Comments on Oh no! Complicated stuff!: Apple needs to play cat and mouse with pirates, no...

Very good point. Excellent post

2010-05-07T22:43:49.197-07:00

Very good point. Excellent post

I think apple is more interested in stopping unloc...

2009-05-29T11:28:28.101-07:00

I think apple is more interested in stopping unlocks then pirates. Wasn't there a rumor that apple has to pay att back for every customer that leaves?

@Mario I liked the Trent Reznor comment. Rather f...

2009-05-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

@Mario I liked the Trent Reznor comment. Rather fitting seeing the issues with NIN ACCESS seemed to have gotten resolved quickly.

Well spoken. While I understand the not hurting a...

2009-05-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

Well spoken. While I understand the not hurting anyone else comment, I also think it's more important to mention the many legal rights US citizens have to enable 3rd party application support and distribution outside of Apple (sorry non-US users - I'm sure you have rights too :).

But more to your point, as a developer of independent software, we have modified our licensing schemes a number of times to help prevent (we currently have 10's of thousands of pirators at this very moment). It's almost unbelievable, given Apple's vast resources and "dedication" to its developers, to not have a stronger DRM position. And with all of their work in 3.0 - wouldn't a large firmware upgrade and required iTunes update be the proper time to do so?

I guess it all boils down to who Apple's listening to - perhaps if AT&T or Trent Reznor spoke out, the problem would be solved in a day or two.

2009-05-07T13:34:00.000-07:00

This comment has been removed by the author.

Well said.. This is Mr. Haklab and I'm the one...

2009-05-05T19:28:00.000-07:00

Well said.. This is Mr. Haklab and I'm the one doing the cat and mouse game instead of Apple but I think we developers will win.

<--insert shameless plug>

Check out my anti-apple piracy site at Haklab. I helped prevent lot of piracy.

And now.. presenting my other anti-piracy site:
Appulous (.org), and Hackulous.
<--/end shameless plug>

Great post. Couldn't have said it better myself.

2009-05-05T13:35:00.000-07:00

Great post. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Good post - all we need now is for Apple to actual...

2009-05-05T11:12:00.000-07:00

Good post - all we need now is for Apple to actually listen!

Haha, imagine we were evil...

2009-05-05T05:34:00.000-07:00

Haha, imagine we were evil...

I do understand where you are coming from, but I'm...

2009-05-05T04:30:00.000-07:00

I do understand where you are coming from, but I'm not entirely convinced Apple should spend it's time on pirates more then jailbreakers.

There is a culture epically prevalent on PC platforms of enhanced security mechanisms to protect software. This type of obfuscation could come of hardware or software means, from a dongle to a virtual machine envrioment made for code obfuscation.

The point is, no matter how advanced software or hardware protections one puts into a product, one will always fall short and someone will always break it open. It's true for the iPhone, it's true for any given protection system developed on the Mac or PC.

Disabling debugger attachments for encrypted apps would be a start, but it only narrows the pool of applicants to 'crack' that application smaller and smaller. The best illustration of this is the PC Game cracking scene, where they are put up against some of the most advanced CD Rom protections such as Securom and Safe disc (both of which uses the VM technique mentioned earlier) and application crackers who write fake drivers which fake dongles being present in FlexLM type authentication schemes (or any other number of schemes out there). They have the skills, and those skills are far beyond your average script kiddy.

I agree in principal, however I'd take it a step further and say that reasonable protections should be applied to both cases, but once it's cracked it is time to be safe in the knowledge that you've prevented the 14 year old with the downloaded 'l33t toolz' from cracking your application, and the casual pirate from stealing it, too.

True so very true, hope someone at Apple reads thi...

2009-05-05T01:46:00.000-07:00

True so very true, hope someone at Apple reads this, more so does something once read.

Great post! Really wish that Apple would listen to...

2009-05-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

Great post! Really wish that Apple would listen to this and apply some of the more basic protections