Has Steve Jobs made jailbreaking your iPhone/iPad too much of a hassle?

The iPhone Blog (TiPB) asks a question that I've been pondering for some time now - Are tethered Jailbreaks worth the hassle?

Currently, any device (iPhone, iPad or iPod touch) running iOS 4.2.1 can only be jailbroken using a tethered hack. A tethered jailbreak means that the device will need to be connected to a PC or a Mac each and every time it is rebooted and the reboot carried out using redsn0w is the jailbreak is to persist. And it's a major hassle, as TiPB points out:

Finish jailbreaking. Reboot. Update Cydia. Reboot. Update Cydia again. Reboot. Install a Jailbreak app or tweak. Reboot. Install another. Reboot. Hang or crash. Reboot. Run out of power. Reboot.

And it’s not just a simple reboot, you have to run redsn0w, power off your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, find your firmware on your PC, load the firmware into redsn0w, let it process, make sure you uncheck Jailbreak and check Untethered boot, put your device into DFU mode, then let redsn0w work its tethered reboot magic.

Every. Time.

I used to jailbreak my iPhone, but I have to admit that I no longer bother. Why? Because it's too much hassle. I always find myself caught between wanting to preserve the jailbreak to run the latest iOS, and for me running the latest iOS always wins. So I ended up going through a cycle of my iPhone sometimes being jailbroken, and sometimes not being jailbroken. While there are some cool things to be gained from jailbreaking, in the long run it's simply too much hassle.

And I think that this is what Steve Jobs wants. I think that Apple knows full well that it can't do away with jailbreaking, but the continual drip-feed of new iOS updates will make it more and more of a hassle, which means that fewer and fewer people will bother doing it.

Do you jailbreak?

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