Kodak has announced that it has filed two suits against Apple. One of the suits is alleged patent infringement on tech used for digital image previews and the second is for computer related tech. RIM is also in the digital imaging suit.
Computerworld reckons that the location-based search Google recently launched is a big deal. The big feature is that the data is updated in real time whereas other services like Yelp are not.
Apple is making tons of money with the App Store by anyone’s measure. However, Apple is reportedly losing lots of money to piracy of apps to the tune of $450 million with three pirated app downloads to each paid download.
This “Apple looses 450M to piracy” is at best amazingly misleading without some context, and at worst, complete drivel.
The article it is from (http://247wallst.com/2010/01/13/apple-app-store-has-lost-450-million-to-piracy/) actually found that probably only 10% of iPhones are actually jail broken, and apparently, only half of these are running pirated software.
That leaves a staggering 95% of all iPods and iPhones running only legitimately bough software. I would be gob smacked if anyone could point to a platform where 95% of users do not pirate software at all.
The 5% that do pirate are probably pirating just about everything available, using it once and moving on, but who gives a tinkers cuss? This isn’t in any sense lost revenue. The only lost revenue is that which would have been earned if that 5% had behaved like the other 95% and paid for the much smaller number of applications that they would have actually bought. How much money is that? Still a lot, but for both Apple, and for an independent developer, it’s just another 5% on what they are already earning, so not a whole lot.
I suppose “App store and developers loose tiny 5% of earnings to piracy” just isn’t such an attention grabbing headline though.
@ Benjohn – I have to agree with you. Plus how do you lose something you never had.
Will iPhone 4.0 finally do something about the absolutely retarded way the iPhone handles turning on/off Bluetooth and WiFi? Having to go into all these menu screens every time I go into/leave my car or office or home for the different settings is really tedious, and keeping everything on all the time murders the battery and floods you with connectivity alterts. Fix this already.
As for piracy, well, in part Apple have only themselves to blame.
Can any one of us hold our hand up and honestly say there hasn’t been a time we’ve paid for and downloaded a turkey riddled with bugs? Or even worse and app that works for one release of the OS then gets hopelessly borked with the next.
And what recourse do we have? None. Once Apple’s taken our money all they say is talk to the developers.
No one wants to see any hard-working developer lose out through theft but neither do I like parting with my cash for something that may or may not work as advertised.
You’ll always get freeloaders who want something for nothing but I’m wondering how much of that “lost” revenue actually goes back to the App Store to purchase something that’s not be hacked…
Has anyone considered the possibility of extracting GPS tags (EXIF) in the self-shots of hot girls for further data mining?
http://dissention.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/self-shots-gps-enabled-smartphones-and-data-mining/
You cant point to any one platform that doesn’t deal with piracy on one level or another. The music and movie industries, PC, Mac, Microsoft, Playstation, Nintendo, even the Droid has been rooted, an open source Android OS.. Piracy cant be avoided, as soon as more advanced DRM comes along some hacker/cracker in a basement somewhere is going to crack it and release it to the public.
Honestly I’m tired of buying apps that look great but run like a slug on acid, if it even runs at all. As Cthonus said above once we pay for this acid tripping slug of doom we have no choice but to eat the cost and hope it doesn’t happen again. Low and behold an OS update comes along and wipes out 1/3 of the apps we have paid for and renders them useless until the devs release an update sometimes taking months to hit the store.
I believe everyone is entitled to their fair share of profits for their hard work but being able to preview something before blowing upwards of $10 on it would be nice. Especially since this economy has everyone in a choke hold.