The insights so far into this conversation have been amazing, can't wait to see what others say as well.
My primary concern and point, which I should have probably made more clear, isn't necesarily that I was missing out on $900 for myself. I understand that not everyone who pirates the app will buy it, that's a given. However, it's an interesting argument for me now that I'm sitting on the developer side of the fence for once and have to deal with piracy as an attack on me.
Again, my more important point here is that with the App Store, it's not huge companies with billions in revenues who are seeing these losses. Instead, it's the college kid like me who really misses the $100 if it's stolen by piracy. Obviously the 4000 units wouldn't result in that many missed sales, but that's only in 5 hours. Throughout the app life time how many pirate copies will get passed around? 10,000? 20,000? 50,000? I mean, I'm no expert on what it will be, but it's important still to note that maybe 1 out of 100 people who pirate would have thought about giving a dollar and at that super super small fraction of potential customers, I still lose out on $500 which would go along way toward providing school books, car insurance, etc.
Anyways, that's just part of my argument. Thanks again guys for comments and can't wait to read more. If you haven't checked out the article, here's a link <snip> If you could consider a digg, it would be greatly greatly appreciated so that hopefully we can get the word out about how this hurts guys like myself, you, or any other indie developer who lurks on these forums.