iOS app piracy soars

While many called BS on the whole "we do it for trials" aspect -- and who can blame them? -- that is, in fact, how this all started. A small group of people on IRC and a forum, who figured out how astonishingly easy it was to dump the entire unencrypted executable from RAM, who shared apps among each other because those little $1-5 purchases added up to a lot when the apps proved misrepresented and worthless. Back then, it was far more common that reviews were gamed and descriptions were blatantly false, and 'lite' versions were quite rare.

I eventually left when that dynamic became an obvious foregone conclusion, and only a very small handful of us continued to purchase the apps that we intended to keep. Frustratingly enough, those who remained and admitted behind closed doors that they were in it for the free apps kept up that mantra, so it became far more of a joke than a meaningful message. I'd have loved to see Apple innovate and find a way to offer developers an easy method of providing time or usage-limited trials, but their response was to dump money into legal rather than R&D.

This article is really nothing new; nothing has changed much from a standpoint of the piracy or Apple's reaction to it since Appulous launched, except Apple's methods are more streamlined and so are the pirates'. However, this article makes the same misleading assumption that all the articles of the past made: They assume that every pirated app is a missed sale.

When you report that 92% of your application's installs are pirated copies, the implication is strong that you've missed out on 92% of sales. That's simply not the case. Many people -- and let's be realistic with the demographic, many young teens who may not even have access to purchase apps on their own -- install these apps just because they're free. If piracy weren't as easily available, I have no doubt that the 92% figure would shrink in direct proportion to the number of installs. Reporting otherwise is wholly inaccurate, and exaggerates the impact that this community has had. And I say that as someone who hasn't supported the community and in fact has spoken out against it for years.

Appulous was an education for me. It taught me about running seriously high-traffic sites, and query optimization and caching algorithms unlike anything I thought I'd ever dig into. Over the past five years that's transported me professionally into a great position where I get to coach dev teams through that kind of work daily, and continue innovating and learning about scalable design. As a vehicle for rapid improvement in my trade, it was a fantastic opportunity. But as for the the lasting impact my contributions have had on the topic and on indie developers, I'm deeply regretful, and disappointed. Apptrackr's proved that if it weren't me, it would have been someone else; it's just a shame that the agenda has switched so obviously from pushing for a better app store to enabling single-tap piracy -- regardless of the _actual_ impact that might have on sales.

'99% of all apps have been cracked!' != '99% of all app downloads are theft'

But what % of the total user-base actually pirate apps? That is the more important figure.

As an aside: I've "educated" a few acquaintances re: pirating apps on their jailbroken devices. They indicated they getting apps for "free" was a benefit of jailbreaking. I responded by telling them that many of the apps they'd jailbroken were not built by large corporations, but actually indie dev houses or even lone developers. When they realised they weren't 'sticking it to The Man' they appeared to boast a little less about this particular benefit.

Whether it actually changed their behaviour is another thing.

Edit: I wasn't fully informed. They first made it free on Android, but they made it free on iOS a week later, giving the same reason. From Daring Fireball: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/23/dead-trigger