As the iPhone becomes more and more popular to the world there is no doubt that jailbreaking the iphone has also gotten very popular. As a matter of fact jailbreaking the iphone has gotten so popular it has been featured on many reputable websites such as cnet.com, tuaw.com, and the list goes on. My point is that jailbreaking the iphone is allowing us the users to be able to do more than we could have imagined whether it be making our iphone a wireless router, to allowing us to make voip calls using skype and 3g unrestrictor.
Now that you know where jailbreaking the iphone is going we can speak of cydia and the business aspect of jailbreaking. For you the user jailbreaking is to get all of the goods but for developers it is like a gold mine with a lot of revenue potential. A year ago you had to purchase an application from cydia by downloading an app and paying the developer however he wanted you to pay whether it was through paypal or some other payment type. Now Saurik the creator of Cydia has created the Cydia Store which allows you to purchase a lot of great jailbroken apps all found in one section which you probably see every time you open the cydia app. The great thing about the cydia store is that you can pay using paypal or amazon payments and they go to saurik so your sure no foul play is involved as he is well known. Another great thing about this is that when you purchase an app you have to authenticate your iphone using your google email account or your facebook id. The authentication feature is great because this ties your purchases to your iphone, so lets say your iphone messes up and you have to restore it and lose your purchased applications. No need to worry because after your back into cydia and have authenticated yourself using your id you can re-download your purchased app for free as you have already paid for it.
Now lets speak of appsidy a new payment method for cydia, it seems fine as competition is always welcome. As of right now things are a little sketchy about this payment method, I have read around forums and done some research and people are having quite a few problems with purchases not going through but getting charged, to paying for an app and not being able to download it. Appsidy doesn’t charge an extra 25 cent paypal fee for using paypal to buy something using their service which is great and i’m sure once Appsidy gets up and running smoothly payments will go through without a problem. It looks like the competition is starting to get tough for cydia now that there are quite a few different stores set up for jailbroken iPhone’s such as rockapp and this new appsidy. Don’t get too excited though because with this new payment method comes a flaw. Take a look at their license transfer policy and NO REFUND policy and this might turn you away. Also look below for jay freemans aka Saurik’s thoughts on this new appsidy payment method which I got from http://iphone-enthusiast.blogspot.com
Jay Freeman Comments On Appsidy:
For a user, Appsidy’s “no refunds” policy is quite damning
. Also, most of the people using PayPal are overseas, and the currency conversion costs drastically outweigh the current $0.25 fee I charge (which I’ve actually been working with my PayPal representative to fix).
If you are in the US I encourage you to use Amazon, which not only provides a mobile-formatted checkout process but also is integrated into Cydia in a way that lets me save your payment information in a manner similar to that claimed by Rock.
- Jay Freeman (saurik) said…
- A) What I just explained is that the $0.25 is a drop in the bucket in comparison to the conversion costs, not that it /is/ somehow the conversion costs. I could do the math out for you on the Amazon micropayments vs. PayPal rates, but you can also do that and see that $0.25 is fair. The point is that I have never once gotten a complain regarding the $0.25 ;P. What I am working with PayPal on is figuring out how to determine what payments have to go through a micropayments account which which ones don’t, in order to get similar rates.
( Via iphoneSpot)(This price is also upfront to the user, which you claim it isn’t: it is very obvious that this cost is applied before you even choose a purchasing agent.)
B) The Cydia Store license transfer system is automated for the first four devices. After that you need to talk to someone. That means that it is already better than the Rock license transfer system, even before you have to speak to someone. Also, as of two weeks ago, the mechanism was tweaked to mean that users probably never have to e-mail me no matter how many devices they want to get on their account, as there is now a time-weighted mechanism for handling the linkages.
C) As for Amazon Payments, anyone who has ever bought anything from Amazon has an Amazon account. In the US for online purchasers that is an insane percentage. If you actually look at the rates of usages of Amazon Payments vs. PayPal in Cydia you see about 45% of users happily using Amazon Payments.
D) I am fine with competition, and never stated otherwise. However, I will take this opportunity to say that competition should be handled in a way that is open, honest, and transparent. Even this person doesn’t know who the players involved are here, and nearly all of your statements in this last followup are incorrect.