The closure of two major Cydia repositories is arguably the result of a declining interest in jailbreaking, which provides root filesystem access and allows users to modify iOS and install unapproved apps on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
Out of all the things jailbreaking makes possible, two are big issues for me that I would love Apple to implement: custom launchers (Springboard hasn’t been changed since the original iPhone and is woefully outdated and restrictive) and the ability to change default applications. However, neither of these are reason enough to jailbreak iOS for me. I do wonder – do any of you still jailbreak? If so, why?
I have a glaring reason for considering jail breaking: iOS 11’s file manager does not show certain file types, such as zipx. This is incredibly annoying, since they have just recently gotten a tiny bit better at file management and inexcusable since zip is not treated like this.
It could be a side effect of the integrated zip support it has, but still, it’s insane.
isn’t it easier just not to place yourself in their jail in the first place.
It’s ironic that people living in their parents’ basements decided that their iPhone is what is in jail.
So the term was coined by you?
According to many sources, interest in iOS devices are decreasing a lot, and this year was the first year in a long while that feature phones sold more units than smartphones. Feature phones might not get any coverage, but they can call and send sms, but i bet it is due to the trend in korea and japan where “flip phones” have become the “cool thing”. Some can even run S60 software (though i do not know the legality of that, unles they are from ericsson/sony/microsoft/nokia)
i myself have traded “down” to a japanese feature phone. It plays video stored on a SD card (iphone can not do that), I get 256gb storage on the phone, and that can house my dvd’s and my music collection. And the software to send them over to the phone is really nice. The new feature phones have bluetooth and wifi as well as hdmi, so i can watch the content on any hdmi capable screen.
No i can not download games and apps, and there is no appstore. The big difference is that updates to codecs and system software works PERFECTLY and i would never consider a smartphone again due to the many reasons of uuid, price, inconvenience and malware.
Worth noting that a lot of LTE feature phones today are running Android underneath it all – often you can’t sideload Android apps, but you’ve still got the security risk.
This assumes that the feature phones weren’t always a security risk.
Since Nokia opensourced Symbian S60 (the code dump is on Sourceforge), I imagine that’s how they do it & that’s how it’s OK legally.
PS. The question that springs to mind is that if those phones can run S60 apps are they “feature phones” or just poor (today) smartphones?
The slight tweaks I cared about weren’t worth the trade-off in stability which always came with jailbreaking.
I found that most of the features i jailbroke for were eventually incorporated into stock iOS
It always pisses me off a little that we need to jailbreak anything. The various companies keep saying they are doing it to protect the consumers from themselves.
But, if this were the case, there would be a relatively easy way to get root on your device without having to resort to hacks that would just be turned off by default. They would have no motivation to actively keep defeating any successful attempt to get root and making it more difficult to achieve in future products.
Its all about protecting subscription software (which is becoming more and more common), antipiracy, and about tiering your devices functionality.
Everyone is so worried about tiering with net neutrality, but mark my words, this is why they don’t want you accessing the internals of your own hardware. Look at tethering as a first example. All of the functionality is in your device and it causes no extra burden on their networks (especially if your monthly bandwidth is capped). There is literally no reason this should be an extra monthly fee, and yet it is in most cases. Any rooted device has this functionality without charge.
But everyone just eats the horse hockey right up and just keeps moving along and accepting it and paying for it. We are making our own beds and will sleep in them…
Edited 2017-11-28 16:06 UTC
That’s a bit of a hyperbole. The tethering is definitively obscene, but it is now unlimited on some carriers as long as you pay a bit more.
The security maintenance of the software does need to be paid for, be it open source or not, however, there is a point to be made that it would be better for corporations to have that burden instead of it being pushed onto all customers disproportionately.
There is however, no reason for not allowing modern cell phones to be just like IBM PCs, and be allowed to run any operating system, besides planned obsolency to keep people buying devices.
That last one is the real crime.
Poseidon,
Nod. If congress were more functional (let’s face it, it hasn’t been functional under either party), then the owners would have the explicit right under law to repair and access their own hardware.
Openness in modern tech is regressing. While IOS clearly deserves a failing grade here and apple set a lot of the bad precedents, we can not pretend android has done a great job either. Ironically part of the problem is that for many decades we had taken our rights for granted. It was never thought necessary to make laws protecting what we already had. However as vendors (microsoft/intel/apple/etc) began using crypto as a means of controlling us, it left the future of open technology in a very dark place.
Except that corporations money to provide this comes mostly from… oh, yes, customers. Honestly, the way some of you people talk about “corporations” makes me wonder if you’ve ever been employed long enough to have the faintest clue how businesses run.
darknexus,
It’s not clear to me what you meant in this context.
The problem is that the tenants of the free market are based on self balancing forces, yet these break down when corporations are so strong that they no longer have to win customers through good services and products, but just by tightening their grip on the market instead. Simply put, it becomes more profitable for them to use heavy handed force over user friendly service. This isn’t really a new phenomenon; you may remember the ATT monopoly and how they controlled not only the lines but also banned competing devices. ATT had become too powerful to recover using free market solutions, ultimately the government had to step in to regenerate lost competition.
A lot of people believe in free market solutions. I think we should give them a chance when it seems like that the market can self-correct. However it is foolish to let the corporations keep taking control and rights away from consumers.
Lets just pretend that I am an unemployed dread lock wearing hippy wearing a Rastafarian hat (I am not, and I am employed. I Guess you don’t know as much as you think…). Lets pretend that you are right.
Given I am clearly too stupid to understand, and you have all of this vast wisdom about literally everything: other than the b.s. “to protect the consumers from themselves”, give me three good reasons why it is good for me to have my phone or device involuntarily locked to me, the owner of the device.
Hell, not even why it is good for me, give me three reasons why they would want to lock it down at all (other than doing it for the consumer’s security).
Back in the day Android was a crappy platform, on bad phones with bad looking apps. Now it’s a much less crappy platform, on some great phones with some really good looking apps. So I would say that it’s very possible that the people that really wanted the features that jailbreaking gave them mostly moved to the platform that allows them to do what they want on phones that may not be entirely as good as an iPhone but are getting really close.
Edited 2017-11-29 13:44 UTC
I don’t use iOS but jailbreaking for installing pirated apps seems to be a good reason (I’m Russian all in all). Android has ability to sideload apps out of box.
That’s funny because Cydia stopped working on my old jailbroken iPod Touch devices over three years ago. The devices were fine. The Cydia servers were not reachable and there was no way to update the device to use a theoretical alternate repository.