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Good on Apple.

People who pirate apps are a sad bunch. I've met quite a few out on the web. These same people complain that if video games were cheaper they wouldn't pirate those, but the fact that they end up pirating things that are $2-5 clearly shows that price doesn't seem to factor into it.

I have a jailbroken phone mostly so that I could unlock it. If I had a legitimate way of unlocking my phone (bought it second hand off someone who upgraded to a 3G) then I would have no reason to jailbreak it. IMO locking phones is a ridiculous practice that needs to be made illegal. You should always have the option to take your phone to another network when you want without having to jump through hoops to get the carrier you're with to unlock your phone officially (if they even will).
 
Wait a minute.
Now I can sell my current 3GS and market it as a model that can be jailbroken, mark it up, then buy a new phone, seeing as I dont care about JB. Awesome.

I didn't jailbrake, until now. And the only reason I've done so is to keep my baseband at 4.26.08 so the resale value of my phone stays high. The only way I was able to afford upgrading to a 3GS was by selling my 3G. I plan on selling my 3GS to help pay for whatever comes next.
 
This is just dumb.. I just got a 3GS today and I was able to Jailbreak it with Blackra1in fortunately.. But seriously why the hell can't we do simple backgrounding on the Iphone without jailbreaking? I mean backgrounder+kirikae works perfectly well. You can background apps and have your own little tasklist to close and switch between apps.

I know Apple says that it's because of battery life issues but I haven't seen anything like that with a couple of apps backgrounded. How is it that a couple of renegade developers can make this work so well, but high paid apple developers can't? Either they're amateur or they're just following orders like slaves. It all just seems fishy because you would believe that apple developers and whatever team that's in charge of the iphone would be able to come up with some awesome solution for a simple problem like this..... But I guess not.

What's up with the microsoft bullcrap tactics? This isn't communist russia. Atleast give us the friggin OPTION to customize and do simple backgrounding or atleast offer these features through the appstore as some kinda download like on cydia.

just plain dumb.. I've seriously been considering a blackberry or an Android phone. The unjailbroken Iphone is just useless and certainly not worth the dough if it can't be jailbroken.
 
But as long as jailbreaking enables piracy, I think this is a good move on Apple's part. The apps are good, they're incredibly cheap and the DRM is an unobtrusive as I've seen.

Well i'm not happy to lose backgrounder, to lose my calendar on my home screen, to lose VOIP over 3G capability. None of these are available on the App Store. Give me these and i probably won't care about the lack of jailbreaking.

Personally i wouldn't buy an iPhone that can't be jailbreaked to give me these options.

Would you prefer if OSX had the same restrictions, all in the name of "stopping piracy".

I think this quote has meaning here:

Benjamin Franklin said:
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
 
I don't see the big deal with jailbreaking for useful purposes. If you want to enhance your phone, you should be able to. After all, you bought it and it's your property. Now whether that applies to the OS, who knows. They usually license an OS to you, not sell it. Regardless, jailbreaking takes the iPhone to another level with the right tools. However using jailbreaking to pirate apps and other related rogue functions is completely stupid. Like another person said, the apps tend to be very cheap. If you feel the need to pirate a .99 cent app because you think it's too much, you're a moron. Some people don't take into consideration other people's time and work.
 
Am I the only one bothered by this?

The part of the story that bothers me is not that Apple is locking down the bootloader, or that people are hacking the iPhone to jailbreak or unlock it. The part that bothers me is:

Recent data from mobile advertising firm Pinch Media reveals that it has seen nearly four million jailbroken devices on its ad network, with 38% of those using at least one pirated application.

Why does Pinch Media get such a deep look into the devices that it can tell not only that the phone has been jailbroken, but what apps are on the phone and whether they are pirated or not!? This is way beyond reasonable and, in my mind at least, constitutes a serious privacy breach. If they can see the pirated/not pirated status of all the apps on the phone, how do I know they can't see into the apps - like contact lists, email, etc? Even if they can't, how would you feel about a website that gathered information about all the software (and the licensing) on your computer when you visited?
 
Looking at the bright side ....

At least I'll be able to sell my current 3G phone on eBay for a decent price once the next version iPhone comes out (whenever that may be.)

I felt pretty good about selling my 2G iPhone on eBay for $345 back in February when I upgraded to the 3G.

-Benster
 
I'm OK with Apple cracking down on pirates and fixing exploits. After all, the whole concept of a jailbreak is to find software holes which are big enough to let you run your own code. Whenever this happens on OS X, everyone gets in a big huff about the whole "Mac viruses/trojans" angle. Yet when this happens on the iPhone, we quietly praise the developers of the exploits (the jailbreak teams).

However, I hope Apple realizes that there are good reasons why people are jailbreaking, and listens to its customers for feedback, so we can have an "authorized" way to customize our iPhones and legitimate stuff like that.

I'm good with them cracking down too. Many of the people with jailbroken phones are also using unpaid for apps, like a gps app that I paid $70-.
 
Just because someone's pirated an app doesn't necessarily mean that the developer has lost a sale. If it wasn't pirated the person might not have bought it anyway.

Quite true. But equally I've no doubt that people who use pirated apps would suddenly start buying a lot more if piracy was no longer an option.

Don't see it as purely sales-based: think of the value it adds to your resume and how you can use apps to promote yourself and your skills. A get rich quick scheme it's not.

I think that's up to the developer, not the end-user; don't you? If a developer has a useful app concept, then spends months realising it, then he/she has the right to sell as/when/how they choose.

And what's the point in promoting your skills, if the market is unviable? The margins are tight enough as it is, piracy could be the difference between breaking even (but at least having an app out there) and making a loss.
 
Which is why we should all petition Apple to please reimpose DRM on all of the iTunes music downloads. Or implement features in the iPhone, since it has a persistent network connection, to contact the RIAA every time a song is played... Maybe put a challenge/response code you have to type in before each song... Because if one person is a pirate, we're all pirates! And anything done to stop piracy is a good thing!
 
It will only be a matter of time until someone figures out how to jailbreak the updated systems. Doesn't Sony do the same thing with the PSP's and people still hack those?

Regardless, I don't jailbreak. I don't care much for what it does.
 
Pretty sad that the article results to the old sky is falling piracy piracy hacker hacker cry to make something seem more valuable or justified.

I always thought the point of a jaaaaaaailbreak (channeling AC/DC) was to be able to change SIMs or customize the UI. Pirating a 3$ game seems pretty silly actually.

I've not done a jb because i depend on mine for work, but it would be cool to use some of the homescreen type apps to have more information on a single summary screen (one thing that was really the win of windows mobile).
 
One of my coworkers has a jailbroken app and he uses an interface for getting OS updates and iPhone software. I'm not sure how they get away with providing free software for things like Navigon. I'd love to see that stopped.
 
I'm bothered too

The part of the story that bothers me is not that Apple is locking down the bootloader, or that people are hacking the iPhone to jailbreak or unlock it. The part that bothers me is:

Recent data from mobile advertising firm Pinch Media reveals that it has seen nearly four million jailbroken devices on its ad network, with 38% of those using at least one pirated application.

Why does Pinch Media get such a deep look into the devices that it can tell not only that the phone has been jailbroken, but what apps are on the phone and whether they are pirated or not!? This is way beyond reasonable and, in my mind at least, constitutes a serious privacy breach. If they can see the pirated/not pirated status of all the apps on the phone, how do I know they can't see into the apps - like contact lists, email, etc? Even if they can't, how would you feel about a website that gathered information about all the software (and the licensing) on your computer when you visited?

I find this deeply disturbing
 
Which is why we should all petition Apple to please reimpose DRM on all of the iTunes music downloads.

Obviously you have lived in a cave for the last few years and missed the part where DRM is known to be a huge disaster and was removed because it didn't help stop piracy at all.
 
Well i'm not happy to lose backgrounder, to lose my calendar on my home screen, to lose VOIP over 3G capability. None of these are available on the App Store. Give me these and i probably won't care about the lack of jailbreaking.

Personally i wouldn't buy an iPhone that can't be jailbreaked to give me these options.

Would you prefer if OSX had the same restrictions, all in the name of "stopping piracy".

I think this quote has meaning here:

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Backgrounder, home screen calendars or VOIP over 3G are not "essential liberties." Expecting to be paid for one's work is not "temporary safety". Nice try though.. ;)

As I said, I've no problem with anyone hacking their phones to enable extra functionality. In fact I find it a little disappointing that Apple, a company famous for making enabling technologies now seems to be spending more and more effort on restricting functionality.

I can understand why VOIP over 3G might be restricted - if you bought a subsidised phone with a VOIP restriction; but then want to remove that restriction then you should return the subsidy, IMO. The only reason we got cheaper iPhones was because they were subsidised by the networks who intended to recoup that money over the course of the contract.

But for me, app piracy is reason enough.
 
It would be a good thing, if we had a choice of carriers!

I have no issues with a non-jailbroken phone as long as I can buy the damn thing and connect it to any carrier I want.

AT&T is a hopeless carrier for 3G, everything from the coverage to the massive cost for roaming and god help you if you leave the country when you see your bill.

There is some hope though, Apple is opening up to more than a single carrier in some EU countries, and lets hope they also open up to T-mobile in US.

:cool:
 
The irony is that Apple is in the unique position of getting grief for making their platform MORE secure.

Given the diversity of apps it's hard to make a credible argument that Apple or its users are somehow suffering from the decision of keeping the platform closed. Certainly there have been trade offs, but as a former Palm and Windows Mobile user I prefer having a stable, secure, and user friendly experience. I definitely would not want to see Apple adopting the so-called open, crash prone, insecure experience of Windows Mobile, an experience that is still available to those who are considering jailbreaking their phones.
 
Backgrounder, home screen calendars or VOIP over 3G are not "essential liberties." Expecting to be paid for one's work is not "temporary safety". Nice try though.. ;)

So would you advocate this same DRM being applied to Mac OSX? It's easy for apple to implement. All Intel Mac's come with the necessary hardware. Sure you might not be able to run the program you wrote without a blessing from apple, but at least all those programmers who pay apple to "authorize" their apps will get paid.

If you argue for this on the iPhone then the same argument can be used for OSX.

As I said, I've no problem with anyone hacking their phones to enable extra functionality. In fact I find it a little disappointing that Apple, a company famous for making enabling technologies now seems to be spending more and more effort on restricting functionality.

Due to a few bad apples[pun intended] though I have to lose out.

I can understand why VOIP over 3G might be restricted - if you bought a subsidised phone with a VOIP restriction; but then want to remove that restriction then you should return the subsidy, IMO. The only reason we got cheaper iPhones was because they were subsidised by the networks who intended to recoup that money over the course of the contract.

I paid full whack for my iPhone to get it on Ready to Go. No subsidies here. I'm waiting for O2 to start handing out unlock codes.

Obviously you have lived in a cave for the last few years and missed the part where DRM is known to be a huge disaster and was removed because it didn't help stop piracy at all.

Tell that to apple with the App store DRM and all this lock down on the iPhone. Which is all, basically, DRM. Judging by all the apparent piracy on the iPhone it is probably working just as good there.
 
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