Installous, The App Store For Pirates, Has Shut Down

Hackulous, the outfit behind Installous, has closed the doors on its website and Cydia repository. It marks the end of one of the more curious apps made for jailbroken iOS devices, one that replicated the App Store experience — just with pirated software.

Usually when one wants to download something illegally, they fire up their BitTorrent client, peruse a Usenet search engine or scrounge the web’s numerous file hosting services. For iOS apps though, Installous delivered a user-friendly, almost professional interface around the internet’s cache of cracked IPAs.

As this article on iDownloadBlog reports, the Hackulous team left a short message on its now-empty website, blaming the shutdown on a lack of interest on its forums and a dead community:

Goodnight, sweet prince.

We are very sad to announce that Hackulous is shutting down. After many years, our community has become stagnant and our forums are a bit of a ghost town. It has become difficult to keep them online and well-moderated, despite the devotion of our staff. We’re incredibly thankful for the support we’ve had over the years and hope that new, greater communities blossom out of our absence.

With lots of love,
Hackulous Team

I doubt spending hours toiling away at an app that helps people download software without paying for it was particularly fulfilling, especially if you had a community that couldn’t give a crap (not in the least surprising). For their sakes, I hope these guys move onto something more worthwhile.

[Hackulous, via iDownloadBlog]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.