The new Apple iPhone 3GS may now be jailbroken at will, according to a teenaged hacker named George Hotz, who has released his jailbreaking software for both Windows and OS X.

Hotz’s first release of the iPhone 3GS Windows software came last Friday. He has since followed up with a jailbreaking program that will run on the Mac platform. Hotz, as is normal for such releases, was very enthusiastic about his feat. In his announcement, he said, “Yes, this is what you’ve all been waiting for. A jailbreak for the iPhone 3GS. And it’s awesome. To get started right now, go to purplera1n.com. Download it!”

Hotz was also dismissive of the decision by the much more famous Dev Team not to release a jailbreaking solution until after Apple has released iPhone OS version 3.01, according to a ChannelWeb story. There are security problems in the SMS messaging system of the original 3.0 release, and the release of 3.01 as a security fix is expected to come much more rapidly than usual because of it. The Dev Team decided  not to expend much effort on breaking 3.0 with 3.01 due immediately on its heels.

Mr. Hotz looks at it differently. He says, “Normally I don’t make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats [sic] up with waiting until 3.1? That isn’t how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn’t worth waiting because you might have the ‘last’ hole in the iPhone. What last hole…this isn’t golf. I’ll find a new one next week.”

It is somewhat amusing to see one jailbreak hacker calling another group of jailbreak hackers on the issue of laziness. Of course, it is also odd to see the main jailbreaking software source adopting tactics that would work in most corporate boardrooms of the land: they are apparently more than willing to make the customer wait in order to save themselves some effort. Sounds just like Microsoft, doesn’t it? Are we seeing the beginning of an era in which all there is to see is “the man” sticking it to another version of “the man?”

Related:

Entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 4:10 pm under Firmware, Free Apps, Hacks, iPhone.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
Stumble It!