While browsing reddit the other day, as usual I hit up /r/Android and proceeded to check the interesting part of the iOS world over at /r/jailbreak. I see a post from a developer about his release of BetterNF, a tweak that adds IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes ratings to the Netflix app, as well as allows the user to see what exact quality settings are being used. This is all well and good, and should be a useful tweak for Netflix users. It costs $2. Not really a bad price, if you watch a lot of Netflix it could be a great buy. If you don’t believe so, you have the freedom to vote with your wallet and not buy the tweak. Then in the comments people were complaining about how it’s so expensive, not worth it, just a money grab, etc. One comment specifically caught my eye.

I’ve been saying this for a year. Devs are just looking for a quick bucks now, a few noticeably excellent devs aside.

Now, I’m almost certain this guy is not a developer, or he would understand that developing cydia tweaks isn’t exactly a very good way to make “quick bucks”. Let’s take a quick look at the steps required to make such a tweak, assuming the developer in question already has some Objective-C and Logos knowledge.

Extract required headers from Netflix app. Figure out a little bit about how the Netflix app works and where it stores the appropriate UI code. Figure out how to use the API’s to get ratings from IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. Insert appropriate code to use the API’s and display the resulting information in the Netflix UI. Find out where the Netflix app stores information about the quality of the video. Insert code to detect a double tap on the upper left corner of a playing video and display relevant quality information. Test tweak. Publish tweak

Now that’s quite a few steps. You could probably also insert a few “Be frustrated” steps in there as well. There doesn’t appear to be any other tweaks on Cydia that modify Netflix, so this is new territory, unlike springboard modding.

On another note, who says the developer won’t reinvest in the jailbreak community with the money he earns? He mentions he has an iPad 2, which is a very old device. Perhaps some of the money earned from this or other tweaks will end up going to getting a new tablet to help development of new tweaks.

Even if he uses the money for something unrelated, I honestly don’t think most developers are just looking for “quick bucks”, or they would be off doing something else. Developers can use their skills how they choose and if they want the quickest money, they can probably get that just working in a regular job. That’s not to say no jailbreak devs have ordinary development jobs, but you know what I mean.

If a developer notices that they can make money off of something that they enjoy doing, why wouldn’t they? At the end of the day, you want to make money too, right? These devs are running a business of sorts, just like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Valve, etc is. Just on a much, much smaller scale. You aren’t getting mad at the above companies, are you? Then why get mad at the jailbreak devs working hard to keep jailbreaking awesome?