Apple Cracking Down on Sites Selling Access to iOS 6 Developer Betas# Apple - 家有苹果
w*1
1 楼
Sun, 08 Jul 2012 17:33:57 PDT
Late last month, Wired covered the emergence of a cottage industry of
businesses selling access to iOS developer betas prior to their official
launch. Apple offers these developer betas to registered iOS developers.
The fee for such a registration is $99/year. Some enterprising
individuals have turned around and started selling their 100 possible device
slots to users looking to install the iOS betas prior to their official
launch.
Behind the scenes, each service uses the same simple backdoor: Registered
iOS developers can activate up to 100 unique device IDs (or UDIDs) for their
account, an essential tool for testing apps on multiple devices. Once
registered with Apple, the activated device is also able to run pre-release
versions of iOS, though developers are forbidden from sharing pre-release
software outside their own team.
Ignoring these warnings, activation services charge a small fee to add a
customer’s device to their developer accounts. When they hit the 100-device
limit, they just register a new account with Apple.
This has been going on for a couple of years with no particular intervention
from Apple. As Wired notes, it seems Apple just didn't seem to care,
despite their wide availability.
That may have changed since the publication of the Wired article.
MacStories has noted that many of the services listed in the original Wired
article are no longer available. After reaching out to the sites, it seems
that Apple has started taking action against these services.
While most of our emails bounced, we heard back from one of the site owners
(who asked to remain anonymous), who confirmed his hosting provider took
down the site after a complaint for copyright infringement by Apple.
Similarly, the CEO of Fused tweeted in a reply to Andy Baio that Apple had
been “fairly heavy-handed” with DMCA requests to UDID-selling sites hosted
on their network.
MacStories exchanged emails with the owner of one of the services which made
$75,000 since the release of the iOS 6 Beta in June.
Late last month, Wired covered the emergence of a cottage industry of
businesses selling access to iOS developer betas prior to their official
launch. Apple offers these developer betas to registered iOS developers.
The fee for such a registration is $99/year. Some enterprising
individuals have turned around and started selling their 100 possible device
slots to users looking to install the iOS betas prior to their official
launch.
Behind the scenes, each service uses the same simple backdoor: Registered
iOS developers can activate up to 100 unique device IDs (or UDIDs) for their
account, an essential tool for testing apps on multiple devices. Once
registered with Apple, the activated device is also able to run pre-release
versions of iOS, though developers are forbidden from sharing pre-release
software outside their own team.
Ignoring these warnings, activation services charge a small fee to add a
customer’s device to their developer accounts. When they hit the 100-device
limit, they just register a new account with Apple.
This has been going on for a couple of years with no particular intervention
from Apple. As Wired notes, it seems Apple just didn't seem to care,
despite their wide availability.
That may have changed since the publication of the Wired article.
MacStories has noted that many of the services listed in the original Wired
article are no longer available. After reaching out to the sites, it seems
that Apple has started taking action against these services.
While most of our emails bounced, we heard back from one of the site owners
(who asked to remain anonymous), who confirmed his hosting provider took
down the site after a complaint for copyright infringement by Apple.
Similarly, the CEO of Fused tweeted in a reply to Andy Baio that Apple had
been “fairly heavy-handed” with DMCA requests to UDID-selling sites hosted
on their network.
MacStories exchanged emails with the owner of one of the services which made
$75,000 since the release of the iOS 6 Beta in June.