There is a huge excitement around as far as the jailbreaking is concerned. Every time Applecomes up with a new device, the first question we ask the developers of the jailbreakcommunity is: Can this device be jailbroken? And most of the time the answer has been yes, but on very few occasions, they have told us to wait, until they come up with a better solution. Jailbreak has become a very essential part of people who own iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Apple TV. So here we are going to talk about what the jailbreak is, why do we want to jailbreak, and the history of jailbreaking.
What is Jailbreaking?
So let’s start with what jailbreak is? Have you guys ever wondered that what technology revolves around the process of jailbreaking, don’t worry no one cares about that unless it works fine. Let me tell you a little story so that you can understand what the jailbreak is. Consider Apple as the owner of a prison. Once you buy Apple product you are in that prison. A person in there can only use the things that are currently present in the prison. You cannot access anything that is outside the prison unless your break out of it. Now comes the jailbreak team, they are trying to help you out of the prison so that you can access anything that Apple doesn’t control. Once you are out you can use anything or have anything you like on your Apple device.
So the scenario is similar to that of jailbreaking Apple device. You can only install those appsthat are Apple approved. After you jailbreak, you are out of the prison and can install apps that are not approved by Apple. After this process you are blacklisted by Apple.
Though the jailbreak is legal, but Apple, from time to time releases a patch that could createhindrance in this activity of jailbreakers. Just like road blocks, when a prisoner is escaped. But they are very smart in finding an alternate way, like a hidden shortcut while playing Need for Speed.
Why to Jailbreak?
In more technical terms, jailbreaking is referred to as ‘hacking’; to have access to the locked files in order to unlock your device so that you can run it on any carrier. It installs an app store like Cydia, which contains a number of apps that you won’t see at the App Store. Thus allowing you to gain full access to your device and unlock new features. If you want to know what Cydia offers, you might want to check out our posts on topic Cydia from here.History
The history of jailbreaking starts with the release of the first iPhone back in June, 2007. After few months the iPhone hackers gained root access to the file system of the iPhone OS. This allowed them to add their own code. Not even a month later the first third party app was released. A year later, with the release of OS 2.0 for iPhone, iPhone Dev Team was originally formed. They released a tool known as Pwange Tool, which was the first ever GUI based tool to jailbreak iPhone at that time. Since then, the iPhone Dev Team has been at the forefronts of the jailbreaking technology.
The release of OS 3.0 thwarted all the jailbreakers, because the tools at that time failed to jailbreak the newly released OS. But as said earlier, the jailbreakers are very smart; they released a newer version of Pwange Tool (3.0) and Redsn0w, the first ever tool to jailbreak OS 3.0.
This rivalry between the iPhone Dev Team and Apple heated up when George Hotz(GeoH0t) enters in the battle and joined the jailbreakers side. With his release of Blackra1n, the OS 3.1.2 released by Apple was successfully jailbroken on iPod Touch 3G.
The release of OS 3.1.3, once again created an atmosphere of frustration for the jailbreakers, as it prevented the third-gen iPhone and iPod from downgrading, if they are already jailbroken. Comex released a video which shows a promo of the untethered jailbreak known as Spirit. After that the jailbreakers start working on the new technology of untethered jailbreak. (Geohot on Limera1n).
So, now Apple releases the iPad. With this the Comex’s Spirit (which was same as Blackra1n – single button jailbreak) was released that worked on all the iPhones, iPods running on OS 3.1.3 and iPad running on OS 3.2.
With the release of iOS 4, the iPhone Dev Team released Redsn0w and updated the Pwnage Tool. At this time Sn0wbreeze – one of the most famous jailbreaking tools for Windows was also released. These tools were a success for the jailbreakers on all the devices other than the iPhone 4 initially.
The jailbreakers were at large, and Geohot was out of the jailbreaking act, soon after that jailbreaking was declared legal in US. But no one care that if it’s legal or not, and since then people were more likely to jailbreak their devices. The strong iOS 4 on iPhone 4 was withstanding the jailbreaker’s hits to get hacked, until Comex releasedJailbreakMe 2.0. This was the first browser-based(works only on safari) jailbreaking tool. Apple released an updated version of iOS 4 which made this tool useless, as Apple closed the PDF exploit. So once again Apple won for a short period of time. This made the jailbreakers to think of alternative solutions as before. Many of us, got their iPhone dead.
So a need of another way was in demand by the jailbreak fans, and therefore SHAtter, an exploit by Chronic Dev Team, from which a device once jailbroken will always be jailbroken was under in progress. But this lead to some complications and pod2g, who discovered SHAtter exploit, left the Chronic Dev Team. In the meantime, iH8sn0w came up with the newer version of Sn0wbreeze, which was capable of jailbreaking the iOS 4.1, but still the fourth-gen iPhone and iPod Touch withstand the force of the jailbreakers, thus they were impregnable from jailbreaking.
The Chronic team at that time was known to be working on the exploit they had found earlier. They released a new jailbreaking tool known as Greenpois0n, which was based on SHAtter; was able to jailbreak the fourth-gen iPhone and iPod Touch, along with the iPad.
Geohot returns with release of Limera1n for Windows. Shortly after this release Limera1n for Mac was also released to jailbreak iOS 4.1. The Chronic Dev Team which was supposed to be working on the Greenpois0n that time released it too after a short period of time (for Mac). This made all the jailbroken devices working on iOS 4.1.
After that Apple released iOS 4.2.1 and later version (iOS 4.3.x). Since then Sn0wbreeze,Redsn0w and Pwnage Tool came in newer versions to tackle the newer iOS, and in all the cases jailbreakers seemed to have pretty much control over the jailbreaking and unlocking. Some of them are untethered and others tethered. Ultrasn0w was updated too to unlockbasebands.
Now Apple is at the verge of releasing its new operating system known as iOS 5. We have seen in the past that all the beta versions of this OS have already been jailbroken. And for those people who are still using iOS 4.3.3 can use JailbreakMe 3.0 to jailbreak their devices. JailbreakMe 3.0 was released a week back and is known to be the easiest jailbreak of all time.
The Dev Team up till now has always been in lead and on the other hand Apple at every turn uses tactics to avoid the jailbreak at any cost. If you are more of a jailbreak fan than of Apple, hope for the best and just wait to see coming more and more.
That is all you need to know about the jailbreak, if you have anything interesting to share don’t forget to write about it in the comment section below.
