Check Out Cult of Mac’s Jailbreak Superguide

CC-licensed, thanks to hackerfriendly on Flickr.

iPhone and iPod owners have been jailbreaking — or unlocking the operating system to run applications not approved by Apple — since at least 2007.

Why bother?

There are a number of reasons to consider jailbreaking your iDevice, whether it’s to create Wi-Fi hotspots with MyWi, get tweaks and added functionalities, many that weren’t previously available (multi-tasking, Bluetooth access, tethering), and the freedom to use third-party apps that haven’t been approved by Apple, whose family-friendly content restrictions have occasionally bordered on absurd.

Apple doesn’t like jailbreakers because of the loss of revenue and control over the devices, but the US Copyright office recently ruled that jailbreaking your Apple device does not violate the DMCA and is legal. Keep in mind that Apple still voids your warranty if you jailbreak, but now they can’t threaten to slap you with a $2,500 fine.

Cult of Mac has put together a Jailbreak Superguide to get you busted out and moving on.

Getting started:

DON'T MISS
Turn Your iPhone Into a Wireless Hotspot and Enable Tethering using MyWi [Jailbreak Superguide]

Must-Have Jailbreak Apps:

Housekeeping for your jailbroken iPhone

11 comments »

About the author

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.

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)| Read more posts by Nicole Martinelli.

Posted in How-To, iPhone, Jailbreak | Tagged: jailbreak superguide |

Will
Just remember, buyer beware. If you choose to jailbreak; load untested non-Apple endorsed third part applications and something untowards occurs, you can only blame one person – yourself. So, again, buyer beware.
James
Your first two links under “Must-Have Jailbreak Apps” point to the wrong articles.
Jacob
ya james is right.
http://www.zoomata.com Nicole Martinelli
Fixed, tx.
DCJ001
Nicole.
Jailbreak guides from an irresponsible sixteen year old like Sayam Aggarwal or you are not appreciated.
Gazoobee
It’s worth mentioning since you guys were advocating people stealing software after they jailbroke their devices, that your line above about jailbreaking being “legal” now is actually inaccurate.
jailbreaking is expressly *not* legal and expressly *does* violate the DCMA if your purpose in doing it is to get the illegally copied apps. You can be arrested for it, it *is* a crime, and telling people how to get the pirated apps is also a crime under US and International law.
I’m not sure why this site doesn’t just do what all the others do and just pretend like they are following the law or concerned about it. A few words of disclaimer and a simple admonition to people not to steal and you’d have your asses covered legally.
Why bother taking the chance, and if your purpose truly is to educate people about these things, why not let people know that by following some of your advice they *could* get into trouble?
Machete9236
@DCJ001: I think Nicole is of a higher standing than Sayam. Also, even though I don’t jailbreak, I can see the use of a jailbreak guide as long as pirating software is NOT mentioned. Since it is no longer mentioned, I can’t see the harm done.
JDS
I don’t advocate jail breaking. I have an iPhone 4 and I have absolutely no plans of jail breaking it under any circumstances. Another thing to consider is that in Apple’s eyes jail breaking is illegal. So they will not support such a phone or ipod.
Sooner or later the class action lawsuit against Apple and AT&T will result in Apple and AT&T being forced to do it legally. Apple wants to do it AT&T does not for obvious reasons.
Having said that I have a 8GB iPod Touch that I would love to jail break to satisfy the inner geek in me. :-) My backup iPhone 3G no way – I am going to wait for the courts to come out and make AT&T do it.
porkchop1234
According to the Millennium Digital Rights Act its COMPLETELY LEGAL to backward engineer a electronic device for ones personal use which means jail breaking any electronics device whatever brand name it might be is COMPLETELY LEGAL. If it wasn’t George Hotz aka geohot and his buddy muscle nerd from the iPhone dev team would have been in jail years ago. Its COMPLETELY ILLEGAL though to DOWNLOAD HACKED apps which are legally available on the iTunes store. There’s a HUGE difference between jail breaking a device for more functionality or 3rd party apps which are unavailable from the iTunes store and jail breaking to download free hacked utilities and games which are available on the iTunes store.
People are comparing apples to oranges no pun intended.
accolon
@DCJ001:
Constant bashing and whining by persons like you is not appreciated.
Justin
It’s not really the concept of jailbreaking that bugs Apple, it’s the reason behind it. Most people jailbreak just to get Installous (comon’ you all know it) and its probably the only app you’ll get off Cydia ever since you upgraded to iOS 4.
Backgrounder WAS a reason but seriously who used Backgrounder it was really odd to use. iOS 4 adds multi-tasking you can’t reason with that anymore
Themes IS KINDA a reason, iOS 4 adds wallpapers with shadowed words. MOST themes don’t even work under iOS4.
SBSettings is NOT really a reason, it can be useful but I had it and barely used it. I mean it makes the interface all wierd and ugly no offense.
The only other apps are things like MyWi and PDANet, which are undoubtedly useful. But tethering is official everywhere already, though jailbreaking helps you eliminate that fee you can’t use that as your reason I mean seriously (especially when there’s a 200MB and 2GB cap).
Apple frowns upon piracy, the App Store is like the central hub of where you can expand your iPhone.
Yes, Apple did block jailbreaking in OS 1.0 but that was back then, why? Another reason was because the main motivation was to unlock the handset, which might have harmed Apple and AT&T’s contract and relationship. But that’s coming to an end and Apple is starting to care less and less about that.