Chinese Hackers Debut New Free iTunes App Store

No need to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad in order to download your favorite paid iOS apps for free. According to a TUAW news report, a group of highly skilled Chinese hackers recently launched a pirated version of the iTunes app store.

The marketplace enables iPad and iPhone users to download pirated iOS apps without the need to jailbreak their devices. Apparently the iOS app marketplace uses geolocation to determine a user’s location. If the user is located outside China then they are refused access to the store and are redirected to another website run by the hackers.

In an admirable stand against the actions of the Chinese hackers, TUAW editors chose not to reveal the name or url of the pirate app marketplace out of respect for the iOS developer community’s hard work.

As a Los Angeles iPad app developer it’s disappointing to see how far some so called hacktivists will go to cheat the system. Being an iPhone app developer is a hugely rewarding profession because we do what we love and create mobile art that solves major problems and brings joy into other peoples lives. But lets not kid ourselves here. It is time intensive and grueling hard work that requires major sacrifices. It can take a team of developers months or years to take an app idea all the way to the app store. Consider all the creative talent and precision that goes into planning, designing, and coding mobile software. The incentive is lost for developers to continue creating cool apps when their ability to eek out a living is destroyed by Chinese hackers.