I don’t believe Apple is any more concerned with jail breaking than they are with Hackintoshing. They’ll always denounce it (they must, since they can’t allow a business to spring up around it ala Psystar), but they’ve never gone after users for either offense like the music labels have sued for piracy. Apple just doesn’t care that much as long as it’s a hobbyist thing.

Finally, as regards to the bottom line, I suspect it affects Apple’s very little. If you buy the phone from AT&T, then break it, Apple already got their piece of that pie.

I jailbreak mainly for this reason. I would gladly prefer a legitimate solution from apple, but seeing as how they haven’t so far, I’m forced into other “less-than-legitimate” solutions. I think apple should really start looking to what people are doing with jailbroken iPhones in order to see where their shortcomings are.

Were Apple to include a trial period for full apps, I think that would be better. Include some better copy protection so that they can’t be cracked. Here’s a solution: You download an app to iTunes (or directly to your iPhone) and it lasts for, lets say, a week at most. Having probed the very root of my iPhone, I know that each app installs a preference file that is only removable if you manually delete it. Or you can restore the entire phone. So, after a week has gone by, the app opens to the main screen and says “Purchase” or “Quit”. The preference file remains static, knowing that your demo date started on a certain day. The only way to erase that date would be to completely restore the iPhone, no backup involved. The user would have to be stupid to keep restoring every week, just to use an app. The app would never be auto-deleted, but rather it would remain until the user took action, whether to manually delete the whole app or buy it.

This offers a much greater alternative to trying cracked apps, then upgrading. In the process of installing the official app, it erases the previous information installed by the cracked version. Thus, all data is lost. An iTunes official upgrade would preserve the data, thus making a fabulous experience for one and all.

You need to go back to your high-school ethics class. The argument you are making is illogical and morally bankrupt (and you have no “integrity.”)

It’s complete nonsense to say that because you can’t play the app before you buy it, that you have the right to steal it. It’s more nonsense to imply that because you have bought an app or two that met with your approval, that you have somehow become moral again.

Your argument basically boils down to “I want, so I should get.”

It would only gain some kind of moral imperative if the situation was the same as in the old DRM music days where you were not *able* to get a fair deal from the companies in question. Unfortunately, the situation is not the same at all. Those people making the apps *are* giving you a fair deal and so is Apple. It’s not 100% the deal you want, but it’s fair.

Fair enough so that you “going rogue” just because they don’t give you exactly, precisely, everything you want is just not justified.

Civil disobedience and fighting “bad laws” in the case of freedom and justice is what you are hiding behind, but what you are doing is nothing so noble at all.

Yes, I jailbroke my iPhone. I’m still using an original 2G iPhone. I like having the option to run it on the cheaper T-Mobile plans. While many people are simply pirating the apps from Appulo.us, I have done differently. I downloaded the cracked version of Rolando 2, tried it out, then promptly went and purchased it from the official app store. As Hackulous has said, they intend the cracked apps to be for demoing- Apple has not given a good trial method for 3rd party apps. By downloading the cracked app before purchase, one is able to determine if they think the real app is worth a purchase. Yes, it is just as easy to keep the app, but that is where integrity comes in.