Service for pirating iOS apps abruptly closes, cites 'stagnant' community - Page 2

Originally Posted by capoeira4u 
I don't steal apps, but I'll stop jailbreaking the day Apple decides to put system shortcut (ex. wifi, bluetooth, airplane mode) onto their Notification Center.

I'm trying to wrap my head around someone that uses sub-iOS 6 by choice.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gazoobee 

I've been buying software since computers first existed and the number of times I could try it before I bought it I could count on zero fingers.  "Try before you buy" has never been the case with most things that you buy.  It's never been the case with movies or records or TV shows or software of any kind in my experience.  I'm sure you might come up with the odd case where this has happened, but by far the majority of software is sold sealed, as is, and non-returnable.  The only exception I can think of is one of those horrible games stores (thankfully disappearing lately), that buy and sell second hand game cartridges.

Really?  Maybe you haven't noticed, but nearly all major software houses offer trial versions of their software, including Apple.

Adobe

Apple

Microsoft

Propellerheads

Plus Xbox and PS3 demos

I could go on and on.  So in fact, its been fairly standard for years to offer trial versions of software.  The 15 minute refund window is definitely one of the advantages Google Play has over the App Store.  Yes, apps cost a fraction of the price of major software, but that's irrelevant.  The fact is this is a fairly standard business model that Apple choose not to follow for iOS.

Originally Posted by 4phun 
JAILBREAKING OR ROOTING ANY NEW PHONE OR TABLET IS ILLEGAL AS OF JAN 1, 2013.
As a matter of fact jail braking any tablet has always been illegal.

Nope. Unless they've changed something in the last two years.

EDIT: Hey. They changed something in the last two years.

I don't often say this but, uh, screw the law here. 

Yeah, I don't care. I think I'll rejailbreak my iPad, for the first time in about two years, just because.

Talk about out of touch. They obviously don't have cell phones.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apple ][ 

Good riddance.

 

As I've stated many times in the past, I still say that most people who jailbreak are losers and thieves, regardless of what some might claim. 

 

If you can't afford to purchase 99 cent apps, then go buy a shitty Android phone, you low class moron. 

You are 100% correct. Their arguments about having control over the device they "own" , wanting to "demo" an app before purchasing, and all the other so-called rationales for jailbreaking are simply smoke screens. The real reason is to steal. It's why to this day you cannot return a movie DVD for a refund. You can exchange a defective disc but that's all. It's the reason that DVD ripping software exists, not the stated excuse that someone wants to "backup" their collections.

Even myself , a bastion of moral virtue <extreme sarcasm here>, have succumbed in the past to renting a DVD and then ripping it to a hard drive. But my 1950's RomanCatholic upbringing (brainwashing?) made the guilt too much to bear. 

Let me guess, you are young?

Yes they have clearly changed the law again and you missed it.

There is no reason for the rooting (jailbreaking) that Congress temporarily allowed solely do to the non competitive cellular structure in the USA.

This provision allowed you to move among cellular companies who sold the same type of technology you had in your phone.

Now that everyone has moved to 4G and LTE no one can claim they are locked into one carrier.

In Sept 2012 it was made quite clear the exception is over as of January 2013.

Tablets and other digital devices were never included by Congress in the original jailbreak ruling.

Originally Posted by 4phun 
There is no reason for the rooting (jailbreaking) that Congress temporarily allowed solely due to the non competitive cellular structure in the USA.

Why? Your reason is what?

Except they quite plainly are, in every instance, on every carrier.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gazoobee 

This is a pretty lame argument if you ask me.  You're trying to make out (without really saying it explicitly), that "try before you buy" is a common thing in many other industries when it clearly isn't.  In particular, you get to try out a car before you buy it because it costs tens of thousands of dollars.  You don't get to try an app before you buy it because it only costs a couple of bucks.  

I've been buying software since computers first existed and the number of times I could try it before I bought it I could count on zero fingers.  "Try before you buy" has never been the case with most things that you buy.  It's never been the case with movies or records or TV shows or software of any kind in my experience.  I'm sure you might come up with the odd case where this has happened, but by far the majority of software is sold sealed, as is, and non-returnable.  The only exception I can think of is one of those horrible games stores (thankfully disappearing lately), that buy and sell second hand game cartridges.  

This recent idea that Apple "needs" to have a try before you buy system is just a meme that lacks any kind of factual basis or proof that it would do anything at all.  Importantly, it's a meme which originates with the people doing the stealing.  It's like their credo or something.  

It's closer to a popular misconception than any kind of fact or desirable outcome.  There is nothing at all that I have read or heard that would indicate to me that it would have any affect on theft at all.  I don't think anyone has even done the due diligence to look into the pros and cons of such a scheme, it's just accepted as "the answer" by the tech media without any real examination of the idea at all.  In other words it's a myth.  

I put it in the same category as those that say iPhone "needs" a bigger screen to compete, that OS X "needs" to go after to corporate users, and that Apple "needs" to make an x-Mac mini-tower computer.  
All myth.  All bullshit IMO. 

• 1Password for Windows — Free trial back in October. Bought in November on Black Friday. Happy purchase that wouldn't have happened if not for the trial. Regular price $50, bought it for $25. At $50 it wouldn't have been worth it to me, but at $25 it was. If not for the trial I would have continued using the free LastPass on my Windows servers.
  
• iVI — A great app for easily finding the appropriate metadata for your Movies and TV shows, updating it appropriately for iTunes, and adding it to iTunes. If it needs to be converted it does that, too. if the container and codec is compatible you can simply update the metadata Info, including the embedded image of the TV Show or Movie. A huge time saver. There is another great feature that if the codecs are completely compatible but the container is not it will only replace the container leaving the data along. This app only costs $10 but there website looks like it be a scam site and these apps never seem to work as well as advertised. They offer a trial version. It was well worth the $10. I would have pay as much as $50 for this app.
  
• iStat Menus — I have been using iStat Menus for years. Love that my Menu Bar can have a utilitarian use that allows me to quickly see how my system is performing at a glance. I'm on iStat Menus 3. The newly released iStat Menus 4 is a paid upgrade. The cost is $16 but there was a 14 day trial option. I tried. I didn't see one thing that made me want to get the new version. Replaced it with my licensed version 3 app.
  
• 1Password 4 on iOS — I have the previous version for my iPad and iPhone. Don't recall how much I paid. It works well, I would like the new version but I have doubts that $8 is worth just getting what appear to be a few UI changes. If there were new iOS APIs that allowed 1Password to integrate better with the system that would likely push me over the edge, but from what can I see there is nothing in that's worth $8. Could I be very wrong about that? Absolutely! But without a trial version I'll likely never know.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/DMCA-Gets-Dumber-Smartphone-JailBreaking-Illegal-in-2013-121800

Illegal to now jailbreak any tablet.

Illegal to jailbreak any phone bought after Jan 1, 2013.

Also now illegal to "modify" your games console or to make copies of DVDs you own!

Who the hell just took the reigns at the DMCA! 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evilution 

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/DMCA-Gets-Dumber-Smartphone-JailBreaking-Illegal-in-2013-121800

 

Illegal to now jailbreak any tablet.

Illegal to jailbreak any phone bought after Jan 1, 2013.

 

Also now illegal to "modify" your games console or to make copies of DVDs you own!

 

Who the hell just took the reigns at the DMCA! 

Sort of an academic argument now wouldn't you say since hackers have all but admitted that iOS 6.0.x going forward will be impossible to jailbreak. No untethered jailbreak exists even today for iOS 6. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by LordJohnWhorfin 

That would be me... Untethered jailbreak is not available for my phone. That means I would lose My3G (which gives me FaceTime over 3G on my grandfathered unlimited AT&T account), MyWi (USB, bluetooth and WiFi tethering), SBSettings (instant access to settings), TruPrint (printing to non-AirPrint printers) and a bunch of other Cydia apps -- which I all paid for.

So you remain forever frozen in time as technology passes you by. Stuck forever on iOS 5 and whichever iPhone or iPad you have. Or just move to the gloriously open platform and repurchase all of those apps you paid for.

Originally Posted by lkrupp 
Sort of an academic argument now wouldn't you say since hackers have all but admitted that iOS 6.0.x going forward will be impossible to jailbreak. No untethered jailbreak exists even today for iOS 6. 

Indeed. While this new ruling applies primarily to the Android crowd (who, in addition to being thieves, are now performing FURTHER illegal acts by "enjoying their platform to its "fullest""), the "you can't unlock anymore" is bull frigging crap. It's quite apparent the telecoms paid someone off to do that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rayz 


The average iOS developer expects his customers to run the latest version of his software on a recent build of iOS. If he has to support multiple versions of the software then his job becomes an order of magnitude more difficult.
People seem to forget that the average iOS user is not a geek; running old versions of code is not something they do. As soon as they receive a notification they update.
Multiple version support would make things needlessly complicated for everyone.

You've misunderstood the proposal.  A developer would have to do nothing.  The proposal isn't that an app would have listed iOS versions 1.x, 2.x, 3.x... 6.x; but rather the previous versions of that app would still be available, and their respective pages would be viewable.

Here's an example.  Let's say we have an app called VersEx and we had released version 1.0 and it required iOS 5.x.  Then when iOS 6.x came out, we made a bunch of modifications to VersEx and upgraded it to 2.0 which requires iOS 6.x.  Well, that would kind of suck for the 45% of users who don't have iOS 6.x because they can't upgrade or don't want to upgrade.  As a developer, you can't do anything about it other than release the different versions of the apps under different titles (which has negative repercussions). 

Under what I proposed, the developer would have to do nothing.  The consumer could do nothing if they were running iOS 6, and just get the latest version.  However, someone running iOS 5.x, for whatever reason, could still purchase and install version 1.0 of VersEx.

Suppose version 1.0 and 2.0 of VersEx ran on iOS 4.x through 6.x.  Again, developers and consumers could still do what they do today if they want.  However, if someone is unhappy with version 2.0 of the app for whatever reason, they could downgrade to version 1.0.  Likewise, people would be able to view each version page to see how well maintained an app is before buying.

The bottom line is that if you're against the proposal for whatever reason, don't worry, you'd never be affected by it, whether you're a user or developer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by emig647 

Well I'm an a$$hole then. I've done it and am proud of it. Know why? Odds are I've paid for more apps than most. There isn't a demo system with iOS. You have to blindly purchase apps. Some devs put out free versions, and I applaud them. I never pirate if there is a demoable version of sorts. There are many in my group that are the same way.
Either way, IMO, the scene has died down a ton since iOS 6. That's fine and not a big deal. Just wish we could get demos and ad versions easily.
Btw, I'm also a developer which is how I learned about these methods.

You don't get to see the beginning of the movie when you go to the cinema (and trailers, well those are the equivalent of the screenshots in the AppStore). I expect you won't pretend that you first pirate and then go and pay for the movie?

The problem is with curation. I've seen too many disgruntled friends (or their younger brothers, mostly) who bought stupid apps (like those ridiculous squeletal scanners or other "magical" apps that actually do nothing, or very little). You can't get a refund on that and in my opinion they should NOT have ever been approved. To my opinion, curation only protects people from viruses and pornography/political dissent. (Of course, if you're like me among those who think the latter should be a free choice -- freedom of speech, political opinion, religion etc, it's a minus...) However, curation should protect you from those "shame-apps".

I don't pirate, I think those who do it are a$$holes, and I also think Apple is wrong applying curation to politics and pornography, but not to "shame-apps", even though their terms&conditions actually pretend they do.

For those who doubt the existence of those shame-apps, go to the AppStore, in LifeStyle or Fun... 

Good point for Apple though, the situation seems to have massively improved over the last two years, I expect they were aware of the annoyance to users and did part of what has to be done.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SolipsismX 


It's not ever true as stated. For it to be true every jailbreaker's goal must be to steal apps. Since there a plethora of paid and free apps on Cydia that allow functionality that is well beyond what Apple offers one can't reasonable claim that "the real reason is to steal all the utilities and apps "are simply smoke screens" unless one want to argue that these developers are making (and selling) these app and utilities as some sort of circuitous plan to fool Apple.

IMHO, that's why people should stop pirating and dissing Android: you want freedom of modding your system: use Android. You want a secure, safe, highly controlled and curated system where all choices are dictated by designers, go iPhone. Hence, it's not wise to jailbreak.

Obviously, I'm just stating my opinion, not pretending my opinion is a universal rule, and if you want to jailbreak it's your problem, not mine ^^

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta 


This is misleading. You can demo a car - IF THE DEALER ALLOWS YOU TO. You can try a physical product and then return it if you don't like it IF THE RETAILER ALLOWS YOU TO.
You don't get to arbitrarily define the terms of the deal. IF the seller doesn't allow you to try it before you buy, then you have no right to just take it without permission - whether it's a physical product or software.
If there's software that you want to try before you buy it, talk to the developer. Ask them to make a demo version. Or read the reviews. Or ask someone who owns it. Taking it without permission is not an acceptable solution.

jragosta, you are obviously are not aware of most states consumer laws which to allow people to buy things and return them within a certain period of time at no cost to the consumer. In my state they that is 3 days including a car and a house. people are allowed 3 days to terminate a purchase contract. Even is the dealer does not allow you to demo a car it is not in their best interest since it more costly to have them leave with a car and return it in 3 days at that point it is a used car and can not be sold new.

The same goes for software, and the problem is caused by the all the apps which cost $0.99 at the price developers do not feel they need to provide a return path. Also reading most review is worthless since most people complain just to complain, they do not provide any sort of worthless review. 

If consumers wanted to fight back they could since most states have consumer protections which allowed them to return what they bough and at it will take is one class action law suite from a state with good consumer protections to force developers to take returns or apple to change the model. I would recommend that Apple change since we all know what happens when lawyers and the government gets involved. 

Originally Posted by sr2012 
Curious, what are those illegal acts? I would like to compare them to what I've done.

Rooting, for one. It's illegal now.

Originally Posted by Techboy 
A simpler explanation could be jailbreak iOS users are finally coming to terms with paying for most apps that ranges from $1-$5. Besides, each day there are so many free app promotes....it renders hacking for free apps plain silly. 

 

There will always be idiots.

And that wasn't the case before? Why is 600,000 apps different from 100,000? Or even 60,000?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 

 

Rooting, for one. It's illegal now.

Only in the US as far as I'm aware, here in the UK and Europe its perfectly legal to jailbreak/root a device you own.

As has been mentioned in these forums many times, thankfully the rest of the world is not governed by US laws.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 

 

Nope. Unless they've changed something in the last two years.

EDIT: Hey. They changed something in the last two years.

 

I don't often say this but, uh, screw the law here. 

 

Yeah, I don't care. I think I'll rejailbreak my iPad, for the first time in about two years, just because.

 

Talk about out of touch. They obviously don't have cell phones.

WTF. I'm quite amazed at the United States here. Isn't it supposed to be the country of freedom and all?

Originally Posted by sr2012 
Nope, still legal, even in the United States Of Freedom (apparently not for tablets though)

Then I don't see how jailbreaking would be illegal.

Originally Posted by sr2012 
Yup, jailbreaking iOS as far as I know is not illegal. But jailbreaking iOS and rooting Android is ~illegal~ in the USA for tablets.

So just tablets… well, why did it matter on phones, and how do tablets differ? Operationally it's the same. The OS modification purpose hasn't changed. The only meaningfully illegalized thing is unlocking… 

Quote:

Originally Posted by sr2012 


Yup, jailbreaking iOS as far as I know is not illegal. But jailbreaking iOS and rooting Android is ~illegal~ in the USA for tablets. That's my current understanding based on that Wikipedia link I provided.

That is a prime example of why you should be careful viewing Wikipedia, it is wrong.

No court is going allow you to plead that you saw it on Wikipedia and thought you were innocent.

Do an Internet search limiting yourself to the last month for more accurate info.

Also avoid android fanboy websites as they're filled with incorrect and wishful dreams on the legality of rooting and jailbreaking new phones and tablets, all now  violations of the digital CopyRight law after Jan 1, 2013

But who am I to be concerned with the current copyright law? Did you notice that a convicted 45 year old man who was involved in aiding and abetting copyright violations via the Internet and torrents got a sentence of five years in federal prison yesterday? 

I bet he never saw that one coming either.

Think of the world's governments as beasts with teeth. Stir them up by defying them and you have only yourself to blame if they suddenly turn on you and rip you up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4phun 

 

That is a prime example of why you should be careful viewing Wikipedia, it is wrong.

 

No court is going allow you to plead that you saw it on Wikipedia and thought you were innocent.

 

Do an Internet search limiting yourself to the last month for more accurate info.

Also avoid android fanboy websites as they're filled with incorrect and wishful dreams on the legality of rooting and jailbreaking new phones and tablets, all now  violations of the digital CopyRight law after Jan 1, 2013

You're posting incorrect information 4phun. Phones have been exempted according to the Copyright Office.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/jailbreaking-now-legal-under-dmca-for-smartphones-but-not-tablets/

It will not be a violation to simply jailbreak or root your phone, but it's a no-go for tablets.

If you wish to verify that for yourself by digging into the legalese read the original source document from the US Copyright Office linked here, specifically beginning page 12.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2012-26308.pdf

EDIT: Of special note, if you feel the need to rip a DVD you already own to play on your iPod or iPad, that will be illegal now.  Thank goodness we have a Copyright Office to put a stop to the blatant theft perpetrated by untold numbers of iDevice owners.

/s

Originally Posted by Chrislove22 
How long before someone else produces hardware with no restrictions on which operating system and carrier you use that can actually compete with Apple (making this ruling irrelevant and obsolete)?

Is that even possible? Android and WP8 require different buttons for use; could they even run on the same hardware?