Like a raven attracted to bright, shiny objects it’s hard to miss a headline like “The underground iPhone: Million-dollar jailbreaking industry thrives on legal loophole.”
The million dollar part sort of sticks in your craw.
Here’s the supporting evidence:
Early jailbreakers were inspired by rockstar-like fame, stardom, and the urge to test limits of creative ambition. Money followed in time and soon some of the jailbreaking vanguard started following money. Now iPhone jailbreaking is a multi-million dollar semi-underground business and there are legal loopholes that facilitate the growth of jailbreaking. (Emphasis ours.)
The story backs this up by citing figures that Cydia told the Washington Post ($10 million in annual revenue) and that there are “hordes of jailbreaking bandwagons which flourish on users’ demand for open-ended technologies that govern their choicest devices….including The Dev Team, MODMYI and THEMEIT…”
We’re still not sure that really supports the “million dollar jailbreaking industry” claim — that’s a heck of a lot of $20 MyWi.
How much would you say you spend on your jailbroken device?
Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco freelance writer who heads up Cult of Mac Magazine, our weekly publication available on iTunes. You can find her on Twitter and Google+. If you’re doing something new, cool and Apple-related, email her.
