cmaier has some good points. First of all, what we are talking about here is copyright infringement, it´s not piracy and it´s not theft in a legal sense. I have more often than not seen kids running around calling people "thieves" or "pirates", and i tell you what, this is what makes me mad. I´m not trying to downplay the issue, but i think we should at least call it what it is, an infringement of copyright.
From statistics we´ve also learned that the minority of iPhone users have jailbroken their devices, the majority hasn´t even done so and therefor can not use any program in an illegal way. Not everyone from this minority of jailbroken iDevice Users have hacked their device to download software illegally, there are some who did it to be able to use their phone at all (Think about China who hasn´t had the iPhone officially available as far as i know), or to install custom software (SBSettings, Backgrounder, No Rotate Plugin etc.)
While i agree that copyright infringement is a problem to a certain degree, i don´t think it it´s that huge of a problem some people want to make us believe. The opinions differ a lot around developers, i´ve seen comments by the developer of Exosyphen who has developed games for over 8 years, not only on the iDevices but also on the Palm and the PC. For him copyright infringement is a sale boost, as it creates awareness to his product for free.
So it´s really hard to say how much impact on lost sales copyright infringement really has, as we are dealing with hypothetical values. Some people might even download an illegal version, test it out, and then replace it by a legit copy from the App Store. It´s much more convenient to have regular updates and having the good feeling of supporting what you enjoy. Not all people are a bunch of little whining kids, who want to get everything for free. There are those among the users of illegal copies, yes, but i think they wouldn´t buy the product anyway.
I just think if you like it you should buy it.
Yes, that´s fair. If you like what you see, honor the work.
Cheers!