Something that you guys likely aren't considering in this "spyware" drama is what the developers are actually using this information for. When the jailbreak scene simultaneously soiled themselves when they discovered PinchMedia was sending reports back I spent a lot of time talking to developers about their side of the story thinking it would make an interesting front page post but it ended up kind of being outside of the scope of what we'd normally write about. Regardless, I did learn a lot of interesting things. First off, I think calling it "spyware" is a particularly loaded word that the privacy obsessed jailbreak scene have specifically chosen to incite fear in people who don't understand what's going on here. Everyone knows that spyware is bad, but spyware is bad because it robs your computer of performance, steals information to sell, along with other nefarious functions. PinchMedia doesn't do any of this. So how are developers using PitchMedia? Mostly to get feedback on what portions of their games/apps people are actually using. The best part of PinchMedia is its event tracking. Say for instance you release some kind of crazy match 3 game on the app store with two distinct game modes. PinchMedia will allow you to see which of those two game modes ALL of your users are spending most their time in instead of just getting feedback from whatever forum you've managed to drum up interest on or whatever iTunes reviews you've gotten. If you then decide you want to put out an update you can look at these figures and say "Hmm, people seem to spend a lot of time playing mode A, but not much time playing mode B. Maybe I should build a better tutorial for mode B, or change something about it so people like it as much as mode A." Without these hard usage figures, developers are just shooting in the dark with updates based on what their echo chamber of beta testers are telling them to do instead of the usage patterns of the rest of the customer base. This is extremely valuable information, but only to that specific developer. I don't know, I guess I just have a hard time getting upset over developers using a analytics toolkit that makes their job of making their customers happy easier when the App Store is such a brutal market that not only demands 99¢ games and apps, but also insists that they have free updates for life.
Remember for every application that does miss-behave there are many, many that work and run wonderfully without "phoning-home". In regards to pinchmedia, recently there has been a nice decline in pinchmedia enabled applications and personally I think this is a good thing. As mentioned it should be up to the user to decide what information and importantly for iPhone users when this information is sent. I do have a problem about applications sending information across my edge/3G connection but an not too fussed when I am on a wifi-hottspot assuming the information was not too intrusive. The "SpyWare" label may seem rather harsh... however when I label an application as such I use the wiki definition: "Spyware is a type of malware that is installed surreptitiously on personal computers to collect information about users, their computer or browsing habits without their informed consent." Ask a user if they want to send feed back to a developer and they will likely say yes. Pinch (pun intended ) the information and outcome will likely be different. All comes back again, to consent. It is the users iPhone, it is the users data-plan & possibly the users information.. only the user can decide.
I don't know... Every system can be cracked, pc games, DS, PSP, Xbox... (Okay PS3 since yet not, but some day it will be cracked) Hell since the 90s the walls are broken about copy-protection and cracking. Now more than 20 years later there is still game business on the different systems. Why is that? Because the money incoming from the people who don't crack, is still high enough to finance the companies who produce the games. Even with piracy! I know that this can't be a excuse or free pass for cracking, but as hard as it is, thats the reality! People don't change and won't change, even if the governments would make harder laws if you get caught. That's the cruel reality: There will be always piracy on every video game system (which can be opened). As sad as it is, you have to deal with that, you can't fight it even with laws. Just hope your game is good/hyped enough to grap the peoples attention and get to finance-strong game-addicted hardliners which mass consum, which will give you a strong monthy income (those hardcore gamers pay a MUCH more money a month then regulars) and hope that the hype/attention/reviews will give the rest to some/enough of the normal folks (who decides to pay), so that your income is at least comforting.
Don't have much time, but to sum my thoughts about all the psots : I'm ok with this consent concept, indeed. Also : Please, stop this logic of "you dev earn enough, so we can steal your work". "Earning enough" is true for big companies, only. And anyway, this will never be an argument. I mean who are you to decide if a company or an Indie "have enough money" to live with piracy ? Seriously ? Do you have infos about already invested funds that need to be covered ? Do you know if the current Indie is already reinvesting into an update, or a new game ? You just can't decide that by yourself. Can you imagine your boss coming at you and say "Ok now you earned enough money for the year, so you're gonna work for me for free." .... lol ??
How ignorant! You do not know what you are talking about. The next time you make a statement like that, be careful to not ofend people like me, from 3rd country that do everything right. All generalizations should not be posted. Keep it to yourself if you cannot prove it. Seriously, do not do it anymore.
I have not heard of PinchMedia. I have fallen out of the loop, I guess. As long as it notifies the user of the intent to send anonymous usage data and also gives the user the option to opt-out, there is no problem. Is that how it operates? EDIT: Is it PitchMedia or PinchMedia?
You should read his post again. If you did you'll realize that he's just stating the obvious. He's not defending piracy or saying its a good thing. All he's saying is that piracy has existed for a long time and people are still making a living EVEN with piracy on the prowl. It's true, all these big companies werent always big they probably started with some indie developers too and they've made it. I'm not saying that piracy is a good thing or shouldnt exist but you have to admit that theres very little that can be done about it, many have tried. Have people gone out of business? left gaming for other industries? the answer to both is a sad yes but even amongst all this piracy you still have people making it. Saying this doesnt make me a pro-piracy believer. I'm just saying it how it is. And another interesting figure from Aug ,5 2009 If you read under the lines, people can still aim their game at that other 90%+ that is not jailbroken. Now just think about it, earlier others have said how a lot of systems can be hacked to play other games (think psp, xbox) By focusing their work on the demographic that PAYS for their game, thats how they made it. As of now, thats the only clear solution, not so much getting rid of piracy, but trying to stop it while focusing on the larger audience. If anyone has a better solution, please feel free to state it. Also, stop this thing with PinchMedia, its off topic really. The subject is PIRACY not privacy....
Talking about pinchmedia data to get an estimate on how many jailbroken iPhones there are goes with the topic at hand. It helps show that there are plenty of unjailbroken devices that dont pirate. That is different from talking about pinchmedia in the sense of their uses and how it is "spyware." What I'm asking people to do is to stop talking about Pinchmedia and privacy concerns. That's an entirely different topic.. Get it?
Maybe you could say the question is; "does PinchMedia (or PitchMedia or Pich Media or whatever) pirate personal information?" Regardless, Hodapp is an administrator and if the discussion branching in that direction was inappropriate he would not have brought it up.
... No sir, the question and subject is piracy. Specifically for the app store. And while I respect Hodapp's opinions I believe the reason he brought it up is because everyone is talking about PinchMedia and how developers are violating our privacy. However, Hodapp as well as many others know the importance of PinchMedia to developers so I'm sure it's hard to just sit back and hear all this attack on devs and PinchMedia when it helps so much. Again the subject is piracy. Do you have something to add to that?
The subject is 'piracy.' Plain and simple: piracy. Any further qualifier is a matter of your opinion. Whether or not piracy is a two way street is well within reasonable parameters of the discussion. I might also suggest that your semantical tangent is off topic.
And I'm just guessing but I'm pretty sure that piracy when used above refers to: for those joining our discussion
Pro-piracy advocates, or those thinking it does little to no harm, always state things like this, and while technically somewhat true if you focus on "actual", it does represent a great potential loss in profit, and anyone who knows anything about business knows that potential gains and losses are just as important as actual gains and losses as the former is how the barometer for things like investment in a product or products by the business are set. On that same note (potential losses), let's do away with the idea that those pirating are doing it "just because they can" and not because they're interested in the product. That sort of statement posited by others is absolute horse manure. The fact is that if someone is taking the time to download anything they have shown themselves to be more interested in a product than those totally disinterested in the product as the latter would not take the time to download the product AT ALL. And marketing as a whole is about creating interest in a product, business interested further in turning those potential consumers into actual consumers. Piracy circumvents this usual process. No matter how interested in the product a consumer may be, they may in fact skip becoming an actual consumer of a product outright if they procure the pirated wares instead. That's a loss that can't truly be pinpointed down to a tee, I agree...but it's a loss nonetheless. The issue is that those without one iota of knowledge of how selling a product actually works are stating they want hard definable "proof". Selling a product is not an exact science. There is no hard proof of anything in marketing, really. It all comes down to analysis of information and tailoring that analysis into a strategy. Such a thing becomes nearly impossible with massive pirating. It's difficult to know which way is up and which is down. And to those that state "I want hard proof that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that all those pirating would've bought the product" such analysis will never be enough, but for those that have an understanding of how things work when selling a product such analysis is absolutely legit and shows losses for businesses. Losses are at a minimum? Depends on what type of app has been developed. Most of the really good apps on this device had investment costs of several tens of thousands of dollars, with the larger budget apps heading into the lower million dollar investment range...for development alone (so that's not even counting however much money is spent on marketing, etc.). Regardless, the very idea that even those developers in the lower dev cost sector shouldn't complain because they're losses are "at a minimum" is silly at best. Even if it's a small loss, a loss is a loss is a loss. That's something to complain about any way you slice it. If I spend $500 developing an app, and it's pirated to hell and back and I don't break even, even if my loss is $100 total I'd still have quite a bit to complain about. Someone is taking something I made and not compensating me for that product. It's BS because the analytical info posted here by various devs points to it being total BS. "Try before you buy" on cracked apps has been proven to be nothing more than absolute bunk. Furthermore, on the Adobe offering "try before you buy" with demos: Tell me now...if trial period versions offset piracy and increase actual purchases of products, how come there are so many pirate keygens out there to fully unlock the trial period Adobe software? Arn answered and completely owned this statement to hell and back, as did various analysis posted by devs and others in this topic. Besides which, let me get this out of the way: Piracy boosting sales is an absolutely contradictory statement. Those that pirate are more interested in the product than those totally disinterested in the product (as the latter, again, wouldn't bother pirating the product in the first place). Those that are interested in a product are potential consumers. The trick is to get those potential consumers (which themselves can be broken into groups of those with greater or lesser interest, but all having interest nonetheless) to become actual consumers. The problem with piracy is that it creates a group that are interested, some highly so, but who will never become actual consumers.
I'm guessing that at some point their idea to put in a SATA HDD will come to bite them in the butt. Once pirates figure out a way to run game data completely off the HDD, all bets are off.
So the devs are using the information to improve their time spent. I can see that. So is everyone happy for the govt to install a little box into your car because they want to track where you go to improve traffic management and expenditure? Both send information, both know nothing of who is operating it. In fact if you wanted to be really picky the Freedom of Information Act covers the govt's collected data. They aren't so far apart. Me? I don't care either way. Long since realised that there is no such thing as privacy. But there is a slope here and it's slippy.
