It is perfectly acceptable if you haven’t heard the craze of a new untethered jailbreak amongst the community for all iPhone holders, there are plenty of articles if you search long enough to find details on just how to carry out the process. Needless to say, Apple aren’t happy, people jailbreaking their own devices despite the fact that jailbreaking is actually legal in the US.
Given all the hype over evasi0n jailbreaking tool and the evad3rs team making a public announcement on the release date of the tool, it wasn’t very surprising when Apple decided to upload their article on their knowledge base support pages detailing the issues that would arise with an unauthorised modification of iOS.
Apple KB Article on Jailbreaking, in case original article is modified or altered after this is published
Let’s face it, some of the details Apple have outline are in fact true and do hold up to some extent, however most of this article is just a scare tactic, and here is my breakdown on each of the points Apple have so conveniently raised about the dangers of jailbreaking.
Security vulnerabilities: Jailbreaking your device eliminates security layers designed to protect your personal information and your iOS device. With this security removed from your iOS device, hackers may steal your personal information, damage your device, attack your network, or introduce malware, spyware or viruses.
OK, that is a fair point, the underlining concept of jailbreaking is effectively removing a secured layer within the iOS that allows 3rd party applications/tweaks to be installed without the need to sign or authenticate with Apple’s servers however not all applications will steal your personal information, damage your device (in fact it could improve your device in certain areas) and yes if you are not careful in where you are installing your 3rd party applications from it could introduce malware or spyware, but viruses? Hardly.
Instability: Frequent and unexpected crashes of the device, crashes and freezes of built-in apps and third-party apps, and loss of data.
There would be crashes and perhaps even frequent if you go overboard with certain tweaks and addons, yes these additions do put a significant strain on extra battery power being needed and extra processing needed and can lead to a warmer phone and this itself can lead to instability problems, however there are 3rd party applications that can reduce the overhead in processing power that can ultimately even help the iPhone/iPad function better than before.
Shortened battery life: The hacked software has caused an accelerated battery drain that shortens the operation of an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch on a single battery charge.
How many times have we all heard this one before? Battery life is largely dependant on the usage of the iDevice. Think about this one for a second, you’ve just jailbroken your iPhone, and you’re pretty excited to try all the new possibilities your phone has to offer, hours go by with you trying all the tweaks and addons possible, what is going to happen? In fact there are many occasions with people experiencing battery life issues without even jailbreaking their iPhones like this, or this and how about this?
Unreliable voice and data: Dropped calls, slow or unreliable data connections, and delayed or inaccurate location data.
OK, where should we start with this one? Dropped calls and unreliable connections aren’t due to jailbreaking, simple as that. Calls, data connections are all largely dependant on the carrier of the network service. Australia’s Vodafone network have coverage issues and still do which frustrated many of it’s customers for years with dropped calls, unreliable connections and inaccurate location data requests.
Let’s not forget to mention, Apple’s latest iOS firmware 6.1.1 which was released on the 11th of February 2013, that specifically mentions “This update fixes an issue that could impact cellular performance and reliability for iPhone 4S.” – Hold on a second here, does this mean that Apple releasing iOS 6.1 had unreliable voice and data mechanisms?
Disruption of services: Services such as Visual Voicemail, Weather, and Stocks have been disrupted or no longer work on the device. Additionally, third-party apps that use the Apple Push Notification Service have had difficulty receiving notifications or received notifications that were intended for a different hacked device. Other push-based services such as iCloud and Exchange have experienced problems synchronizing data with their respective servers.
Disruption of services I can agree on, when the jailbreak team evad3rs first released their evasi0n tool, many took to the Internet to mention the stock Weather app crashing upon loading after the jailbreak process. With many jailbreak methods initially would have it’s quirks and are often quickly rectified. Which I can’t say the same for Apple’s methods when an issue is discovered.
As for iCloud services? This alone presents some rather disturbing issues. Exchange experiencing problems synchronizing data? Sure that can happen, however not when a device is jailbroken, in fact it can happen on Apple’s stock iOS 6 firmware and guess what? It did.
Inability to apply future software updates: Some unauthorized modifications have caused damage to iOS that is not repairable. This can result in the hacked iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iOS update is installed.
OK this one just seems like, we ran out of things to say – so we’ll just scare people into thinking they can no longer update their devices. There are two distinct areas when it comes to hacking iPhones, you can either jailbreak (which is what this article and Apple’s KB article is about) and unlocking with the latter having the possibility of damaging the iPhone and iOS.
Apple please focus on the subject of the article, jailbreaking is easily recoverable even less tech savy users can plug their iPhones into iTunes and hit restore or update and guess what? The iPhone updates with a perfectly good stock iOS version of the software.
Needless to say, Apple aren’t happy, people jailbreaking their own devices. But that sentence there is the problem itself, it’s their own devices which I believe allows them the right to do whatever they wish with their devices.
What do you say to jailbreaking? Yay or nay?
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the RSS feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader. Or sign up for free email updates
The post Apple Aren’t Happy, People Jailbreaking Their Own Devices appeared first on Just Kevin.