If you want to get in before Apple manages to make it illegal you might like to JailBreak your iPhone now. Or possibly sooner. It has correctly been pointed out that you could do it for over a year. Now it is urgent. For Apple is trying to make it illegal to modify the iPhone operating system to allow the installation of third party software.

So first how to do it (which was published a year or so ago but you may not have done it then) and then why Apple is frothing, slightly, at the mouth at the fact.

First credits:a group of hackers including hdm/metasploit, rezn, dinopio, drudge, kroo, pumpkin, davidc, dunham, and NerveGas have put together the ‘One-Touch’ instant jailbreak which works with the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Basically it makes your device’s full disk available for use and adding Installer.app to the device, giving you access to installing almost any third-party application on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

You are invited to make a small donation which seems a good thing.

For the record this device was used on both my machines this morning and seems to work with no hitches that I can detect.

Open up your Safari web browser on your iPhone or iPod Touch and visit JailBreakMe.com. (Note you CANNOT access it usefully through your PC.)

After visiting the site simply read the instructions provided, then scroll down and click on the ‘Install AppSnapp’ button.

You have just hacked your iPhone or iPod Touch and Apple thinks it is a naughty or potentially illegal act.

Note carefully so that you do not panic: when jailbreaking your device, Safari will commonly disappear and you will be brought back to the home screen, once there give it a minute for the device to restart and make sure not to touch anything at this point.

Once your iPhone or iPod Touch has restarted and you get the ‘Slide to Unlock’ opening screen, go ahead and unlock it and you’ll find that a new icon (Installer.app) is available on your home screen.

There are reports of some Safari web browsers hanging. Just press the Home button for about 5 seconds until it returns you to the home screen, then try again.

Now why does that which you have just been told about make Apple unhappy?

There are two major reasons why ‘jailbreaking’ as the process has become popularly known, makes the Cupertino Cabal less than totally chuffed.

The first, and the most likely to be quoted by Apple, is that allowing any old coder to fiddle about with the innards of the OS is a great way to encourage the kind of low-quality (and in some cases malicious) applications which have plagued other mobile platforms.

As with everything it does, Apple likes to keep a tight rein on every element of its hardware and software.

The second reason is that Apple skims 30 percent off of every transaction made on the App Store. To which it is perfectly entitled. But with popular apps selling in their tens of thousands it is a serious source of income and you are messing around with it.

Using the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the company is trying to have jailbreaking classified as a copyright infringement.

Will it succeed? Probably not.

Does it bother you whether your device is Jailbroken? Truthfully, I did it because I could.

So far I have not downloaded anything because of it.

Apple would do better to tell its legal people to keep their collective traps shut. But lawyers cannot do that. They are congenitally incapable of leaving well alone.

Related:

Updated: iJailbreak: easy 1.1.3 jailbreak for iPhone and iPod Touch on Mac

Jailbreak iPhone and iPod Touch 1.1.3 without a computer: iJailbreak Mobile

Application offers one-click Jailbreak of 1.1.3 iPhones

Should I jailbreak my iPhone?

How to jailbreak your iPhone or iPod Touch

Entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 6:09 pm under Free Apps, Hacks, How-to, Legal, iPhone, iPod Touch.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
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