You could've said the same thing about Windows apps.
Piracy (which always acted as a marketing scheme for software) is also becoming irrelevant since many apps on the iPhone are just frontends to online services.
Besides, the free lunch is almost over. People are getting tired of fart apps.
Fart apps never made Apple much money. Of the top 5 grossing apps on the iPhone right now, the prices are $15, free, $1, $900, $7. They are hardly "fart apps". The free one is a TV streamer with an in-app subscription service of $10/month. The $1 is the RedLaser barcode scanner. Of the top 50 apps, 11 cost <$1, and 12 cost >$10 [1]. Apple is actively pushing developers to make more of the latter.
1. I mean >= and <=, rounded to the nearest dollar. That is, $9.99 ~ $10.
> You could've said the same thing about Windows apps.
Precisely! Except the easier it is to pirate Windows software, the more valuable Windows becomes (at no loss to Microsoft). Handset manufacturers, on the other hand, are trying to make a profit by taking a cut of the app sales. The more iPhone apps are sold, the more money Apple makes. Their bottom line is negatively affected every time someone opts to pirate instead of buying. Not so with Microsoft.
Back then I had a PC with dozens of pirated apps and games (there were "pirates" which took orders by phone, and delivered CDs by mail).
In fact I haven't used so much pirated software as in the nineties :)
Sir! Bite your tongue! This truly unique genere of iPhone apps has incalculable (by you, at least) amounts of potential. I'm certain that you would be shocked at the extensive research and development that is going into the next generation of these apps.
- the PC/Mac market has Microsoft taking a cut of every PC sold. Not so with Google's Android. With minimal software costs, making Android handsets is dirt cheaper.
- in the PC/Mac market, Apple makes most of their money selling hardware. In the mobile market, Apple is also making money facilitating the sale of content (Movies, Music, Apps).
- currently, Apple has an enormous advantage in the number of developers targeting their platform. As the industry matures, developers will gravitate even more to the device where they can make money selling their apps. When people start realizing how to easily pirate Android apps, I predict Apple will be the clear winner here.