Cult of Mac is at WWDC and AltConf, fishing for ProTips. The world’s biggest gathering of Apple developers is a rich hunting ground filled with alpha geeks, experts par excellence. What’s a ProTip? A ProTip is a nugget of knowledge, a little bit of expertise from someone in the know — a pro.
SAN FRANCISCO — Has Apple ever contacted you? This is one of two questions gray-hat hacker Jay “saurik” Freeman gets asked all the time. It happens so often, he has thought about putting it on a T-shirt.
“I have been contacted by Apple twice — once about a job and the other time a 50-page response to request sent to the copyright office,” he told Cult of Mac after his AltConf presentation on copyright in the digital era.
You see, Freeman is not just a gray-hat hacker, but also a businessman, an adjunct professor, a really fast talker and an expert on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He also built Cydia, where iOS users with jailbroken devices can download apps.
“I provide an alternative to the App Store,” said Freeman.
Which leads us to the second-most asked question he gets: Should I jailbreak my phone?
“In most cases the answer would inevitably be yes,” said Freeman.
Here is his list of reasons why jailbreaking iPhones makes sense:
- Jailbreaking your phone allows you customize the way the device’s interface. If you want to customize your iPhone’s icons or make them function in a different way, this is the one way to get that done.
- If you have trouble with your eyesight or the mobility of your hands, jailbreaking your iPhone allows you to implement a UI that will help with your particular problems.
- If there is a feature you have been dying for Apple to implement and you can’t wait another minute, chances are someone in the hacker community has already made it available for you to try on your jailbroken iPhone.
- If you are a developer working on your mobile app and you want to debug it before launch, you are more than likely going to need to spy on your work on a jailbroken phone.
- If you have security concerns and don’t want to share any of your information, your best bet is to jailbreak your iPhone and implement security checks yourself.
In the end, Freeman says he would never be able to work for Apple. He doesn’t think he could do good things for the world from inside a giant corporation. But he loves his Apple products.
Jim Merithew is director of content at Cult of Mac and Cult of Android. He is the former photo director of Wired and editor at large of Raw File, Wired’s photography blog. In more than 25 years as a journalist, including eight years at the San Francisco Chronicle, Jim has led award-winning teams and relentlessly spread the gospel of the bicycle. He also plays guitar in Pickle Horse. Follow him on Instagram (@tinyblackbox) and Twitter (@tinyblackbox).
13 responses to “#ProTip: The upside to jailbreaking your iPhone”
And what are the reasons not to jailbreak? Apple won’t support the user if it’s been jailbroken. I have a rule about listening to hackers……… I don’t. They are hackers and by nature, i just don’t trust them. who knows what kind of hacks they are doing.
thats a very naive way of looking at things.
Jay, please for the love of god get some basic hygiene and shave that fucking neck.
Uh, god created that look, just the way it is. Change your own look if you want to change something.
Well, if we were living in a society without hygiene products, then maybe that would fly, but in today’s modern society? Using the “God” excuse doesn’t work.
I don’t actually believe in gods, and my use of that word was not intended as the excuse. But really, if a person wants to allow the natural growth of their own hair on their own body in any place it likes to grow naturally, this is neither un-hygienic nor anyone else’s business to “correct”.
I’d rather see a list on why not to jailbreak your device. Secondly, Jay could probably take Apple to the next level if he worked there. Imagine some of the UI changes he could dream up.
Apple doesn’t support a jailbroken device. There have been malware that’s targeted towards jailbroken iPhones. I would suggest jailbreaking your iPhone unless you are one of those impatient people that have to have a feature that Apple hasn’t released and you are a developer and you really understand dealing with a jailbroken device, but I just can’t recommend this for the general population. Even with Android devices, there is only a relatively small number of users that root their phones, etc. It’s just these developer/hacker types that think they are superior because they know how to tweak their phones. It’s an ego based behavior that’s just silly.
Completely agree!
Your concern is moot. If you ever have a problem with your phone and need apple care support, you can always restore back before bringing in your device. I’ve been jailbreaking for years, and have brought jailbroken iPhones under apple care in for replacement and always received serviced. Most apple genius people can’t even tell the difference.
There’s no superiority complex around jailbreaking, its just a matter of having control over a $650+ device you payed for beyond the walled garden that apple provides. For me, its as simple as enabling tethering on my grandfathered data plan when AT&T locks it out. Jailbreaking has always been absolutely essential for that alone.
The basics for many of the current features on stock iOS that you enjoy all started out as jailbroken tweaks: wireless snycing, the current app switcher, command center, etc. Jailbreaking drives innovation on stock iOS, so your welcome for all the features :)
So you want saurik to change ui of iOS? Who said he is an UI dev? He can change the iOS altogether which apple won’t let. His abilities are not just restricted to UI , he can build his own OS.
Takes a lot more than skill to create an OS, and guess what, it won’t sell like Apple’s iOS. I meant he could probably more good at Apple…
Reasons: Free apps (VShare), free music (LinkTunes), free movies (Movie Box), Free tethering (MyWi), download capabilities (Safari Downloader), unlimited customization (Springtomize), and overall increased function.