Windows and Mac Installer for USB Stick Educational Program

This was a custom installer and Cloud registration system for a sports psychology educational program. These were sold to individual school sports programs as USB sticks containing all the relevant audio and video files. To help limit piracy, we created protections for the files on the USB stick and custom Mac and PC installers to unlock the files. Each new computer using the system also had to register online to activate the software.

Cloud Registration

The Cloud registration software sat on a Google AppEngine instance that only spun up in response to registration requests. This kept it squarely within the free tier of usage and cost the client nothing to maintain. The registration software notified the psychologist of every person activating the program so he could track usage and limit piracy. This Python app used a simple REST-ful API to interface with the installers.

Mac Installer

The Mac installer required writing installer plugins in Objective-C. Since the files on the USB stick were protected against copying, a custom plugin was created to unlock them and transfer them after the online registration process. Many years later, Apple switched to 64-bit apps and required some newer APIs at the same time. This required some updates to the installer to support older 32-bit Macs and newer 64-bit Macs in the same universal binary.

PC Installer

Of course, Macs and PCs work very differently with their installers. We created a normal MSI-style installer for the PC. Like the Mac, it had to register online, unlock the files, and install them on the local computer.