Bombora - Surf, Sail, and Ocean Forecasting iPhone App - Latest Comments

Re: The Cracking of Bombora

wireless programmable thermost — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 04:27:56 -0000

Bombora is a powerful, elegant, and comprehensive ocean-forecasting app - built specially for surfers, sailors, fishermen, beach walkers, kayakers, ..

Re: Bombora Feedback

samnigro — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:24:04 -0000

Perfect! That did it. Thanks.

Re: Bombora Feedback

Kerry — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:57:55 -0000

Hi Sam,

Thanks for the kind words! If you launch Bombora again, you should find that Cape San Martin now has swell data... let us know if there's other buoys that we might have overlooked.

Thanks again, really appreciate your feedback.

Kerry

Re: Bombora Feedback

samnigro — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:44:31 -0000

First off, I really enjoy the app. And the update is pretty good. But how come some of the bouys no longer have swell info (cape San Martin, port San Luis)? I live in slo county so those are pretty important. Without those (and a few others), I haven't gone to your app first as in the past. If I am missing something I would love to know about it.

Thanx,
sam

Re: Bombora 1.0.2 Approved By Apple

Kerry — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 01:36:27 -0000

Hi Brian,

We caught up with you on our support site at http://www.getsatisfaction.... - but I wanted to re-publish our answer here in case others had the same question.

The buoy with Station ID 42019, which is identified as the "Freeport, TX" buoy in some publications, is labeled as "Laneille" in Bombora; this is how station 42019 appears on the NDBC maintenance reports located at http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/ws....

Thanks for writing in and we hope you enjoy Bombora!

Kerry

Re: Bombora 1.0.2 Approved By Apple

Brian Dunwell — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:21:08 -0000

I just downloaded the new app/version. The main buoy that i need, which is listed as one of the new ones, FREEPORT Texas, isnt on my list????

Re: The Cracking of Bombora

Dave — Sat, 23 May 2009 14:47:01 -0000

Blocking jailbroken devices isn't really a good idea. Also, device IDs may not exactly correlate to the number of purchases because some people (like me) have multiple devices assigned to a single account. Probably better to do the Info.plist check and use that for statistics / crack checking.

Re: The Cracking of Bombora

Kerry — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:17:42 -0000

AC,

I think you're on the right track - there isn't much we *can* do, legally - lawyers are expensive, time is expensive, and the international variables make it even more complicated. The potential for futility is overwhelming.

I definitely feel that we've lost sales - it's my belief that at least some of Bombora's target market are those with the aptitude to jailbreak. So it goes.

We're trying some new stuff, like the sale running until the release of our next major update (which will have some fun anti-piracy measures of our own,) so hopefully that will produce some results - or at least, some more fodder for the discussion.

"Apple really needs to get it together and start protecting their developers."

I couldn't agree more.

Kerry

Re: The Cracking of Bombora

AnonymousCoward — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:12:17 -0000

I was actually in with the group of guys that make these cracking programs back when the appstore first came out. I can't apologize for them, and I haven't talked to those guys in over a year. The host/developer of appulous is kyek, you might want to do some searching (on the forums they have) and get in touch with him. I think their site is hosted in Russia or the Netherlands now tho, so I don't know what you could legally do.

I hate to see indie devs losing their sales over this. Are you guys still going to be developing more apps for the iphone?

By the way, all the "cracking" does is decrypt a certain part of the program. It involves running GDB (Gnu debugger) while the program is running in memory on the account that made the purchase to do it.

Are you guys sandboxed or is it possible to poke around the file structure and perhaps make the program not run on jailbroken iphones? Say, for instance, if the cracked games installer (not going to drop any names here) is located in the /Applications folder, throw up an error.

I'm sure there is some way you guys can get around the piracy of your app, whether or not it complies with the appstore terms is another question.

Apple really needs to get it together and start protecting their developers.

Re: The Cracking of Bombora

Kerry — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:39:32 -0000

Thanks for the heads up - appreciate it!

It's fixed now - I could tell that you didn't want us to promote them anymore, right?

Re: The Cracking of Bombora

Hunter — Sun, 17 May 2009 13:30:14 -0000

I'm one of the guys that works on Bombora.

Jay - I believe that nothing we could do would ever really stop these people. At the same time, if the bar for piracy is raised slightly, it might not encourage such a high level of casual cracking.

Maybe I'm wrong - we'll see. We're certainly not going to expend a ton of resources on it. I'd rather spend time working on real features.

I love the App Store but there's no doubt it has a lot of problems / deficiencies that I hope Apple will fix over time.

-Hunter

Re: The Cracking of Bombora

dm — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:01:42 -0000

I understand that in order to run cracked apps, the security subsystems in the iPhone need to be disabled, i.e. the app needs to be tagged as "part of the OS" and have elevated privileges.

I wonder if it would be considered ethical to have your app contact iTunes and purchase itself?

Re: The Cracking of Bombora

anon — Sat, 16 May 2009 21:27:04 -0000

THANKS FOR THE GREAT LINK TO THE APP SITE!

Re: The Cracking of Bombora

Jay Freeman (saurik) — Sat, 16 May 2009 21:02:01 -0000

Won't they just then crack the newer version of your program? I don't see how forcing an upgrade and requiring people to use that version will actually manage to stop this from happening.

The stupid part about all of this is that if Apple were to just provide you access to a customer list for your own product you would not be in this position. The idea that you have to provide both support and server resources to /anyone/ who claims they own your application is ludicrous. :(

(For the record, products sold via Cydia do have this ability, in addition to being able to give people discounts on purchases if they own other products and other "must haves" that result when you have serious business concerns at work.)

-- Jay Freeman (saurik)

Re: Bombora Location-Aware Buoys Preview!

Kerry — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:23:05 -0000

FYI - The status icon color is determined by the Significant Wave Height figure displayed on the top of each square.

Re: What is Bombora?

Kerry — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:39:37 -0000

Bombora is scheduled for release in Spring of 2009 and we're excited about the launch.