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by suneliot 5430 days ago
I guess the AppStore hasn't quite made 99cents seem like nothing. Users still don't want to pay for anything, no matter how small the cost may seem.

Shouldn't most if not all iOS developers already know about jailbreaking/Installous? If your revenue stream is 100% hinging on selling the app (as opposed to in-app purchases or ads), then shouldn't you be cognisant of the piracy issue associated with a jailbroken iOS device and not naive enough to think that every copy of your app will be obtained legally?

I do think it's a shame that companies put a lot into creating a premium app for the AppStore, which gets pirated and downloaded for free. But I don't really see an end to this for the foreseeable future. Apple has already tried to make jailbreaking illegal, but it failed to do so.

2 comments

The only solution seems to be to write apps with an essential server-side component. It's pathetic that $0.99 is till too much for the cheapskates of the world to pay for somebody else's hard work.
Do pirates matter? I don't think they'd have bought the game if they couldn't get it illegally, although I guess one could argue that converting even a fraction of them counts.