Installous was the app developed by puy0 who abandoned it later and Hackulous adopted it (as far as I know). Installous allowed cracked IPAs to be downloaded and installed directly from their Apple iDevices. User could download cracked IPAs using direct links as well as bit torrent. All cracked IPA files were user submitted.
AppSync was a little tweak that allowed cracked IPAs to be synced with jailbroken iDevices. Ability to install AppSync and cracked IPAs was one of the big (but not the only) reason behind people jailbreaking their iDevices.
The farewell message posted by the Hackulous team is as below:
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
The hackulous team released tool(s) for cracking and sharing IPA files easily right from the Apple devices, which made sharing of cracked IPA files a piece of cake. Almost every paid app on the Apple App store was available to be downloaded for free. Most of the apps were available for download for free right after they were released on App store, which gives idea of how active the community was.
The shutdown of Hackulous and Installous has come as a surprise to its user as there were no news of shutting down the community anytime soon. Also, the hackulous team released update for Installous recently, which shows it wasn't planned to be shut down but to continue being developed. After the shutdown of hackulous, the Installous app started showing "Outdated version" message and terminated.
Apptrackr, the portal developed by Hackulous team solely for the purpose of sharing the cracked IPAs also seems to be shut down. "Server not found" error is being received when trying to reach Apptrackr site.
most_uniQue, one of the most active IPA cracker on Hackulous has tweeted that it was not a surprise that Hackulous has been shut down as it started dying right after he left it.
Hackulous shutting down. No surprises there. It started dying down right after I left it.
— Robin Hood (@most_uniQue) December 30, 2012
Hackulous and their projects - Installous and Apprackr were probably under the radar of Apple due to the copyrighted files being shared on them. There were news that hackulous received take-down notices from Apple many times (Can anyone confirm it?). Probably this was the reason for hackulous to be shut down unexpectedly.
While the actual reason for the shutdown of Hackulous may be unknown, this may be a bit of relief for Apple and App developers. But with many alternatives available, the copyright battle may be far from over.
It is also being said that the news to shut down hackulous permanently are just prank(?) and hackulous along with all other projects will be back online soon.
Any update on this topic will be posted here on Blog O'Nerd.
Until next time, Adios from +Perez Park
