iLounge

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Gasp. Pirated programs on a computing platform? The horror.

Amusingly enough, I can say with 100% certainty that I have never pirated a single iPhone/iPod touch app on any device I own. Go figure.

Posted by Daniel S. on October 14, 2009 at 1:54 PM (PST)

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This is what annoys me about Technology Bloggers who encourage people to Jailbreak their iPhones.

Back before the App Store, Jailbreaking was the only way to get enhanced functionality into an iPhone.
With iPhoneOS 2.x, someone could excuse Jailbreaking if they had a hardware accessory that they needed. This limited the amount of people who *had* to Jailbreak to a small subset of Hardware Hackers.
With iPhoneOS 3.x, the only people with a reason to Jailbreak are bleeding edge Hackers and Pirates. Bleeding Edge Hackers shouldn’t need automated tools to Jailbreak.

Posted by Dan Woods on October 14, 2009 at 3:08 PM (PST)

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If apple doesn’t like people tinkering the hardware they bought, maybe they should make it tamper proof.

Why I even once heard of couple of guys tinkering in a garage, that started a company named after a certain fruit.

Posted by Xing on October 14, 2009 at 4:24 PM (PST)

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@Dan Woods. Your “only people with a reason to Jailbreak are bleeding edge Hackers and Pirates” statement is ridiculous!!  There are plenty of reasons to jailbreak on 3.x firmware. For instance to run apps that integrate into certain areas of the iPhone which are blocked by Apple’s Terms and Conditions - which are complete bull. If I buy a car and decide to tinker with the engine, it’s mine to do so. If I buy a phone and want to load software that makes better use of phone functionality, it’s mine to do so. You have no idea what you are talking about to make a statement like that. Take a trip to Cydia and you’ll find more useful and powerful apps on the first page than in Apple’s entire catalog. Oh yeah, there aren’t any fart and flashlight apps in Cydia either!

Posted by Trent on October 14, 2009 at 6:32 PM (PST)

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@Dan, you simply have no idea what you’re talking about. None whatsoever.  Go look at “lock calendar”, “weathericon”, “wide sliders”, “reminder”, “sbsettings”, date-in-statusbar, iphone afp access, the jailbroken navizon version, sms quick reply from w/in any app…and those are off the top of my head (though they’re my main ones). 

No. Idea.

Posted by shawn on October 14, 2009 at 7:19 PM (PST)

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@trent

...there actually *is* a flashlight app, but it bypasses the app store’s restriction on turning up the brightness on the screen.  When you use the bigboss version, it brightens your screen all the way.

Quite useful, though I think I’m a bat, and can see fine using the phone even on its dimmest setting to find my way around the house in the dark.

Posted by shawn on October 14, 2009 at 7:22 PM (PST)

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that dan guy is an ignorant you know what.  I personally have tlert for my 3gs and mlert.  tlert pops up the text message and allows me to send a text without going to the sms app. so I can by on safari, etc… same thing with mlert.  it an email app that pops up a shows a preview of the mail.  tler was $5 and mlert was $1.  so yes sir you are a #####.

Posted by jez on October 14, 2009 at 10:15 PM (PST)

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Wait, i’m a bleeding edge hacker and(or)pirate, cause i run the “backgrounder” app. Quite a leap…

Posted by Andrew S on October 15, 2009 at 1:01 AM (PST)

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While there *may* be something to those percentages of how many go onto to get a paid version after using the demo/lite version compared to the cracked version, I’d like to see the raw numbers. I’d also like to know if they bothered to track the percentage of cracked version users who both didn’t go onto buy a paid version and also stopped using the cracked version compared to those who simply kept on using the cracked version for several months. I know from personal experience that if there’s a cracked version of a program, I’ll use it to try something every single time over a demo version. Demo versions too often are simply crippled beyond the point of showing whether a program is worth buying or not. Heck, I’ve even opted for the cracked version when the lite version does everything I would ever possibly want it to do but is infested with nag screens; I’m not going to pay you just to remove a nag screen if there’s nothing extra I’m getting besides peace, deal with it or make a better lite version that doesn’t annoy potential consumers.

In other words, this is a case where using percentages is potentially deceptive over raw numbers (just like there are cases where using raw numbers over percentages is deceptive). If that 0.43% of cracked version users going on to buy the full version represents roughly equal or greater sales in raw numbers, the percentage is meaningless. It’s similar to the way the recording industry attempts to lie with their numbers about music “theft” even though it’s been demonstrated conclusively that music downloaders buy more music than non-downloaders. It’s looking at the “problem” from the wrong direction.

Posted by Code Monkey in Midstate New York on October 15, 2009 at 5:28 AM (PST)

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I have to admit that i my self have used ‘cracked’ apps on my jailbroken iphone but that is not the main reason for me jailbreaking at all! I jailbroke simply for the enhanced usability like the backgrounder thing and the sega/nintendo emulators and roms. The main reason though, for me personally, was for the mass of available themes and layouts plus a host of other great stuff to help get the very most out of my shiny awsome phone! Im not proud of using cracked apps but i have, and will continue to spend a fortune on the official app store and itunes. If apple would just listen to us, the end user, then jailbreaking won’t be needed!

Posted by Rob on October 15, 2009 at 5:36 AM (PST)

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And another thing… @Dan Woods needs to read the App Developer chat over at The Unofficial iPhone Blog and see that those developers say Apple could learn alot from the Cydia store. Developers are saying that they earn more from the Cydia store even with less jailbroken users out there because they can release truly cutting-edge apps, rapid deployment without Apples slooow approval process, they get paid twice a month. A quote from that article “Cydia Store sales are generally much much stronger than AppStore sales”  Here’s the link, unless it’s blocked, tuaw[dot]com/2009/10/09/tuaw-live-chat-with-app-store-developers/

Posted by Trent on October 15, 2009 at 9:51 AM (PST)