Reader Poll: Will You Jailbreak Your iPhone?

Nicole Martinelli ()

Now that the US Copyright Office has ruled that jailbreaking your phone is not a violation of the DMCA, you can go ahead an tinker without crossing over to the wrong side of the law.

Tell us whether you will jailbreak your iPhone now or not and why in the comments.

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14 comments »

About the author

nicole_martinelli

Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco native who has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek. You can find her on Twitter , Facebook and Google+.

If you're doing something new/cool that's Apple related, email her about it.

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Posted in iPhone, Jailbreak, News |

  • JC Pancake

    Marijuana may have a good chance of becoming LEGAL in California soon. Just because it becomes legal does not mean I should encourage my kids to smoke it. Would you encourage your children to smoke it, just because it was legal? How about you guys encouraging your pregnant wife to smoke pot if both of you could smoke it legally?

    The point? Assuming jailbreaking becomes legal (and Apple is forced to comply) doesn’t mean you should all be jailbreaking without considering the pros and cons. In other words, the pros would have to clearly outweight the cons. And maybe that would be a case-by-case basis for a lot of iPhone users.

    I’m in the Maybe camp for now.

  • Bubbah

    well nicotine-based tobacco is also legal. I guess everyone, that doesn’t do it already, should smoke it because it is legal. Hell, get your loved ones to start smoking. Help them die earlier from lung cancer

  • blackhaT

    RE: THE 2 POSTS ABOVE

    Since when does jailbreaking cause cancer? I didn’t know a software modification was comparable to controlled substances..

  • Barry

    If I had an interest in hacking a device I’d just buy a Droid instead. I use Apple products for their improved stability, I can help but think that jailbreaking the iPhone would increase the potential for instability and hassles in updating.

  • firesign3000

    I jailbroke my 3G twice because I thought I might want to use tethering. Both times it caused noticeable performance hits and instability, enough that it wasn’t worth it for me to even try and use it for tethering. Plus it caused issues with visual voicemail. I know 80 people will now tell me how it worked fine for them. I’m sure it probably dd, and that’s fine for you, but it didn’t for me. I also don’t need a baseband jailbreak since AT&T here in Cincinnati works just fine for me. I have no intention of jailbreaking my iPhone 4.

  • brosareforlife

    Anyone who doesn’t jailbreak their iphone is just ignorant. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I’m just saying that if you aren’t a techy then you prolly won’t have the smarts to fully utilize a jailbroken iphone. Oh, and the guy with the droid, hacking device comment, you obviously don’t know squat. You can do 100x more things with a jailbroken Iphone vs. a Droid.

  • JD

    My hope is that Apple and AT&T will allow users to unlock their phones once the contract is completed. There is a class action law suit somewhere for this and I hope for once Apple and AT&T loose,

    I could see keeping the phone locked during contact but after that .. there is absolutely no reason to except greed.

    JDS

  • bubbakush

    gee, a lil’ too far right here?
    marijuana? iphones?
    umm ok ….

    i wont jailbreak my phones since i buy the apps i want (soo much better
    then having to hack updates n all the hassles)
    i only jailbreak out of contract phones and thats just to get the gophone
    working to give them to my kids but we dont use installous type crap.

  • bubbakush

    “Anyone who doesn’t jailbreak their iphone is just ignorant.”

    been there done that and its a pain in the ass the apps only cost a few bucks and any design enhancements wear out the battery! jailbreaks suck.

    im not moraly against them its just apple is better.

  • John

    I have no problems jailbreaking my phone, and it has never been illegal here in the free world, only in the US has the DMCA neutered your rights.

  • Marky Mark

    The only reason I would JB is to be able to use custom SMS tones. I’m well aware that this is a lame cause and shame at the trivia of it is probably why I haven’t done it. But iOS4 dragged my 3G to the brink of useless and I’ve downgraded back to OS3 again – no more OS updates for me – this means another psychological barrier removed. I might get around to it now…

    Come to think of it, a more informative lock screen would be useful too…and a video camera…

  • http://www.vvvrm.com James Churchman

    “But iOS4 dragged my 3G to the brink of useless and I’ve downgraded back to OS3 again”

    yeah i had that slowness for a brief while… till i did the double hard reset trick, its nor NOTICEABLY faster than it was under ios 3.1 .. and it has all the new features too!!

  • Barry

    @brosareforlife: my point is that I use Mac products so I don’t have to screw around with them. I prefer to have a stable system to develop with and I want a stable phone. There may be 100x more things that you can do with a jailbroken iPhone, I wasn’t comparing the capabilities of the platforms. I was just making the point that with a droid you can install whatever crap someone puts up for download.

  • B. Marley

    Leave the cannabis out of the argument, mon.

    Jah Love never hurt nobody, legal or not…