Whats your View of Cracked Apps?

[kushed]

Since apple is already making so much money from just their hardware, do you feel bad for downloading cracked apps? i mean personally i have not performed this process on my mac. I do, however; have a JB iPhone 4 and use appcake. But i dont download apps that are crazy expensive (GPS apps that are like 80$) i do have a few 2 dollar apps that i borrowed from another user. I am just wondering what your stance is on the cracked App Store.
Another thing, i understand the very expensive apps like Logic and XSan. That is rediculous to steal hundreds and thousands of dollars in software, but like when they have a free version of a game and let you play 10 seconds of it with all these adds and then ask you to buy it for 3$ should i feel bad if i dont want to pay for it? (Again, i havent done this) im just saying i dont feel like i should have to pay for little games (and again, big time software is a completely different story).

Lets hear everyones input on this HackStore!!!!

 

[huythanhv2]

While it might not hurt Apple, it surely hurts the developers.

 

[hehe299792458]

let's see how fast this get deleted by the mods.... I bet on 10 min or less of this post.

 

[kushed]

While it might not hurt Apple, it surely hurts the developers.

how do you figure? most developers get paid to make the app, not on how many times its used. so they get their pay from apple before it actually goes on the store, for one.

and secondly most third party developers make their apps for free. well the cool ones anyways

thirdly, apple makes so much in iTunes i think its just silly to charge us 2$ for a game that ends in 15 minutes.

 

[David-fr]

how do you figure? most developers get paid to make the app, not on how many times its used. so they get their pay from apple before it actually goes on the store, for one.

and secondly most third party developers make their apps for free. well the cool ones anyways

thirdly, apple makes so much in iTunes i think its just silly to charge us 2$ for a game that ends in 15 minutes.

Dont like it don't buy it. You like it pay for it, nothing is free.

 

[kushed]

Dont like it don't buy it. You like it pay for it, nothing is free.

what if i like it enough to play for 5 minutes then realizes it sucks. does apple have a 14 day return with apps

 

[Peter Maurer]

how do you figure? most developers get paid to make the app, not on how many times its used. so they get their pay from apple before it actually goes on the store, for one.

and secondly most third party developers make their apps for free. well the cool ones anyways

Dang, I'm not cool.

By the way, the part about developers getting paid a lump sum by Apple before the apps go public is pure fiction. You're either just making up excuses as you go, or you've been seriously had.

 

[Nein01]

The good developers are not in it for the money; they're in it to share something amazing with other users. Making your software free is the right thing to do, and then simply ask for a donation (like transmission and others do). Those who can afford to will; those who can't, won't. Even major apps like final cut, logic and the adobe suite should be this way.. Imagine how much more content would be created if those were more accessible to the general public - like $20 instead of $2000 (look at toon boom for example )

If pro apps were around the same price as a video game, do you know how many people would actually BUY them instead of pirating? A LOT. Poor artists like me could own legit copies of our favorite programs and the developers would be making even more money for their work. Everyone would benefit, but unfortunately that's not the case the way things are now..

 

[Gaura Mohana]

i think the opposite to the OP
If the app is very cheap (like 1-2 USD or something like that) and its worth it, and I can - i do buy it
I ended up spending over $300 in the app store JUST for apps for my iPod Touch 3g in one year
I do pirate all expensive programs though - over 10-20 is just crazy man.... photoshop, etc = all cracked
so far on my 2 month old MBP '13 every single app i have is either free or cracked lol..... Same on iPad - either iPad version of apps which i actually bought for the iPod then, or else Cracked...
and btw I hope to develop apps one day - i'm currently trying to learn C, then OBjective C, and then iOS development.

 

[akicebear]

The good developers are not in it for the money; they're in it to share something amazing with other users. Making your software free is the right thing to do, and then simply ask for a donation (like transmission and others do). Those who can afford to will; those who can't, won't. Even major apps like final cut, logic and the adobe suite should be this way.. Imagine how much more content would be created if those were more accessible to the general public - like $20 instead of $2000 (look at toon boom for example )

If pro apps were around the same price as a video game, do you know how many people would actually BUY them instead of pirating? A LOT. Poor artists like me could own legit copies of our favorite programs and the developers would be making even more money for their work. Everyone would benefit, but unfortunately that's not the case the way things are now..

The world owes you nothing.

If you think developers can offer top-notch productivity apps, games, etc without large budgets, well, you should get in there and start offering said apps for a tenth or hundred of the cost and corner the market. But you won't, because these programs do require massive investments in time from experts, which is costly.

Let's call a spade a spade; if unwilling to pay for a program you use because you think the price is unfair, that's no different than walking into a store and taking some merchandise because you feel their prices are unreasonable. This is technically called stealing.

 

[ZilogZ80]

Poor artists like me could own legit copies of our favorite programs and the developers would be making even more money for their work.

Why should you get your hobby subsidised? No-one pays for me to go bowling!

 

[Hansr]

If I find an application to expensive I always go to http://alternativeto.net/ instead of pirating, you can generally always find and free and/or open source alternative to what you were looking for.

 

[Derango]

how do you figure? most developers get paid to make the app, not on how many times its used. so they get their pay from apple before it actually goes on the store, for one.

and secondly most third party developers make their apps for free. well the cool ones anyways

thirdly, apple makes so much in iTunes i think its just silly to charge us 2$ for a game that ends in 15 minutes.

This is junk. Apple pays out developers a percentage of the purchase price of each app when a purchase is made. They don't get paid to make the app, they get paid based on actual purchases.

So yes. You're hurting the developer.

Stop pirating software.

 

[wct097]

how do you figure? most developers get paid to make the app, not on how many times its used. so they get their pay from apple before it actually goes on the store, for one.

Where did you come up with this nonsense? Developers get paid based on sales. If you don't buy it, they don't get paid.

The good developers are not in it for the money; they're in it to share something amazing with other users. Making your software free is the right thing to do, and then simply ask for a donation (like transmission and others do). Those who can afford to will; those who can't, won't. Even major apps like final cut, logic and the adobe suite should be this way.. Imagine how much more content would be created if those were more accessible to the general public - like $20 instead of $2000 (look at toon boom for example )

Do you think development is magic? Someone has an idea and *poof*, they have a product they should be 'giving' away? The 'good' developers don't give anything away, and developers need to make money too. It's not like we can sit around coding 10 hours a day for free, then go work at McDonald's to pay the mortgage. There is ALWAYS an angle when something is free. It's either an effort to get individuals to use their app to pressure corps to license the app, or it's another way to get you to use their service.

Firefox is free. Google donates to the non-profit that develops it. Developers get paid. Google gets the default search provider spot. More people use Google to search. Google gets more ad revenue.

The opensource community is great, but the reality is that if development takes time, and full time developers need to make money. The money has to come from somewhere. If a talented developer elects to give away their time and go the starving artist route, that's their choice. Good luck paying for broadband and a development machine without making money.

If pro apps were around the same price as a video game, do you know how many people would actually BUY them instead of pirating? A LOT. Poor artists like me could own legit copies of our favorite programs and the developers would be making even more money for their work. Everyone would benefit, but unfortunately that's not the case the way things are now..

There are alternatives. You don't have to use photoshop to do great work. Thinking Adobe should give you software is pretty arrogant.

 

[Ca$hflow]

Curiously I wonder what percent of developers revenue comes from iAd that apple has built into the iOS? Surely the free apps do create some sort of revenue. As an example there are folks on youtube that create free quality entertainment/content that has value and therefore google pays for it's popularity by the hits on their ads I believe there can be a system that can produces free apps and the developer gets rewarded.

 

[Macmel]

Let me get this right...
If I were a developer (which I'm not), what some of you mean is:

- Pay for your education to become a programmer/developer or at least spend a lot of time trainig yourself in these matters.

- Have a good idea, develop it, program it and put it in the App store.

- Wait for people to be kind enough to pay for your idea.

That's stupid. It's like saying that good mechanics are the ones that just charge you for the parts, or good taxi drivers are the ones that live just on tips.
You work, you get paid. Everywhere. Full stop.
If you want to give something for free, it's your problem (or your way to become known so people would pay for future releases), but it's stupid to try to impose that on everybody

 

[slu]

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Most points have already been covered. I bet the OP is a kid, so I can cut him a little slack. Or at least I hope he is a kid because he, and others in this thread, are naive.

When did America's youth become such entitled crybabies? I am 34 and this culture of stealing music, movies, games, and software didn't really exist when I was younger. There certainly was piracy, but it was much more rare and people certainly didn't have the attitude that it wad their RIGHT to have some form of entertainment, even if they could not afford it. People that were pirates were aware they were stealing.

As was said above, if you can't afford something, or think it is too expensive, you need to do without or save up to get it. End of story. Any other "justification" you come up with for stealing is bull.

And maybe if all you pirates paid for your software, it would be cheaper for the rest of us. The cost of piracy is built in to the cost those of us with integrity that pay. Also, I would bet you don't even use a lot of this software you steal. You are just collecting it to say that you have it, so what is even the point? Does this behavior make you feel like you are in some way "sticking it to the man"? Because in most cases you are not.

 

[squeakr]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)

I am 34 and this culture of stealing music, movies, games, and software didn't really exist when I was younger. There certainly was piracy, but it was much more rare and people certainly didn't have the attitude that it wad their RIGHT to have some form of entertainment, even if they could not afford it.

A

I am almost 40, so I grew up in somewhat the same time frame as you. Piracy was rampant back then, it was just not thought of as such. I remember seeing an episode on 60 minutes about this fact in the 80's where they did a study and the media sold the most were blank cassette tapes (VHS, BETA, and standard audio cassettes). They played them and said, what is so enticing about the snow playing and the hissing sound?? Nothing!! They were making a point that piracy was rampant. We all copied our friends tapes and had library of these copied items (remember renting a video tape and copying for your library since you liked the movie?), but thought little about it as the copy was of such reduced quality that we felt we weren't really cheating anything and we would usually buy a legit copy when we had the dough. It is the ease and quality that has made piracy such a concern, as we no longer need to buy a legit copy to get the quality we are missing.

Having said that I don't agree with piracy and feel that if it continues in this way, people will not want to develop and the well will go dry. Support your developers.

 

[mishari84]

not different from theft
if someone doesnt have money , it is not an excuse to steal

 

[Kebabselector]

I can understand the argument where you get a cracked app to try (if no trial is available) and if it works for you then buy it. I often do this with music, if I like it I'll buy it, if not it gets deleted (saves me using a listening pod at a retail store).

 

[slu]

I am almost 40, so I grew up in somewhat the same time frame as you. Piracy was rampant back then, it was just not thought of as such. I remember seeing an episode on 60 minutes about this fact in the 80's where they did a study and the media sold the most were blank cassette tapes (VHS, BETA, and standard audio cassettes). They played them and said, what is so enticing about the snow playing and the hissing sound?? Nothing!! They were making a point that piracy was rampant. We all copied our friends tapes and had library of these copied items (remember renting a video tape and copying for your library since you liked the movie?), but thought little about it as the copy was of such reduced quality that we felt we weren't really cheating anything and we would usually buy a legit copy when we had the dough. It is the ease and quality that has made piracy such a concern, as we no longer need to buy a legit copy to get the quality we are missing.

Having said that I don't agree with piracy and feel that if it continues in this way, people will not want to develop and the well will go dry. Support your developers.

If I remember correctly, you couldn't rent a VHS tape and copy it, as there was copy protection and to get around that you would need some special hardware. My family bought tons of blank VHS tapes and cassettes, but we used them to time shift TV shows, for home movies, for mix tapes, and to copy our records (later cds) to casette to listen to in the car and in our walkmen. Again, I am not saying piracy didn't exist back then, but I don't think it was rampant as you put it. I would say it was a niche if anything else.

So I guess what I am saying is that my anecdote is better than yours!

 

[squeakr]

Only later on (toward the end of the life of the VCR) did they add the copyright protection that required a special machine to decode. Early on it was just connect the two VCR's and let 'er rip. It is a little known fact but time shifting is also only allowed for one viewing only, and only by the recorder within their time zone. When you trade that tape with someone or take to another time zone, it is piracy as well. Mix tapes or moving to another media are copying and therefor piracy (as there was no right in the early copyright laws for archival purposes or media shifting, so even though you owned it copying it was violation of copyright laws). We didn't know these things back then and it wasn't considered a big deal, but it shows that piracy was more widespread than we thought and quite rampant back then (it is the years of this common practice that have caused such problems in the piracy laws).

 

[wct097]

Curiously I wonder what percent of developers revenue comes from iAd that apple has built into the iOS? Surely the free apps do create some sort of revenue. As an example there are folks on youtube that create free quality entertainment/content that has value and therefore google pays for it's popularity by the hits on their ads I believe there can be a system that can produces free apps and the developer gets rewarded.

I cannot speak to iAds, as I have not started porting my Android app to iOS yet (I'm learning now). My Android app.... which is amusingly named the same as your forum handle.... makes peanuts on ad revenue. Granted I don't have a million downloads like Angry Birds, but with a half million ad impressions a month it would take me 10 years to pay for the MBP I just bought. The paid version of the app has about 25x fewer users/downloads and makes 3-4x the revenue in sales that the free app makes in ad revenue.

 

[ZilogZ80]

Curiously I wonder what percent of developers revenue comes from iAd that apple has built into the iOS? Surely the free apps do create some sort of revenue. As an example there are folks on youtube that create free quality entertainment/content that has value and therefore google pays for it's popularity by the hits on their ads I believe there can be a system that can produces free apps and the developer gets rewarded.

I would much rather pay a reasonable sum & have no ads.

 

[zincaloy]

I just pay for my software nowadays. Mac, windows or iOS. I always used to install cracked versions and whatnot, but honestly I don't want to put to much time in it anymore and don't mind paying money to use something.
Maybe it's because I have a steady disposable income now, or my morals changed over time. I don't know.

Anyhow I think it's fair for the developers to just buy a license instead of pirating it. If everyone pirates a certain program it just dies because the developer doesn't earn a dime.

Sometimes it bothers me i pay for everything. I for instance paid for NotifyApp and used it for about 6 months, then sparrow came along and I use that now. I still have my notifyApp licence but no longer using it.Sure I've used it for some time and was happy with it but the licenses are just sitting there in my password manager now. But it's more of a mental thing.

I also have quite a few double registration keys because some software bundles overlap with each other. Seems wasteful.

What really pissed me off is that the guys from Acrylic made Wallet an App Store only application, without offering any support for the people who bought the pre-appstore version. I e-mailed them, but recieved no response. Kinda makes you sad you actually paid 20 bucks or something for an app that you can now buy again trough a different channel if you want further updates.

Don't use the Mac Appstore much. Many useless ports from iOS apps, and little software titles that i don't already have licenses to.