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Matthew Miller & Joel Evans
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With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?

By | August 3, 2010, 11:55am PDT

Summary: Jailbreaking is now legal, but it still voids your warranty. Are you interested in taking the chance?

Jailbreaking an iPhone became legal last week, and Apple has already made it known that even though it’s now legal to Jailbreak your iPhone, the company still considers your iPhone to be out of warranty if you do. Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from jailbreaking, especially since this weekend a web-based service at JailBreakMe.com, made it super easy to do so.

If you’re not familiar with using the new service at JailBreakMe.com, Jason covered the process in full detail. The creator of this latest version claims that you can easily restore your iPhone back to normal, so I’m sure that people are happily Jailbreaking all day long.

I’ve made a few attempts to Jailbreak using the new service, but each one has failed. This has no doubt been because the server is overloaded. That said, as of this writing it’s still unknown if MMS and a few other features are back online post jailbreak, so I’m definitely going to hold off for now.

It used to be a bit of a “cat and mouse” game each time the hackers advanced their toolset. Now that jailbreaking is legal, though, perhaps Apple won’t spend any more time trying to thwart the hackers’ efforts. Then again, it looks like there’s a bunch of kids running around Apple Stores jailbreaking iPhone 4 devices on display, as you can see in the video below (thanks to Geek.com for the heads-up).

You can bet that there will soon be an overzealous employee at the Apple Store who catches someone in the act. Once that happens, there’s no telling what Apple will do to make an example of the hacker.

Did you Jailbreak your iPhone? If so, share why you did below.

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Topics

Apple iPhone, Apple Inc., Hacker, Smart Phones, Hacking, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Security, Joel Evans

With more than a decade of mobile, Internet and wireless experience, Joel specializes in taking existing brands and technologies into the mobile and wireless space.

Disclosure

Joel Evans

Joel is a serial entrepreneur with his most recent business, CronkSoftware (cronksoftware.com), focusing on consulting and building games and applications for mobile devices. Joel has consulted for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile division and advises other companies on how to incorporate mobile into their existing brands and products. Joel purchases many of his devices and others are sent for review on a 30-day loaner basis and then returned to the supplier. If any devices are provided as “keeper” Joel will clearly disclose this in his reviews.

Biography

Joel Evans

With more than a decade of mobile, Internet and wireless experience, Joel specializes in taking existing brands, technologies and services into the mobile and wireless space. Joel is currently serving as the Managing Director of Cronk Software, Inc., a company he founded to offer full-service, end-to-end mobile strategy, design and development services.

Joel is the former founder and "Chief Geek" of Geek.com, a website praised by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and others as one of world's best sources of information for technology professionals and enthusiasts.

Joel also serves as a technology expert for a number of well-known publications and regularly advises corporations, analysts, journalists and bloggers on what the future of technology will bring. He brings decades of relationships with leading game publishers, online communities and publishers, along with both hardware and software product management and delivery expertise. Joel can be found online as "JoelGeek" and you can follow him on Twitter @JoelGeek.

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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
FAULKNE 13th Oct
Good day to confirm this comment I would appreciate T h e b e s t o f Z D N e t d e l i v e r e d your website very nice to everyone Yes, Oracle is the only one with shared-disk architecture, but that is there advantage. It means you can add or remove nodes and the database lives on. In a shared nothing architecture, if you lose a node, you lose the system. I'm sure Oracle appreciates EMC highlighting their advantage.I also desire to signal in your RSS feeds. Thank you as soon as once again and maintain up the great operate Awesome post! Thank you very much || thanks for nice content this is really benefit to me.
View in thread
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JB, then restored
taylor@... 3rd Aug 2010
I did Jailbreak it. I found that most of the JB software doesn't yet work under iOS4. Also the JB broke Skype. Skype can not run in background to accept incoming calls and IMs. This is important to me. So restored back to factory to unjailbreak. I'll pass on JB for now. There aren't many useful things you can do with JB at the moment.
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
Pete "athynz" Athens 3rd Aug 2010
@taylor@... I found that most of the JB software doesn't yet work under iOS4. Are you on an iPhone 4? I jailbroke my 3G running iOS4 about 3 weeks ago using a local jailbreaking program and so far everything works... might be an issue with the iPhone 4 itself.

There aren't many useful things you can do with JB at the moment I'd have to agree as far as the iPhone 4is concerned - with the earlier models there is quite a bit of very useful things jailbreaking brings to the table... although the number of things has been diminishing with each major iOS revision.
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Ha, that's HILARIOUS!!!
NonZealot 3rd Aug 2010
Then again, it looks like there?s a bunch of kids running around Apple Stores jailbreaking iPhone 4 devices on display, as you can see in the video below

Ah, the ultimate in drive-by pwnage!!!

No, I will not be jailbreaking my phone. I was not going to reward Apple with my money for releasing really, really, really bad OSs in their iPhones. Now that iOS4 is actually a decent OS, I simply can't justify jailbreaking it. As taylor above has already noted, jailbreaking isn't free.
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
a1fr3d0 4th Aug 2010
@NonZealot OS4 a decent OS!? Man, at least for the iphone 3g, OS4 is the worst think you can do. I update mine and the phone is working very slow, also many apps crashes very often (black screen). Same apps on my wife's iphone (OS 3) works fine.... I hope apple is working on a big patch for OS 4.... Or are they trying to put 3G out of the market?
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
John_Harris@... 3rd Aug 2010
Indeed I have jail-broken my wife's 3GS. I can now upgrade (downgrade) her to the iPhone 4 and send the current on to a family member overseas. Otherwise I am being denied fair use of the current phone.
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
Droid101 3rd Aug 2010
I've never sent any phone back to a manufacturer for a warranty service, so warranties are pointless, in my opinion.
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
Stan57 3rd Aug 2010
@Droid101

what a looser,so just because YOU don't use them the rest of the world is mistaken by using them. Who are you? why should anyone believe or do what you do? you have the smugness of an apple zelot for sure
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OF COURSE I DID
eddit13 3rd Aug 2010
The commenters above obviously don't understand what Cydia and the open app stores provide.

1. SBSettings - Access Wifi, Bluetooth, 3G are now a homescreen swipe away (a la Android). This should be immediately implemented into the next iOS.

2. Intelliscreen - Yeah go ahead and act like the Alert Bubble that Apple uses for ALL notifications is just gravy. Spare me. Intelliscreen does what the iPhone should do. On the lock screen, you have missed calls, missed texts, weather widget, calendar widget, news widgets, etc. No more missed calls, texts and other alerts because of Apple's idiotic alert bubble.

3. MyWi & My3G - AT&T is the biggest scam artists in this country. It doesn't cost anyone anything to enable tethering. Give us the option and stop trying to nickel and dime your customers. Likewise with the 3G limits. With these two apps, your iPhone is ready for SHOWTIME.

And that whole voided warantee is BS. If you notice problems, plug it into iTunes and restore the original software. It's click of a button easy.
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
eddit13 3rd Aug 2010
@eddit13 I forgot to mention...on iPhone 4, performance isn't hindered ONE BIT. It flies, like it should. Very happy that I returned the Droid X.
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
a1fr3d0 4th Aug 2010
@eddit13 What can I say, I jailbreak mine iphone some weeks ago and I agree with al you say. I did it mainly for the tethering, now I can use my iphone as a wireless router and any pc around me can access internet using my 4g. Works great.
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
Therophin Updated - 3rd Aug 2010
I don't like the fact that Apple leaves their older models in the dust. i understand somethings just can't happen due to speed related issues but seriously I can put apps in a folder now but not have a picture on my home screen? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3FGdjjythQ
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
Pete "athynz" Athens 3rd Aug 2010
@Therophin That's the reason I've been jailbreaking from the get-go with my iPhone 3G... and iOS4 brings so much to the table that the older hardware CAN do (such as wallpapers) that Apple says it can't. They said the 3G is not capable of recording video and left that functionality out... and yet with cycorder (available via Cydia) I can record video to my heart's content on my 3G. Multitasking - well the Apple version of it is a different story... it works but it does bog things down if I keep more than 3 apps open... but it IS older hardware.
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
Pete "athynz" Athens 3rd Aug 2010
Heck yeah! I was doing it while it was in litigation... like I've said before iOS4 brings a lot to the table as far as functionality vs the earlier OSes that is not allowed to run on the older 3G... things like video recording and wallpapers which I've had on my 3G ever since iOS 2.0 via jailbreaking.
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Rough Crowd
tomogden Updated - 3rd Aug 2010
You're ALL NUTS.

Why would I want to mess with a phone I paid good money for so I can force it to do something it wasn't meant to do?
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Because most people buy things to do what THEY want it to do.
Michael Kelly 4th Aug 2010
@tomogden

When I buy a tool I don't give a flip what the manufacturer wants me to do with it, I care about what I want to do with it and if I can do what I want with it.
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
max_wedge 9th Aug 2010
@tomogden, So even though it CAN do things that Steve Jobs never meant it too do, you would rather keep the limited version, making your good money less valuable to you than if you were to jailbreak? Fair enough, to each their own, but I don't think it's the jailbreakers who are nuts....
0 Votes
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
MACKENZI 10th Sep
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
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RE: With Jailbreaking being legal, will you jailbreak your iPhone?
FAULKNE 13th Oct
Good day to confirm this comment I would appreciate T h e b e s t o f Z D N e t d e l i v e r e d your website very nice to everyone Yes, Oracle is the only one with shared-disk architecture, but that is there advantage. It means you can add or remove nodes and the database lives on. In a shared nothing architecture, if you lose a node, you lose the system. I'm sure Oracle appreciates EMC highlighting their advantage.I also desire to signal in your RSS feeds. Thank you as soon as once again and maintain up the great operate Awesome post! Thank you very much || thanks for nice content this is really benefit to me.

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