5amuel personal blog The LORD is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion.

5 Myths About Jailbreaking

Came across this article. Thought I would share it with everyone.

When talking to prospective jailbreakers, I am both shocked and outraged by the lies and myths that they swallow. They will believe almost anything, simply because it is said by men in suits from apple.

1. Jailbreaking is illegal.

This is the argument that I hear most often, and the one apple fan-boys (and girls!) defend resiliently. The simple truth is, it’s not. The law states that “reverse-engineering of hardware is acceptable in order to add functionality”. Jailbreaking certainly adds functionality, so there should be no leg for apple to stand on, yet they resort to these scare tactics.

2. Jailbreaking voids the warranty.

This is not true. Because the restore process unmounts the drives (according to ih8sn0w- a prominent member of the jailbreaking community) there is *no* possibility of apple finding out that it was previously jailbroken. All of the software is wiped, including the products of the jailbreak. A friend of mine had jailbroken his ipod touch when the screen started to come loose at the edges. He restored it and took it back to apple. They issued a replacement; no questions asked.

3. Jailbreaking damages your iDevice.

I cannot stress enough how useful the restore option in iTunes is. *Whatever* happens, you can always restore. Since DFU mode is built into hardware, there is no way that you can modify it. As a result, there will be no situation in which your iDevice won’t restore. Seriously, try it out. SSH in as root and delete everything. That’s right; everthing. A restore will still work. I know, it sounds crazy! I didn’t believe too so I tried it. Needless to say, I was shocked and overjoyed when iTunes fixed it.

4. Jailbreaking leaves your device open to hacks.

I must admit, this is based partly in truth. However, it was the users’ fault, not the jailbreak’s. They installed openSSH, yet didn’t change the password. This is downright idiotic. Imagine creating an email adress and leaving the password as “password” then complaining about getting hacked into. You’d get laughed at. It’s the same principle here. There are some easy to follow guides on the internet of how to change your root password, something highly recommended.

5. Jailbreaking doesn’t add functionality; it is only used to get cracked apps.

Is being able to background apps not adding functionality? Is theming not adding functionality? Is being able to circumvent pointless “protections” by apple (such as apps not being able to change screen brightness) not adding functionality? Is instant access toggles from anywhere (sbsettings-check it out!) not adding funcionality? Suddenly this argument seems petty doesn’t it? I’ll admit it, a high proportion of users jailbreak for the abilty to get cracked apps. I do not condone this at all. However, anti-jailbreakers need to realise that we’re not all criminals. A lot of us jailbreak for one simple reason; it allows our devices to reach their full potential.

In order for the jailbreak community to flourish we need to better educate possible jailbreakers of the misinformation they are being fed by so called “impartial” bloggers.

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Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod Touch, Jailbreaking, Spirit