14 DAY TRIAL // As successful as it is already, the Apple App Store is not generating the profits it may have, should jailbreaking and, implicitly, piracy, not exist. Apple’s latest attempt to thwart piracy on the iOS is the inclusion of a “try before you buy” section dedicated to promoting free applications found in the App Store.
Seemingly not available for all territories, the Try Before You Buy section (iTunes link) features the best of all lite / free versions of iOS apps, as well as some of those apps that have always been sold for free. The move has been touted as being Apple’s latest effort to reduce the number of users downloading pirated apps on their jailbroken devices. In fact, the initiative may quite well help reduce the number of jailbroken devices, given that many such Apple customers claim the jailbreak was so that they could actually try before buying. Well, Apple is now making it easier than ever to do that, although the number of jailbroken devices is almost certainly not going down. If anything, it will continue to grow, with the iPhone Dev Team developing ever simpler solutions to hack iOS devices.
The group’s latest effort was announced earlier this week when JailbreakMe 2.0 went live, enabling users of an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to simply point Safari to jailbreakme.com and gain access to an over-the-air jailbreak solution. Apple may have launched the Try Before You Buy section to reduce possible attempts to jailbreak, a practice that has recently been labeled as legal by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Apple, however, continues to not support it, and claims that jailbreaking voids warranty.
It would not be surprising to see Apple post a web page dedicated to the downsides of jailbreaking, much like it did with the antenna attenuation tests carried out on several popular smartphones. While that portion of the Apple.com site has since been removed following a backlash from the respective smartphone vendors, Apple cannot be pushed into pulling a page targeting the dangers of jailbreaking its portables.