iPhone app claims 95% piracy rate

The app isn't available in the Swedish store either. Since the iPhone is deployed in more and more countries, could the morons behind the regional release ideas please consider pulling their heads out of their asses and start doing global releases instead...?

I don't want to sound as if i'm coming off a moral high-ground, but I don't agree with the logic that one needs to pirate apps to try them before buying. All of us do wrong things throughout our lives; nobody is perfect. But one should at least know the difference between right and wrong. Attributing false reasonings to it won't make it right. I have pirated computer apps in the past, but I am patently aware that it is wrong. The fact that I am a poor student doesn't make it right - and neither is the fact that I am mentioning this fact as an excuse :).

Comparing buying clothes or a TV is not the same as buying an application. Every commodity is different and rules of commerce are not necessarily transferable. The seller defines the rights of the buyer before purchase. Just because a TV manufacturer or clothes retailer gives you that right doesn't mean any seller of every commodity has to provide the same. It is his choice whether he wants to or not.
Just to provide a conflicting example - you don't get to try a dish when you dine in a restaurant. You look at the menu and order it without sometimes even looking at a picture. And excepting rare circumstances (like bad service etc.) you commit to the purchase without trial.

The point is obvious, but bears mentioning - If a seller of any commodity doesn't want to provide a rental/demo, he is perfectly within his right. It his not the seller's duty, and it is not the buyer's right. If the buyer is not satisfied with the terms of sale, he simply has the right not to purchase.

Not that I don't understand the logic that everyone doesn't want to risk money on an unfamiliar purchase (whether it be a TV or an app), but it is still wrong.

I think we all can agree that pirating is wrong. That people aren't JUST trying these out... Have I jailbroken my phone? Yep. Have I downloaded apps illegally? You betcha. And I'm glad I did. For one main reason: I like to try games before I shell out anything.

I haven't pirated much, and I don't actually keep any of the apps on there for more than a day or two. Just enough to figure out if I like the app or not.

The reason I buy?

I believe in supporting the developer, and I don't want to have to re-download the cracked apps everytime they update it. I only have 6 games on my phone right now and that's it. And they are the ones I liked enough to buy and keep AFTER TRYING them. Now, I understand most people who pirate, aren't like me at all. But I've come to realize that I can't trust the star-ratings and other people's reviews. In my case, me pirating has actually helped those developers out that made the quality games I wanted to keep. Instead of me ending up shelling out 2,4,8,10 bucks for games, play it once, and realize it's not for me. (which has happened, a lot).

I support jailbreaking for other reasons, but I think apple needs to implement a rental/demo service to combat the pirates who don't give a rip... You don't buy clothes without trying them on. You don't buy a TV without seeing the picture first. This shouldn't be any different.

I am a pretty low end iPhone App developer. We had sales of each game we released (all are $1.99 in the US) that amounted to a few hundred dollars a month for 1 or 2 months, then taper to near zero. Each has been downloaded from a number of torrent sites well over 10,000 times, and in one case almost 100,000 times ... I would not have mined if even 1/10 of those were really using the try-before-we-buy approach and actually bought the app then. But like one other games author who tracks by registered high scores, no pirated version device ID has ever converted to a paid customer registering a high score. So the pirates excuses are bogus. And really. $1.99 for an app that takes a few months to develop. That is already heart breakingly low. Add the piracy and the incentive to improve and release new versions (which existing customers get free! Cool! I actually like this feature!, but 0 revenue to the developers), that incentive wears pretty thin.

So now rather than put effort into more games that will be "liberated" by crackulous and other tools "just to try before we buy" our entire effort focuses on Apps for other folks, who are in banking, finance, and other areas where free apps make sense. This takes our somewhat niche games (most are educational, and play is in multiple languages) and drops that development for a bit. We'll get back to it again likely when the paid work to produce free iPhone Apps dries up a bit. But in the meantime I like a roof over my head and a bit o food on the table.

The arguments it is broke teenagers doesn't fly either. They shoplift a gameboy they go to jail. And those that are "broke" wearing 100 dollar jeans or sneakers are the worst "broke teenagers".

The average lifetime used to be about 3 weeks before the cracked versions made the torrents. The last game we put out we found on the torrents before Apple's email it was approved and on the App Store had reached us.

So ... Enough ranting for now, but it is widespread and for popular Apps, maybe 100 to 1 or less in favor of pirated copies, but for our apps it is an order of magnitude worse.

And please don't make judgements on the cost of the app for TomTom or others justifying pirated copies either! They pay licensing fees or paid large amounts to get the rights to use the data in the App, or paid a number of professional programmers a lot to produce the App. They _need_ to recover their investment, so either nice clean apps or more and more Ads and Ads and Ads will clutter the apps.

Out-

Jailbroken but never pirated? Yeah, okay, and I've got a cock and never masturbated.

Sorry about that irrelevant comment above. I don't how that happened. It must be a Halloween ghost of an old post.

Anyway: 95% of nothing is still nothing. How are we to judge the severity of the piracy with nothing to base the percentage on?

For Mac users the compromise is a simple no brainer. Use the status bar to move browser windows around the desktop and the title bar for tabs. All Cocoa application windows can be moved from the bottom.

I call BS on their methodology. There can be up to 5 legitimate UUIDs using an app for every given sale, due to the app sharing that is possible in iTunes. My wife has an iPod Touch and I legally share my apps with her device, since both devices are tied to the same account.

Firstly, I haven't pirated this app and my iPod touch isn't jailbroken, but this app is not available in the New Zealand iTunes Store. Maybe the pirated copies are from potential customers unable to purchase a legal copy?

what % of iPhones are jailbroken?