Demanding free trials of iPhone app

sqrPi Demanding free trials of iPhone app.Apple,Inc Geek | Written by Kay | Leave a Comment

Like what I found in this article, the app store has a lot to solve. Trials for apps are not easy as preview of music in iTunes music store. Trials can sometimes be unlocked in a much easier way, which may simply result direct piracy rather than boosting the sale. →Link

The potential piracy of iPhone apps

sqrPi The potential piracy of iPhone apps.Apple,Inc Geek | Written by Kay | 2 Comments

Disclaimer: We do not support piracy of any kind. As developers ourselves, we know the effort others have put to make those apps available. We strongly encourage you to purchase legit apps from the App Store. Our intention, simply driven by curiosity, is to make sure Apple is taking enough measure to protect developers, not the other way around. We will delete this post if it ever directly leads to piracy.

Just like its big brothers, iPhone is also a platform that piracy will eventually take place. The question is how hard it can be to pirate softwares for the iPhone and what measures Apple will take to prevent it.
For now, Apple uses Signing Certificate as it’s been proven to be a secure standard(Vista, for example).
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After poking around with the new App store, I discovered that, by renaming the downloaded app file from *.ipa to *.zip and unzipping it, you will be able to get the app package. Now if you have a jailbroken iPhone, you can simply upload the app to your iPhone. As I’m sure you can’t just upload this file to your iPhone and simply run it, the FairPlay Version 2 DRM that Apple is using for these apps is not hard to hack. I tried to install Remote using this method, the app shows up in iPhone’s Laucher but it won’t run. I also purchased the game Enigmo, and tried to unpack it and upload it to my iPhone. It shows up in the Launcher but it still wouldn’t run.

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But the failure might just simply because of my iPhone is still running on 1.0.2. I will later install 2.0 firmware and test it out. It will not work most likely, but trying to find a solution will be on my list.
Either way, the bigger the app store grows, the sooner Apple will have to fight piracy to protect the developers who are paying 30% of their revenues to Apple.
Update: A user at ipodtouchfans.com has found out that “application can be traded”.

I took my friends ipod, on HIS COMPUTER. NO iTunes account watsoever, and sync my MonkeyBall.ipa to his ipod and it works fine!!!!

No iTunes account needed! just the ipa! I am not encouraging this illegal behavior nor am i providing a guide on how to do it. just making you aware of apples flaws.

-John

This is truly terrifying.
Update 2: There is an iTunesMetadata.plist file in the unzipped folder, it appears to contain the app and your iTunes account information. It seems that iTunes checks your shopping list to determine if the app is transferable to other account. Which means *.ipa is probably for packaging reasons, iTunes extracts the *.app folder off it and loads them on your phone(which is associated with the same iTunes account, just like the way iPod handles the music you download from iTunes music store). So if they are DRM encrypted, the key to decrypt them must be available in the phone somewhere, just like cracking the FairPlay DRM of music from iTunes music store.
Also, every app packages appear to have two additional folders(see the picture above), a _CodeSignature folder(Signature key), and a SC_Info folder(don’t know what this folder is for yet). The CodeResources file is an XML file(Property list) that contains a signature for each file.
This means they are indeed signed, which also means it may be cracked by patching the iPhone OS to ignore signatures.

It may be reasonable for iTunes to check the apps everytime when you sync to make sure they are legit.
Still, the only way we suggest is to purchase from the App Store.

Update 3: It seems App Store has a lot of unsettled questions.

What exactly does Fairplay for apps mean?
Apple has stated that they’ll apply Fairplay protection to applications purchased through the Apple store, but we don’t know what that means. Will the software be tied to a single device, and if so, what happens when the user gets a new iPhone? Can this software be backed up and later recovered? As seen in Edward Spodick’s comment on my previous article, users are quite wary of their software being tied to one device.

How will developers get customer information?
Right now, when we sell software to a customer, we get all manner of information. We can track visitors, hits, downloads, and more. We also get a name and email address we can use to contact the customer later, if needed. Will we get any of this from the App Store? If so, what pieces of it?
How will support be handled?

What about trials?
We provide free trials of all our software for Mac and Windows. Just like test-driving a car, you can test our software, before you buy it. The goal here is to make sure our users know just what they’re getting, and that it will perform as expected. How will we accomplish this in the App Store? Can we have free software that’s just a trial, and then link it to a paid version?

How will refunds be handled?
Even with our free trials, we occasionally need to issue a refund to our users. As an independent developer, we can handle this on our own, but what happens with the App Store? Can we make this happen? Further, can users go directly through Apple to receive a refund, without ever interacting with the developer? For that matter, will there be refunds at all? With music and movies purchased from Apple, there’s no obvious way to get a refund. If a user has a problem though, we don’t want them to be left holding the bag and hating us.
How do we give out review copies?
We often provide free licenses to journalists and other people to whom we’d like to give a free copy of our software. To do this, we can just generate a license key and provide it via email to the recipient, then they can download our trial and unlock it with the key. However, it’s not clear how we can provide these sorts of review copies through the App Store.
What about other pricing concerns?
Currently, we have a coupon system in our store, we can offer upgrade pricing for users who’ve purchased old versions, we can offer volume discounts for large purchases, and much, much more. All of these things, and more, help our bottom line. We’ll want to do them with iPhone Apps, but will we be able to?

A commenter said Apple will presumably use exactly the same way as they did for Fairplay for music and videos. I.E. unlimited iPods (iPhones), tied to your iTunes account.
For reviewer, Ad Hoc distribution wouldn’t work in my opinion, and developers haven’t got the official word from Apple on this matter yet.

It seems App Store has to a lot to questions and problems(naming mechanics, for example) to deal with.
[Read:Open Questions for The App Store]