iPhone’s pirate problem

Pirate Dog Arr matey, there be a danger on the wireless waves.

A tool was recently released for the iPhone that breaks the copy protection on the AppStore apps, enabling redistribution of any application.  And it is designed to do this with a single button push.  The cracking tool is only available to jailbroken phones, as would any redistributed applications, but it poses a potentially troubling scenario.

The iPhone jailbreaking community has played a large part in the development of the wireless world.  Back when the iPhone was released, Apple’s stance was a staunch “no native apps.”  They felt it was enough to provide tools for iPhone customized web development.

It was a ragtag grouping of a few very clever individuals who found ways to build, install, and run applications on the iPhone without Apple’s permission. Continue reading “iPhone’s pirate problem”