[ipad] Buying iPad apps en masse without adding credit card?

[Sam_Brown]

I was just wondering how other people with iPads were handling being able to buy apps en masse?

 

We were going to follow the model we've seen mentioned a few places that involves buying the app once in the store and then gifting it multiple times depending on how many copies of the app we need. The "gifts" would then esentally be our licenses with the apps.

 

Quick Example: We need the scrabble app installed on 10 ipads then we would purchase it once in the store using our normal iTunes account and then gift it 9 times to a designated e-mail address.

 

The issue we're facing is that we wanted to use Apple Gift Cards to purchase the apps on so we wouldn't have to associate the school credit card with our iTunes account. However we've discovered that we can't use a gift card balance to fund gifting items. Buying them directly and the gift card balance works fine but it falls over when we want to "gift" the app 9 times because it explicitly asks for a different payment method.

 

Either Card or Clink N Buy.

 

I was wondering how other people got around this issue?

[Sam_Brown]

Right so after doing a bit more research we've come up with two possible solutions for the time being.

 

1) Have a separate apple account different from the main one that has the school credit card attached. That way we get get finance to log in and "gift" the apps to a designated e-mail address and again this acts as our licences. The upside being we have all our "licenses" in one place. The downside to this is having to put through a separate order for each app we want to purchase and then having to wait for finance to gift the licenses for us.

 

2) Have a separate account for each i pad. We can buy gift cards and give each account say £15 which should be enough for most app purchases for the near future. The up side to this is that we don't need to wait for finance to order the apps and we can manage them ourselves. The only thing we need to worry about is keep in stock of itune gift cards. The downside is that it means manually downloading each app on each account. At 10 iPads this isn't TOO bad but in the future if we have 20 or 30 then it is going to be a massive ball ache to have to purchase`an app 30 times!

 

These are the two options we've come up with. I was hoping someone could perhaps add a 3rd way which would make life a little easier? From my reading on the subject so far I get the impression that the majority of people just completely flaunt the licensing agreements and buy an app once before sticking it on as many devices as they own. I've even been told to do this myself before from apple resellers however getting anything in writing which I'd want to do before pushing ahead with that is obviously not going to happen!

[rdk]

We got trapped with the inability to gift apps using a gift card - a real PITA and Apple no help at all. We buy individual gift cards for each machine and have the kids install the apps. But these are machines that are managed buy the kids although owned by the school. In Australia gift cards are often on sale (say 20x$20 cards for $30) at various department stores and there is even a web site that tracks the latest iTunes card sales so we have never paid full price for the gift cards.

[mac_shinobi]

Can't you get pre paid credit cards ( link each of them to the school credit card ) and use a specific pre paid credit card for each iDevice ??

[old_n07]

Have you seen the volume purchase program, I was told by a supplier that Apple announced that it has rolled out to the UK, I've not verified this though

 

Apple - Education - Volume Purchase Program

 

No sure if it the same but we needed 20 copies of Final Cut pro x which is only available through the app store for our iMacs, Academia were able to bulk purchase them on our behalf and then they issued us with a redemption code from Apple allowing us to install it on our machines

 

I can give you the contact details of our account manager if you want to speak to him about it.

Edited June 30, 2012 by old_n07

[Steve21]

Have you seen the volume purchase program, I was told by a supplier that Apple announced that it has rolled out to the UK, I've not verified this though

 

Apple - Education - Volume Purchase Program

 

Coming Soon. The Apple Volume Purchase Program is expanding to the following countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, and United Kingdom

 

Not yet but "soon"

 

Steve

[old_n07]

I know it says that on the website but Airwatch who supplied our MDM suite which provides the ability to install bulk purchased apps to our controlled iPads called us about the feature being announced in the UK last week as we were waiting for it to arrive.

[old_n07]

Here is the UK page for the volume purchase program

 

Apple (United Kingdom) - Mac - Apple Software Volume Licensing

 

the software available is limited though

[Steve21]

That's Mac, Not iOS.

 

Steve

[old_n07]

Yes, I did say in post #5 that we purchased Final Cut through Academia in bulk and I suppose it was via that scheme but I didn't know if it can be used with the iPad or not so I was posting the link in case it was any help

[Steve21]

Yes, I did say in post #5 that we purchased Final Cut through Academia in bulk and I suppose it was via that scheme but I didn't know if it can be used with the iPad or not so I was posting the link in case it was any help

 

The US one you linked is the iOS one Thus the query about it not being released in UK yet.

 

The UK Mac one won't work on iOS Just hoping Apple will hurry up and release the iOS VPP in UK

 

Steve

[old_n07]

I'll ring Airwatch on Monday when I get into work and see if they can point me at a link with some info http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h208/old_n07/emoticons/thumbs.gif