iPhone App Piracy Risks
NEIRAD enilno edition
Buried in the pockets of many DHS students are iPhones and iPod Touches that are not Mac legal. Tired of the plain and aging interface, teens are resorting to “jailbreaking” their devices.
Jailbreaking, or hacking an iPhone so that it is capable of performing functions normally unavailable, was first introduced in 2007 as a way to download free ringtones. As time went on, iPhone users were able to download free applications, and even gain the ability to switch wireless carriers.
While a consumer pays $2.55 per app on average. iPhone user spends almost $10 on apps a month, not to mention the data plan that just starts at $69.99 a month and the original $199 price tag for the iPhone 3GS.
According to Apple though, “jailbreaking results in copyright infringement”. Jailbreaking modifications “clearly harm the interests of Apple”, as they take revenue away from the company when users download “cracked” applications. This doesn’t seem to stop DHS students though, as many are eager to download the latest and greatest themes and games, such as “Super Mario”, “Donkey Kong”, and the school-wide favorite “Pokémon”, all of which are unavailable on Apple’s App Store.
However, John Herrman, the contributing editor to Gizmodo, a well-known technology Weblog, doesn’t agree that “your average user has much to gain from jailbreaking his or her device.” The only thing they can gain from it is “a few specific, restricted tools and customizations”, ones that are not offered by the traditional iPhone OS, the iPhone and iPod Touch’s operating system.
What Mr. Herrman believes is driving the trends “is that having a jail-broken phone means you can pirate apps.” This seems to be especially the case for DHS students, many who have the Game Boy emulator-the app for playing the original Game Boy-on their devices. The Gameboy emulator is actually a pirated app, and therefore technically illegal to download.
But this doesn’t seem to be stopping students. Sophomore Dirk Heideklang, who first jailbroke his iPhone over a year and a half ago, does many of the exact things Mr. Herrman describes. Dirk says its “great to be able to run apps in the background”, or multitask, something that currently iPhone OS lacks. “You can listen to Pandora while playing games, or going on Facebook.”
For other students, one game is enough to jailbreak their device. “You can get Pokémon!” sophomore Lewis Clarke said. It seems that word of this popular classic spread fast, with countless students jumping at the opportunity to once again become a “Pokémon Master”.
Despite all the perks of jailbreaking, there still is lot of problems that can occur. Jailbreaking has always been notoriously buggy, with a tendency to often freeze and crash. Data such as songs and apps can mysteriously disappear, and games can be plagued with a disruptive lag. Dirk agrees that even though jailbreaking offers many advantages, his iPhone has “become a little slower though.”
Despite the negative side effects, this trend has continued to thrive. But as students roam the halls with their iPhones and iPods in hand ferociously tapping away, some people just still refuse to mess with their device. As Mr. Herrman said, “For what it's worth, almost nobody on our staff regularly jailbreak their phones, and we take our nerd cred pretty seriously.”
