iCombat's stats on app pirates

Do you have any evidince to suppport you claim?
I can't put it kindly, but you don't know what you're talking about. At all. Listen, I have a jailbroken iPod Touch, and let me tell you something, jailbreak is not about stealing. It's about adjusting your iPhone or iPod Touch to your liking. I don't use cracked apps, and a good amount of jailbreakers don't either. I first jailbroke my iPod Touch in July of last year. I'd had my iPod Touch for about 2 months, and, being a geek, decided to jailbreak. I still bought App Store apps, and I aslo used the addon hacks from Cydia. But about 5 months later, I learned about cracked apps. I then decided I wanted to be a cheap bastard. To clarify, I didn't jailbreak to use cracked apps. I used cracked apps later on. Anyway, I looked around the web, and found out what to do. You can't just have a jailbroken iPod or iPod Touch, you have to do some extra things. I added the "Hackulous" repository to Cydia, and installed the "MobileInstallation Patch", which is what makes the iPhone OS think that cracked apps are as valid as ones you bought from the app store. Then I had to install "Installous". That's it. I downloaded cracked apps for a while. That lasted for about a month and a half. I eventually realized that the developers desearved money for their apps, and cleared the cracked apps from my iPod Touch. I restored and rejailbroke my iPod Touch, and bought all the apps I stole, and I don't use cracked apps anymore. I still have a jailbroken iPod Touch, I buy legitimate apps from the app store, I use hacks from cydia (most of those are free, but there a few (I can probably count them on my fingers, seriously) Cydia apps that aren't free, I have bougt one (Cyntact), and I havn't stolen any of those. I only know a few people who use jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch (I know a lot with unjailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch. Most people are two afraid and/or not geeky enough to jailbreak), and the ones I know who do jailbreak, none of them use cracked apps. So to put it simply:

Jailbreak= Customization and Extension, and is good.
Cracking= Piracy of apps that cost almost nothing, and is bad.

Jailbreaking≠ Piracy

@Gazoobee and United States of Generica

I completely disagree with you. I have a jailbroken iPhone3G and I have not downloaded a single cracked app on it. Every app I have either was purchased legit from the App Store or is not available in the app store.

I jailbroke my iPhone for backgrounder and winterboard.

(I've also found a few cool things like putting the weather in the status bar, the 5 icon dock, changing my carrier tag, Flashlight--the one that actually increases brightness!, Cycorder, Supreme Preferences and SBPreferences to name a few... ok, well, all that I use anyway.)

In fact! I even purchased another app just yesterday, with my Jailbroken iPhone. So don't tell me the only reason people Jailbreak is to hack apps.

That's exactly what the people I know with Jail-Broken iPhone do ... download cracked versions of App Store products so they don't have to pay a cent for them. I showed a friend 'Zen Bound' and he said "hold on" and proceeded to download a pirate copy direct from his iPhone; he's never paid for a single App but has all the latest games.

These people do the same with their games consoles, warez (Mac and Windows flavors), music and video too. For example, I know several people with Xbox 360 who have never bought a game for it, not one, but they have every major release.

In area where app store is not available the only viable way to use the game is via cracked version. Maybe that add up to the statistics.

The decision to pirate apps is easy for some people.

Free vs. Paying Money.

@Mark: That is exactly what they are doing, and with a Jailbroken phone, you can install those cracked apps on your device free of charge and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

My theory is that some of these developers sell so few downloads that 80/20 sounds harsh but in reality no one is actually buying their game any ways.

For instance, Mobile 1UP (no offense, just an observation) has 5 games available, only 1 of which has any rating and the one that has a rating only has 1 review! I wouldn't purchase any of the games based on the description and the screenshots and no reviews available doesn't help the matter any.

How are apps being pirated? I thought one had to download an app from the store, which then authorizes one's device to run that app. Are pirates taking one, legit copy of an app and somehow stripping it of its copy-protection? Or somehow fooling the device into thinking it's authorized to run the legit copy of the app?

As someone with an App that was much more heavily pirated than sold, I still think most pirated copies are not lost sales but for 99 cents or $1.99 it is still aggravating that the pirates claim the motivation is the poor Apple App store experience. Well they hurt me with 70% of their infliction of pain. And I'd love to actually transition to the App development full time, which I could if even 10% of the pirated copies where converted to sales. Oh, and Gazoobee. I have multiple jailbroken devices pre-SDK restrictions against for developers, and 0 pirated Apps. I just prefer custom wallpaper, a few cool Apps that are against Apple policy for the App store and much much better management of SMS and call logs. For example, I really don't need to keep my business partner's SMS about being 5 minutes away from arrival but do want to keep the one saying a client is coming in on a particular flight. And I also like global cut and paste (which is coming soon I know, finally). Oh, and DS... You can tell during app execution if your app is pirated. So the stats _could be_ very accurate.

Tjp

Where's your proof that that's what all, or even most, jailbreakers do?

Weak troll is weak.

I think the numbers may be skewed. If Pinch is using iTMS accounts, then the numbers would be correct. However, if they're using unique iPhone/iPod IDs (serial numbers, etc.), then the stats don't work: one copy of an app can be shared to any phone authorized on the account, which is not piracy (since it's in the iTunes TOS). I have a dual-iPhone house, and we share apps through iTunes. It's not piracy, as far as I know. If it is, I can't imagine Apple would rest on its laurels this long about it.