Silicon Realms (Digital River - Armadillo) used to have a Mac application protection/trial builder. They discontinued it this year most likely due to Mac App store not allowing 3rd party protection mechanisms or trials. Does anybody know of alternatives for creating trials and generally wrapping apps for copy protection which will not be sold on the app store? I am not expecting iron clad solutions... just simple copy deterrents and 30 day trial mechanisms.
The only solution I've found is ExeShield. No idea how well it works, but since I just discovered that Silicon Realms discontinued their program I'll probably have to go with that.
Apple is working harder and harder to get you into their store - and take their 30% of the gross off the top. Eventually Apple will do anything, legal or no, to make sure that they make more money out of your program than you do...
Related
First of all, I know about this: Licensing Technology for OS X applications?
But, since it was posted so long ago, that almost all answers point to dead urls, I think its time for a new question.
I am researching options on frameworks for license-key registration for OSX cocoa apps. I want to know what is out there, that supports Elliptic Curve Cryptography and is released under MIT or something similarly permissive as a license.
Currently, I've found just this (Watchdog): https://github.com/konstantinpavlikhin/Watchdog
But there are no reviews about it, nor does it seem to have much traction at github.
I use EllipticLicense for ECDSA-based license keys (the link is my fork of an abandoned project). It doesn't do online activation or validation or provide any UI, but it's simple and the validation is cross-platform, which is what I need.
I'm keeping an eye on DevMate by MacPaw as an all-in-one solution, but they're not out of beta yet.
I know it's not what you're asking for - but I can't see the purpose in super-complicated key generating algorithms when users can simply distribute valid keys they've bought from you through the various, well-known means (web sites, offline apps/databases of license codes)..
It might pay off to rather spend the time in developing cool features and building a strong user-community that's willing to support your app.
My Mac got stolen today. So now I only have my Microsoft Surface left. The problem is: I need to develop iPhone and iPad apps and I'm not too high in funds. I am now looking for an affordable and reliable way to develop iPhone and iPad apps that isn't too costly (so no new laptop). So I was wondering what all the legal ways of developing iPhone and iPad apps via a windows machine are.
I looked into:
- Hackintosh (not legal)
I briefly looked into (also via SO):
Mac In Cloud
VPN to a Mac Mini
Using other frameworks (seems tricky, I won't do this)
Buying a second hand MacBook or Mac Mini (seems tricky to since it is second hand)
My first question is: are there any other legal ways to develop Xcode apps on Windows? I think the answer is no (I just leave it here in case it isn't). So lets look at the real question at hand.
How feasible is it to use services such as Mac In Cloud or your own Mac Mini and VPN? When should I just develop directly on a Mac?
Also, is there a real difference between services like Mac In Cloud and your own setup, besides the obvious point that you access a pre-configured Mac in the cloud?
As it was sometimes pointed over articles in the internet, Mac in Cloud faces some performance issues. This article refers to may '2012, but can be considered nowadays as a point of concern.
On the other hand, taking in consideration that a brand new Mac Mini costs US$ 599,00 today in its most basic configuration, this value would suffice to pay for Mac in Cloud service for almost 3 years, if you stick to the most basic montly plan of 3-hours-a-day usage (and pay quarterly):
I'm not sure if this price is an advantage for you. As I live in Brazil, we face much higher prices: the price charged for Mac Mini here would suffice to pay for Mac In Cloud for almost 5 years - in fact, that's exactly the service I plan to use for my IOS needs.
On the other hand, it would be advisable to at least try to use a second hand Mac, if the price is interesting.
Best bet is to sell your surface and buy a used Macbook Pro 2011 from craigslist, i look up and researched all those ways, they never work as good as having a dedicated mac. They always remind you that you don't have a mac. Save yourself the agony...
Instead of paying for a cloud instance, you can also run OSX locally with VMWare player for free
In 2014 this was a tough question to answer, but since this year I have a fairly workable setup as I'm encountering this problem from time to time.
My setup at the end of 2021 (I'm using Windows or Linux on my laptop)
M1 Mac Mini at a trusted location
Google Chrome Remote Desktop
Zoom if I need to tunnel my audio (setup a Zoom meeting and connect computer audio to the Zoom meeting audio)
It works quite well. The biggest issue that I have is that I cannot restart my Mac.
What didn't work: all VNC software that I tried was too slow Google Chrome Remote Desktop was the only program that seemed to be fast enough in order to have an okay user experience.
I'm trying to give a license to all the users who have bought my app from Mac App Store in order to give them faster updates.
What i was thinking is to do an update for the Mac App Store version of the app that will let user register from within the application itself. But i'm having problems figuring out how to test if the application was really taken from Mac App Store and not from a pirated source.
Is there a way to test if the user bought the app from AppStore. Apple does not release this info - as if it would - i could just test if that user email is in the list of people who downloaded the app from AppStore.
Thank you in advance for the help,
Bogdan Vladu
You could have the MAS version of your application copy the Apple-issued receipt to the Application Support folder.
The independent version could look there for a valid receipt. If there is, it will behave like the fully licensed version. If there is not, it would go to demo mode.
If you're making enough money from this app to pay money for DRM and obsfucation, go for it. It might slow down the pirates enough for it to be a profit for you.
Otherwise, you're pitting your own time and skill against everyone who's interested in pirating your app. It's a losing battle, unless your app is really unpopular, in which case you've lost again.
In short, there's no algorithmic way of making sure. Code obsfucation is the way to go, and hope that the pirates don't find the "check-for-tampering" module.
Apple has a corporate developer program with an elevated licensing cost, does Microsoft provide such a service for Windows Phone 7 developers?
This was asked at a recent MS event. You can assign (I think 5) phones to developer unlock them, then load application directly/bypass the marketplace.
Also, there were talks that they are hoping to soon allow beta/redemption codes to allow limited deployment of your application to non-unlocked phones, bypassing testing/marketplace acceptance.... But I do not know the status of this.
The best thing you can do at the moment is develop your application as normal and have a password/login screen at startup. This is a horrible approach, but it does work.
At the moment, the phone is very much targeted towards consumers.
I'm not sure what is provided in the Apple Enterprise version, but so far Microsoft only has the one registration process and no private app distribution: you can distribute apps on the market to everyone, or by giving your xap file to people with dev-unlocked phones, nothing in between.
The official line is NO, not yet.
Windows Phone 7 was created, first and foremost, for consumers, not enterprise customers.
That being said, LOTS of people are asking for this and Microsoft have said they will address this in the future. No timescales or details have yet been announced yet.
This will likely be related to the way that beta testing and home brew distribution are implemented. (Just my assumption.)
I don't know why I can't just comment on another answer in this thread, so my apologies for placing these remarks in an answer.
I think MS needs to really make this happen since it could be the saving grace for WP7. While I personally feel that my experience with WP7 and my Samsung Focus have been just as good or better than that with the second-gen iPod Touch that I have, there are a lot of people who aren't convinced. For better or worse, it really is the ecosystem that matters and MS has that within the corporate world.
And/or: do I need one?
I've recently started using FogBugz for my hobby projects, and I'm very happy with things so far. Having read more about it, especially the evidence-based scheduling, I'd like to start using it for my PhD as well. (Heh; something tells me my supervisors won't be opening tickets for me, though.)
Last night I stumbled onto TimePost, which looks like a tidy app that doesn't do much but could be a real bonus to logging my time in FogBugz effectively. I tried looking around for similar apps but came up a little empty-handed. Are there any other FogBugz clients that you've used and recommend for Mac OS X? Or are you happy with the web interface?
The official answer is no, there is not a dedicated Mac client, other than Safari :)
There's a command line version that runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac.
There are also plans for an iPhone version although I'm not technically supposed to announce features before they are done or even spec'd so pretend I didn't say that.
I recently spotted this one which looks quite nice for additions:
http://manicwave.com/products/tickets
I'm happy with using the web interface. I've used Fluid to create a custom browser for it, and even gotten some help making a pretty icon.
We recently released a new Fogbugz client software for Mac, maybe you are interested to give it a try, http://lithoglyph.com/ladybugz/
I remember reading that there was a client in development, and I believe they're still looking for beta testers. See this URL
http://support.fogcreek.com/default.asp?fogbugz.4.24403.0
Shameless plug here, but you might wanna check out QuickBugz --- it is a lightweight program that integrates into your status menu. http://www.quickbugzapp.com
I have been very happily using the Tickets program from Manic Wave for a few weeks now. it provides a very fluid experience. I am using it in a pressure cooker of doing a competition entry in my odd hours around my day job.
Tickets makes it incredibly easy to create lots of small cases and juggle them between different milestones. I particularly like its outline view which helps when doing task breakdowns into sub-tasks.
Being a long way from the Fogbugz servers, in Western Australia, the speed of a searchable local interface is very much appreciated.
The UI has a lot of nice little Macisms such as mouse over a milestone and see the hours summarized.
Support has also been very prompt and comprehensive.
I don't think there is any other such Mac tool. I've never found the web interface too bad personally.
I don't know of any native tool, but like Matt I am pretty happy with the web interface.
The beta of Safari 4 and SSB feature is a pretty good option...
I found using a Mac browser w/ the screen snapshot and search engine add-on to be very useful. I think what you are saying is that it can be hard to edit your timesheets, but that is part of the web design.
I've just released Bee, which is a Mac client for FogBugz. (It also pulls in your tasks from GitHub and JIRA.)
It offers several benefits over the web interface and is designed to be simple, fast and elegant. You can check it out at: http://www.neat.io/bee/fogbugz.html