

Hackulous Shuts Down, Taking Its iOS Piracy App Installous With It  - suhailpatel
http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/30/hackulous-deadpool-installous-shut-down/

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biot
This underscores the fact that piracy isn't about the money; it's about
availability and convenience. If only the app creators would make their apps
available on some kind of easy-to-use online store where installation is a
breeze, customers are automatically informed of updates they can download for
free, and all this is provided for a few bucks an app, we'd see nobody
resorting to using piracy apps like these.

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eyeareque
How would you improve on say, the Apple app store? What you've described is
what Apple has already created IMO.

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biot

      > What you've described is what Apple has already created IMO.
    

Exactly.

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spobo
This is definitely a good thing. Support the developers. It takes a lot of
time and effort to build an app. Surely a single dollar (usually) is not too
much to pay. Im' still surprised how cheap most apps are for my phone ;o

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hackerboos
The price of some apps is ridiculous though. I'm not defending pirates but
look how much Anki costs on the App Store whilst being free on Android.

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mikeash
$25 seems pretty reasonable to me if it's the sort of thing you find useful.
How is that "ridiculous"?

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hackerboos
Relative to the Android price. It seems unfair for iOS users to pay for
development of the platform across all platforms.

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mikeash
Funny how people get up in arms about price differences like this, yet nobody
_ever_ suggests that the price of the cheaper one should be raised to remedy
the situation.

Would the iOS price suddenly not be "ridiculous" if they charged $25 for the
Android version too?

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hackerboos
No, but why not go halfway? Lower the iOS price to half and raise the Android
price to the same as iOS.

~~~
mikeash
_Why_ go halfway? $25 seems like a decent price for this.

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josteink
While another App store (even used for pirated apps as well) is probably a
good thing, and having fewer sources of software (less competition) is bad, I
have to say: good riddance.

It wasn't exactly ethical, and even when used for semi-legitimate purposes
(obtaining software "not available" in your region) it was slow, cumbersome
and unreliable.

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homosaur
Honestly as a user, Installous totally sucked. The thing was rife with malware
and it was impossible to tell which apps were legit and which were malware. I
tried it a couple of time just to see what it was like (this was also before
widespread app reviews) and although you could grab apps for free, it wasn't
reliable or safe.

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coolnow
You tried a couple of times yet managed to come across enough malware to
describe it as such? I've been using Installous for a long time and have never
come across any "malware" on it.

Also, isn't iOS sandboxing designed to ensure no rogue apps cause havoc on the
system?

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mischanix
There's nothing to stop code in an ipa from escaping that sandbox if the code
isn't checked by Apple.

~~~
coolnow
And how would we know that has happened? The parent comment suggests it was
obvious which downloads were malware just by using Installous.

