For several days now, the tech elite have been all atwitter with excitement over the news that jailbreaking your iPhone is now a legal thing to do. Right on the heals of that news came the easiest way to jailbreak your iPhone ever. A simple website, JailbreakMe.com, allows you to navigate to a page, slide your finger, and in about 90 seconds, have an iPhone that can be used in new ways, not intended by Apple or AT&T.

For the non-techies that follow me, jailbreaking is the term used to describe the software hacks that circumvent the use and customization restrictions placed on the iPhone by Apple – and probably the carriers. In the case of JailbreakMe.com, the hackers are exploiting a software hole in the Safari web browser to gain high-level control over the operating system, and make the changes necessary.
Now that we are all up to speed on what jailbreaking is, lets talk about what it can do for you. Simply put, Apple is very restrictive of what you can and can’t do to, and with the phone you paid for. In their defense, this is done for a user-experience reason, and not because they don’t want you to have an iPhone that looks like a vending machine. Just think about how hard it would be to provide customer service for every Tom, Dick and Harriet that customized their phone. That is reason numero uno, why Apple will not provide support to users with phones that are currently jailbroken. Before they even take a look at your phone, you will have to restore it back to the standard iOS.
Jailbreaking allows you to make your iPhone yours. There are hundreds, if not thousands of custom themes to change how your phone looks. You can add features, like lock screen info that shows recent email, text messages, weather, twitter updates all on the main screen before you even unlock your phone. Handy, if you want just a quick, at-a-glance update. There are apps that turn your iPhone into a WiFi hotspot, so you can share your 3G signal with nearby laptops or iPads, or whatever. Doing this gets you around the $20 per month fee AT&T leverages for the privilege of tethering, and they don’t allow you to make the phone a WiFi hotspot. This feature is especially great for users who are still on the unlimited data plan.
There are thousands of apps on the “other” app store – the one not run by Apple – many of them that would never see the light of day on the iTunes store. In my opinion, that does not make it better, just different. I hesitate to buy anything through this grey-market arena, simply because I don’t know that I can trust these other vendors with my info. You may think I am being too cautious, but I don’t need Shady McShaderson taking my money.
Maybe I am not making all the good points for jailbreaking your iPhone, check out this link or some of the many articles over at topiphoneresource.info. But selling you on jailbreaking your iPhone is not my goal. What I am trying to do, is tell you why I chose to jailbreak my iPhone 3G, and why I tell most of my clients and friends not to bother.
First, me: I chose to jailbreak my 3G before the website option came around. Actually, I did it before it was technically legal. I did it because, in their quest to offer the best user experience, Apple did not support background app processes on my phone. I wanted to have some apps run in the background – particularly Pandora – and I wanted to have the remaining battery life displayed as a percentage. Two fairly simple reasons. I like how it works. I don’t want it to work like a Droid, and with the exception of the lock screen info, I don’t have any use for the rest of the apps.
As much as I like the idea of having the lock screen info on my iPhone – and I think Apple should do something like this in a future update – I am not going to spend money on something that is not officially supported because it may disappear with a future OS update, and also because of reason number dos.
On my hardware – a two-year-old 3G – iOS 4 runs about as fast as a freshly poured slushie. Jailbroken, with apps running, my phone comes about two seconds away from becoming a flying projectile of frustration. But, yet, because I love having Pandora playing while I check my email, I still have it jailbroken.
Now, for the rest of the people that come to me with their iPhone questions – @urvaksh does call me the ITCzar after all – I typically ask two questions. 1. Are you unhappy with how your phone looks, or what you can do with it? 2. Do you want to spend time trouble-shooting your phone when something is not quite right? If the answer to either of these is “no” then I tell them to just forget the option is even there – you were happy before the new and shiny came along, and you will continue to be happy in un-jailbroken bliss.
However, if they are a “power user,” want to have tethering, or just want to play around, then I tell them to backup their phone, and give it a whirl, but do it knowing that Apple, and likely AT&T will find ways to keep you from doing it in the future, and will not give you support now if something breaks.
But if something does break, come to me @smartpig, I will fix what ails ya, its what I do.