It’s a story that was bound to happen. And if you own or know somebody with a jailbroken iPod Touch or iPhone, chances are you’ve heard of Appulo.us. Essentially, Appulo.us is an underground black market for apps found in Apple’s iTunes Store. The only difference is that they’re completely free. Consider it app pirating.
As of recently, the powers that be at Appulo.us have taken a bold, bold move. They’ve essentially temporarily shut down free-for-all access to the app store as a result of server overload. The creator of the site, in order to prevent servers from crashing, has set up what he calls a “troll bridge,” and boy, has that got app pirates upset.
According to the creator, it seems to be working because many simply cannot find an answer to the riddle:
“Kyek modified a Greasemonkey plugin to allow you to see if an Appulous IPA link was dead before you clicked it. The original plugin was the ________ Links Checker.”Now, if you know anything about the interwebs, you’ll know that Google will easily provide you with an answer to this — but if someone’s n00bish mindset somehow prevents them from using resources, then I suppose the troll bridge really does work.
Kyek (the creator of Appulo.us) is stressing that the troll bridge is only a temporary measure, until more servers are put in place to distribute the traffic load. He goes on to say that this could be days, or even weeks from now.
