This is the history of Emagic dongles for the Mac:
The first dongle was the "EMAGIC Notator LOGIC" one. It had a ADB and a Mac Plus connector. In later ones the Mac Plus connector was removed and the openings were filled with a plastic cap. With the arrival of audio support, a "EMAGIC Notator Logic Audio" dongle (same look, besides the sticker) was released.
Then the stickers were changed to the new Logic logo. It became the "EMAGIC Logic" dongle or "EMAGIC Logic Audio" dongle. It also removed the need for two dongles, which were shipped for a while (one for Logic, one for audio) by introducing the "combi" dongle.
After that we got "emagic Logic Audio gold", etc. dongles.
So far, all ADB only.
With the bondi-blue iMac a USB dongle was necessary. For a while the iMate ADB to USB adapter from Griffin Technology worked. Apple kept the switch to USB and the drop of ADB as a surprise for all developers, so it took a bit of time to get USB chip sets and design new dongles.
The new USB dongles had a USB connector in the center of one side, they were still black and had the same size, but the groves were thinner and 8, instead of 9. The sticker on it described the type, like "emagic Logic Audio Platinum".
With Logic 5 the XSKey was released (Patent US 2004/0128251 A1 from Jul. 1, 2004). It contained additional memory to allow for temporary demo versions and also allowed adding licenses at runtime. For Logic 5 we had the ES1 and the EXS24. As well as Macintosh or Window platform licenses.
Because the internet was not "everywhere", upgrades and registration could also be done via postcards. For that reason there were activation (12-week temporary codes for the postcard to arrive, these are the ones which were sold, they are non-XSKey specific) and authorization codes (final authorization, without an expiry, they only work with one XSKey). The last sentence is actually not 100% exact, because when Apple bought Emagic, a generic authorization code for the Mac-platform was issued, which worked with every XSKey. The platform-test was later removed from Logic, making this code no longer necessary.
The Emagic XSKeys came in 2 different colors:
- blue for full licenses (sometimes with an embedded sticker for VIP, Academic, Volume Licenses)
- orange (for NFR licenses, which are always temporary)
(plus 2 black XSKeys, which were never sold)
The serial number of the XSKey is always 15 digits and tells you the type and color. Take the last 5 digits as a decimal number and XOR them to the first 10 digits (also as a decimal number). The resulting first 10 digits are the hardware serial number, starting at 413 (below that were only used during development and used a different encryption protocol). Serial numbers below 1500 were used for beta testing only, if you have one: they are really rare ;-) The last 5 digits can be changed in software to allow recycling an XSKey (by changing the serial number all previously issued codes for the XSKey become invalid)
After Apple bought Emagic the case was changed to be more Apple-like white and more square key. They also have a different serial number range, but besides that they are completely identical on the inside.
Also a server to validate (via the XSKey Updater tool) and to register authorization codes onto the XSKey became available:
http://xskey.apple.com. At the end of 2012 the server was taking offline, because maintaining it became a huge effort and only about one user per month even accessed it. New licenses haven't been issued in many years via the server. Also EES Musik
http://www.ees-musik.de, which actually manufactured the XSKey (and all previous dongles), closed shop at the end of 2008, which no longer allowed Apple to even get new XSKeys.
