[ansy]

I'm not sure if it works anymore. But with the App Store you can download on anyone's device after you pay for it once. For example, I buy Angry Birds, and then I log in on your phone and install Angry Birds on it as a free update. Then I log out of your phone, and Angry Birds is still installed.

I didn't even know it was possible and I did iOS development. Then I saw someone do it and had a WTF moment. He just said that's how everyone he knows 'shares' apps. One guy gets it, and downloads it on everyone else's phone.

[adolph]

The trick is that a particular iPhone can't run around to different people's computers slurping the apps they bought on different iTunes accounts. It can only sync with one computer/iTunes account.

For example, my spouse and I could use the same purchased apps (if we used the same stuff) since we share a single iTunes account and library. I could not sync with my next door neighbor and use all their apps at the same time as I use my own.

[ansy]

I think we're describing different things. You're talking about syncing apps with a computer. Sharing libraries between spouses and stuff like that.

I'm talking about this set of steps (on an iPhone/iPad):

1) Go to Settings App

2) Log out of iTunes

3) Log in as Person B

4) Launch App Store

5) Download an app that Person B previously bought. This is a free update.

6) Go to Settings

7) Sign out of Person B's iTunes account

8) Log back in as myself

9) Voila! Launch pirated app which is still on my device without having to jailbreak my phone.

This of course doesn't allow me to update the app because it requires I login as the other person. And yeah, I probably can't sync this rogue app to my computer. But for games and most apps, this is enough. If an app is worth pirating it's probably good enough without the updates. And I turn off app sync because it's annoying. If I really lost my apps I'd just reinstall the ones that mattered.

NB: I don't do this myself. I'm sure if there was a more 'secure' way without being horrible Apple would have done it. Getting apps onto a device for development was/is horrific.

[Jach]

Is Steam horrible? As far as I know you can log in as another account and download games the other account has and play them, and if you log back into your account the game data doesn't go anywhere (so if you buy you don't have to redownload) but you can't launch them from the steam client. Why didn't Apple do something similar?

[rimantas]

No need for single iTunes account and library. There is home sharing feature in iTunes and it allows to share apps simply by dragging and dropping.

[adolph]

Yeah, we started sharing the library before home sharing. I've been thinking about splitting them and using home sharing but the current pain (oh, will you quit iTunes, I need to sync) is less than the pain of changing how we approach things (oh, I need to copy these songs to my Library to put them on the phone).

[ralfd]

But they can't update. For that you have to login into the account who bought the app.

[Herald_MJ]

You can do this on Steam and PSN also. I don't view this as a significant piracy problem (and apparently neither do Apple, Sony or Valve), because there is an obvious limit of scale. Pirating an app via this method to two or three iphones is fairly trivial, but to distribute it to hundreds or thousands of devices would be a gargantuan task which no-one is likely to do.

Compare this to pirating an .ipa file via bittorrent for jailbroken iphone users, and it's a different story.

[Vivtek]

Not in Tennessee, though!