Over the last several months, Apple has
been displaying a little muscle in regards to their UDID (Unique Device
Identification) program. Developers- and developers only- can register 100
devices to access to iOS beta's for a fee of $99 per year. Last month Andy
Baio, who writes for Wired Magazine, brought this issue to light. If you
want access to a buggy beta version of iOS 6, no problem! There is a group of
public websites that will sell you access while totally ignoring Apple's UDID
conditions.
]
Apple
reprimanding developers for selling access to iOS betas
Apple may charge developers $99, but most
of these sites will charge a small fee of $10 in exchange for one of their
"developer only" UDID access codes. To get a better idea of the
amount of revenue these sites are pulling in, Baio writes:
"For a small developer, unauthorized
activations are a lucrative business that's likely worth the risks. UDID
Activation publishes their order queue on their official site, which shows more
than 2,300 devices activated in the last week alone. At $8.99 for each
activation, that's more than $20,600 in revenue, with $2,277 paid to Apple for
the 23 developer accounts. Their homepage claims that more than 19,000 devices
were activated so far, and that's only one of several services. And since
device activations only last for a year, each service can reuse their expired
slots with no additional cost."
The
Apple iOS Range
A large number of these sites vanished in
recent weeks after Wired published Baio's article (activatemyios.com,
iosudidregistrations.com, activatemyudid.com, udidregistration.com,
instantudidactivation.com). Will this aggressive behavior on Apple's part stop
other sites from popping up? One thing is for sure, websites that are caught
selling UDID access codes will be facing a DMCA request made to their host.
