. Note that the quotes around <name> and <code> should be kept; your name and code should be quoted.

The commands as displayed below may wrap around to the following line if your window is not wide enough; they should be entered into Terminal as single lines without wrapping.

After you have entered each of the two commands given, press return. If any sort of error message is printed out, something probably went wrong; stop following the instructions here and email us for help. An example is shown in the next section.

Fracture

defaults -currentHost write com.stick.screensaver.fracture PaidUserName "<name>"

defaults -currentHost write com.stick.screensaver.fracture PaidUserCode "<code>"

Measles

defaults write com.stick.app.measles PaidUserName "<name>"

defaults write com.stick.app.measles PaidUserCode "<code>"

Trisection

defaults write com.stick.app.trisection PaidUserName "<name>"

defaults write com.stick.app.trisection PaidUserCode "<code>"

When you have finished, you should quit the Terminal application, and then try running the application you have registered to verify that your registration codes were properly entered. If the application still doesn't think you are registered, email us for help.

An example

As described above, step one is to quit the program that you intend to register. In our example, a user has registered as "Cary Grant" and received a code of "vibrating martians" for Measles. So this user would first quit Measles, and then launch the Terminal application from /Applications/Utilities/Terminal by double-clicking it in the Finder.

When I run Terminal, I see a prompt that looks like:

[~] bhaller%

The prompt you see may be different; that is not important. You type the commands given after the prompt (or paste them in); so showing the prompt at the beginning for clarity, our user would type in:

[~] bhaller% defaults write com.stick.app.measles PaidUserName "Cary Grant"

Again, note that although the command line shown above may have been wrapped to a second line if your browser window is not wide enough, it is a single line of text and would be entered into Terminal without any linebreak in the middle. After this command was entered, the user would press return, and a new prompt would appear. (If anything besides a new prompt is printed out, something probably went wrong; stop following the instructions here and email us for help.) At the new prompt, the user then types:

[~] bhaller% defaults write com.stick.app.measles PaidUserCode "vibrating martians"

After pressing return for this command as well, Measles would then be registered for that user. Our user would then quit Terminal and run Measles, and if all went well, Measles would know that it had been registered.

Further questions

Please feel free to contact us with any questions you have, comments on this page, or other issues, by sending email to our support email address. Happy downloading!