After reading this a while ago, I thought that piracy in iOS is over. Then I learned that there are various apps that offers "pirated" apps. AppCake (http://iphonecake.com/appcake/en/) is an example.
But well, it's been a long time since I jailbreak-ed my iOS device. It is because I'm not really comfortable doing the jailbreaking process. Also, waiting for a jailbreak for new versions of iOS made me realized that there are various free apps that are good, or also better than paid apps.
sigh, I feel uncomfortable not having a jailbreaked phone. Don't you guys need a root shell?
I have to ssh into a server to do basic maintenance work, like it is something illegal.
Btw. trying out apps via hackulous helped me decide, which one to buy.
Besides, there are poor ppl out there with iDevices. Did you know, that in european apple&itunes-store the prices are often the same or higher, just with a €-symbol? And that europeans earn comparable less and pay higher taxes.
iMac: 2618$
iMac: 2678€
Pirating helps ppl participating in society and we creators/media professionals canafford them.
I'm sorry, but an iOS app is made for convenience. Nothing more.
Email, social networking, instant messaging, collaboration tools, productivity tools, office suites, development tools, and even entire operating systems are available for free. There is every opportunity for someone to "participate in society" without illegally obtaining something they don't want to pay for.
The developer is the creator of the app, and he or she is the one who gets to decide whether you can try it for free. There is no other way to support the developer than paying for their work in some way or another.
> Besides, there are poor ppl out there with iDevices. Did you know, that in european apple&itunes-store the prices are often the same or higher, just with a €-symbol? And that europeans earn comparable less and pay higher taxes.
If they're that poor they should probably get something more affordable. Also, complaining about taxes is best done by complaining to your local politician / MP, not by pirating apps.
wasn't complaining, there is a price differential between US and EU electronics & media content which widens even more if one considers the lower purchasing power.
@ppl eg. get unemployed and own devices (suffering by recession anyone). Being poor is not necessarily a choice or a selfcaused taint.
I ssh into my devices often, eg. to get pictures out, or to scp episodes into my vlc folder - since my goodplayer can't play mkv.
I am also pinging ocassionaly other servers and have to do it from another device than my iPad if it is not jailbreaked.
Imho, you all seem to be to accustomed to appliances - I favor open devices without those hastles. And being unable to inspect a good before purchasing it, if it is something lasting like software sucks.
Surely an Android device would have been a better choice? Jailbreaking is a kludge, it doesn't make the iPhone less encumbered from the average user's perspective.
(While a couple specific devices are open, most Android devices are closed; it does a disservice to connect the notion of "Android" with "open". Your point stands, however, with that detail fixed, although the process for setting up Debian or Ubuntu Core in a cheroot to get a nice ssh server with a decent shell and a package manager is a lot more complex than Telesphoreo on an iPhone.)
That done with, from the "average user's perspective", jailbreaking an iPhone 4 gets you more freedoms from less invested time and with less required knowledge than even a a "truly open" Nexus device: the tools are more centralized and easier to find how-tos that expect nothing more than "I sort of know enough to use YouTube", they are less technical to operate (and often even quite graphical; sometimes even having been embedded in web pages for a "slide to jailbreak‘ experience: I don't think I've ever seen a hack quite as smooth as comex's JailbreakMe 3.0), and due to Substrate it is infinitely easier to intstall the one or two custom changes you want rather than thinking about choosing and installing a custom version of the entire OS or having to screw around with risky patch files or incredibly complex baksmali instructions.
Like others have replied already to: look around on the system, to transfer media (mp3, documents, etc.).
I also used it to develop and learn the Objective-C on iOS. I didn't have a Mac at the time and didn't really have to money to buy one either. Eventually this got me into a 3 month job (sabbatical from my regular job) to develop a prototype on the iPad for a startup.
Not quite, the iPad gig was on OS X using Xcode (ugh!).
My first experience developing on iOS was SSH-ing into my jailbroken iPhone. Here are my notes on setting up the development environment but these are old by now and very probably not relevant anymore: https://www.dropbox.com/s/naq7763aximu8cx/iphone.org
If you are really interested I have a tarball with source and Makefile for you but it won't compile on recent toolchains I guess. (Also a bit of googling will get you examples as well.)
This is all thanks to saurik (who replied elsewhere in this thread) and others in the jailbreak community.
Also a lot of apps on Cydia were written using the GCC toolchain (at least initially, I'm not really up-to-date anymore).
USA prices don't include taxes as they vary from state to state. They are cheaper because they have less taxes there than we do on Europe. Europeans earning less doesn't matter, Apple doesn't sell low end and aren't competing on price.
I'm a sysadmin/devops, I don't need a root shell on my iPhone/iPad, what for? Maintenance? Which maintenance?
I maintain a WMAN and can't use my 700€ iPad for it. Use case: connected with a hotspot, it lags: normally pinging to hotspot, than from hotspot to GW is the first diagnosing step. ..
reducing such a fine device to a mere consumption device is really bugging me.
I don't believe there's anything stopping you from building or finding a network diagnostic app that will let you ping/trace/etc considering there are SSH clients.
Once again we see the entitlement attitude used to defend piracy.
So first off, iDevices aren't made for hackers. They're made for consumers. The amount of people who need a root shell on their iPhone is probably about the same amount of people who will post in this thread saying they need a root shell (I'm exaggerating but it's a seriously small number).
There are free apps that let you SSH into servers already on the app store. If one doesn't suit you there's always the option of creating one. Too expensive? Then submit it to one of the stores for Jailbroken iPhones. They'll probably be more interested in it than the regular App Store using population anyway.
Trying out apps before you buy one is a really great idea and I wish it was possible with iOS apps. I get people using Hackulous and such to try apps before they buy but what I don't buy into is this idea that there's a huge population of iOS users who are using Jailbroken phones and apps to "try before you buy". I don't have solid numbers and I doubt anyone really does but experience and observation tell me that the amount of people who Jailbreak a phone just to try before you buy is incredibly low with the majority just trying and never buying. I myself Jailbroke my first generation iPhone when I first got it. You know what I did with it? Totally got a bunch of paid apps for free with intention of never paying for them. I was poor and even $0.99 was too much for me. I was an asshole and I know this. I haven't done that since 2008 or so though.
Now, when you say "Besides, there are poor ppl out there with iDevices" my mind gets kind of boggled. How in the hell are poor people getting iDevices if they're so poor? If they can afford even the subsidized iPhone or the low-end iPod then you'd think an app that costs $0.99 - $2.99 wouldn't be all that much. But even if we assume this is a valid reason (excuse is the word I'd use personally) does being poor entitle you to goods at a lower cost or free? I've been poor. I know what poor is better than most and I can say that looking back I wasn't so poor that I couldn't afford iOS apps. I was just incredibly cheap as a result of how poor I was. That $1 - $5 was just going to get pissed away on something equally stupid and quickly squandered like a pack of cigarrettes. I feel for the poor people but I can't get behind the idea that it's alright to pirate software because you can't afford it. The old "they wouldn't buy it anyway" argument is so lame. If they wouldn't buy it anyway then they shouldn't have it anyway and maybe if they couldn't circumvent the payment process they'd actually give saving up for whatever "they" want to pirate the ol' college try.
Pirating helps people participate in society you say? Depends on your definition of participate. If it means they get to use a copy of Photoshop for free rather than something cheaper that they paid for that's really not good participation. Again, I've been on the shit-end of poor and I was able to participate as a creator without piracy. Yes, I did do it but there was nothing stopping me from participating with what I had available. I feel like this whole line of thought comes from this weird idea that many young people, my peers (I'm only 26), have these days that somehow we're somehow entitled to start out at the top. That we're too good to "slum it" and work our way up. Participating in society could mean doing the ethical thing and paying for the goods you use. That's good participation the way I see it.
So iMacs are more expensive overseas. That sucks. It really does. But I doubt it's some conspiracy to empty the pockets of European Mac users. That's life, man. Some things suck but you just do what you gotta do to make it.
@piracy
is not right but we all can afford and tolerate it. The above statement strikes me as fundamentalistic, it seems to disregard the arbitrary character of content-pricing, it's virtual nature and insinuates that copying is stealing. We don't live in an ideal world and pretending everyone can "do it" and who doesn't is lazy, is propaganda.
piracy is more than downloading apps, it's movies, tv-series and so on, ppl with low income who can't, don't deserve it then?
@terminal emulators
the most used app on my iphone2G was erika sadun's utilities, I didn't pirate any app.
Lets look to slovakia. With under 1000$ average income you would invest in PS6 for 800€ esp. if you start your own project? - The alternative would be gimp?
@iMacs
haven't talked about conspiracy, just showing that framesets are different.
I have to say, Installous was actually a really impressive app for what it was.
It was literally as simple to use as the original App Store, which was incredible. I've never seen that kind of excellent design in an app designed for piracy. It seriously "just worked" in the same way that you'd expect any iOS app to work: you searched for an app, clicked install, it'd take you to a mirror (usually on a site like Mediafire), download it in the background, and install. The interface had a shocking amount of polish, too.
I can't really argue, as a developer, that it's a shame that development has stopped on it, but still - there must be a lot of smart developer talent in that group that will hopefully be put to better use now :)
Windows Phone and Windows 8 marketplaces are the best of the app markets in this regard. There is almost always a "try" mode and it can be time, transaction or feature restricted or just the full app with ads.
It's in one way a drawback to WP developers. They have full control on whether to provide 'try' option or not but almost every user expects the app to have the option before putting in money. So not providing a 'try' option will be a lose-lose situation for the developer. But it's a huge boon to the user. I've tried countless of apps only to end up not purchasing many as they are poor or sometimes the trial app is good enough to use.
With one app, I remember a stink being raised over them not having a trial for their game. It was Infinite Flight, a flight simulator app. The developers announced the game on reddit, and many of the comments were related to not having a trial for a game which cost a few dollars rather than 99c. The developers mentioned they did not include a trial because they were afraid people outside their target audience would try it, realize it's a flight simulator and not a traditional game, and leave poor ratings based on misconceptions.
I believe they eventually broke down and released a trial, but it does underscore the point that trials are very much encouraged on Windows Phone coupled with the idea that sometimes not having a trial can be for good reasons.
Isn't the Xbox/Windows Live/Zune/Microsoft billing back end a nightmare? I remember there being a EU-centric website protesting the lack of data portability that is mandated by EU law.
To be fair, being in different countries trying to access/retain (you lose all your purchases with the MS stuff if you switch countries) your "purchased" content is still a clusterfuck even with Apple and Amazon, but I recall my experience with MSN/Live being totally fucked up for just wanting to change my address.
Their recent shuttling of Games For Windows Live redirected users to vague no-detail error messages on Xbox.com for stuff like having to login and accept new EULA terms.
Jailbreaking is often associated with piracy and circumventing DRM, when piracy is only a possible side effect of jailbreaking. The true purpose is getting complete control over the device.
Piracy will always exist on iOS, but now it is less prominent and less public.
Lots of people are saying similar things. Does anyone have data on whether sales actually go up after an event like this? I suspect the people pirating your app aren't going to pay for it, they're just going to not use it.
