Jailbreak – Perhaps Not?
Ever since I got my iPhone, I’ve been ready to jailbreak it wide open. Before I go further, let me take a few steps back…
When you get an iPhone, Apple locks it down so you can’t get in there and fiddle with things. Even though iPhone OS is built on OS X, which comes with a terminal and an SSH client, you don’t get that in the iPhone. Something that’s touted as being very “desktop like” with it’s desktop-like browser and such, you can’t use a terminal. Presumably so you can’t hack the phone open to install new firmware, bypass the carrier lock, etc. Not that it’s stopped anyone from doing it, but I can only assume that’s why you get no terminal out-of-the-box on it.
Now, you can do what’s called “Jailbreak” your phone. This breaks it “free” from the “jail”, or “Apple death grip” on the phone. What does this let you do? Well for starters, you get a terminal, but you also can use a modified version of apt (the package manager Debian and all other variants, such as Ubuntu use) to install your own, unapproved, 3rd party apps. Like game emulators (emulators are banned from the App Store), for example.
Also, once you jailbreak the phone, you can install a package (currently ultrasn0w, previously yellowsn0w) on the phone that “unlocks” it. This lets you use any carrier you want (as far as I know, here in the US, that means you can use T-Mobile instead of AT&T…not sure of any other providers on the same platform, albeit T-Mobile’s 3G is on a different frequency so you can’t use 3G with them), so again, this is another reason they lock it down, so you can’t do that. However, once you’re in, you can fiddle around as you please.
Back to my 1st paragraph. I’ve been looking forward to jailbreaking my phone, but at this point, I’m not sure I need to anymore. Why? Well, it comes around to the guys who do the jailbreaking. I won’t link to their site for sheer laziness, but they’re called the “iPhone Dev Team”, which is just an awesome name altogether. Working with George Hotz (geohot, as it were), who was the 1st person to ever unlock an iPhone, they figured out how to crack open the iPhone 3GS. Gotta give them credit, that’s pretty awesome. I don’t have the time or patience to learn everything they’ve learned to get that far, but I’m sure it’s good fun and would be enjoyable to do if I had the time to hack on it and risk bricking phones. But, I do want SSH on my iPhone. It’s really the only reason I want to break it open, since I didn’t want to “pay” for an open and free standard. You can buy SSH applications in the App Store, but they cost $$$. The prospect of emulators seems cool, but I question how well they’d play since they weren’t designed specifically for the platform. Still, it could be great fun. Sadly, they’re waiting to release the jailbreak so that more people can have it available to them (since the new iPhone has extra security measures, which means once they fix the hack, all new phones can’t use it due to some certificate signing constraints).
Well, I went to get my oil changed here on Tuesday at the dealer (paying the “Dealer Tax” for now while I still have a CPO with Volvo) and I forgot/lost/misplaced my coupon for like $15 off the price of the oil change. I remembered the coupon when I saw him write up my ticket, and I ran out to my car to get it. Puzzled, I couldn’t find it and assumed I must have left it at the apartment. Fantastic. I asked him about it and he claims ignorance on the issue, so I’m screwed paying full price. Great. I printed the thing out days in advance and I swore I put it in the car as to not forget it. Yargh.
So as I sit in the waiting room, I’m thinking of how to get into my TWC webmail to get this coupon out to save me my money. At this point, the car is in the shop so even if it’s in there, there’s no finding it now. I was going to IM a friend to SSH into my server and get me the password, but AIM wasn’t working properly (fixed it later), so I was on my own. I realized I would save more than $5 (didn’t know it was $15 at the time), so I just caved and bought iSSH from the App Store. It had the best reviews of all the available apps (the lack of a free app is rather irritating), they had JUST released a new version of the app on Monday which added support for things I needed, like non-standard ports, etc, and the developer(s) for it have a group on Google which is somewhat active and they reply to pretty much everything.
So I login via my newly purchased SSH client (based on PuTTy, apparently) get the password, copy it into my email, login, find the email, and show the service manager. Saved myself $15, so I saved $15, but paid $5 for an app I sorta wanted, but was trying to avoid paying for (what can I say, I’m cheap). I was pretty happy with myself until I hit a “Doh!” moment driving to work when I realized I had some friends in the car and tossed stuff in the trunk. I did in fact check the trunk before sending off my car to be worked on, but I only quickly looked over it. Upon further inspection, I found it farther back. Grrrrrr. Figures.
Still, I’m only out the price of the app, which I sorta wanted to buy anyway but couldn’t justify. And by the time I bought the app, it was already do or die. I would have lost the $15 anyway had I not done it. The app is great, btw. Very fast and responsive, and there’s already an update submitted for the app to include the Copy and Paste API from iPhone OS 3.0, which will be really, really cool. Not to mention this app also has VNC and X11 support, so for $5, you get a LOT of great remote administration functionality, all of which I can use.
So, to swing back full circle, what’s the point? The point is, I now have my SSH application I wanted. I’ve used the terminal on a jailbroken iPhone 3G with OS 3.0, and while it works, I can honestly say it’s nowhere near as polished as iSSH. I also used the 99 cent SSH client on another phone and again, worked but wasn’t that great. The jailbroken one even had some crazy screen-flipping going on where it worked upside down, but landscaped fine. Kinda strange. iSSH also has some keys you need that aren’t part of the keyboard API like tab, esc, ctrl, and so on. Still, that said, a physical console with apt would be nice…
However, in all honesty, I enjoy Apple products for the support. Heck, I have AppleCare on both my iPhone and on my Mac. I also signed up for MobileMe to try it out (there are cheaper alternatives for the disk storage, like dropbox, but I only really want it for contact/calendar syncing and the remote iPhone services), but I dunno if I’ll be keeping that or not. Still, I enjoy being able to take my products in and just say “It’s not working, fix it.”. I can’t think of many things I’ve bought over the years where you can get this kind of service. Usually it’s a whole fiasco to even attempt to get a replacement on faulty hardware. It’s just nice not having to worry about it, and quite frankly, I find the interface for all Apple products very intuitive and genuinely enjoyable to use. The iPhone is no exception. If I jailbreak, I’ll be losing support (unless I do a restore on the phone before taking it in, which is easy enough). But I’ve read about lots of stability issues with 3rd party apps (no surprise), as well as the fact that if I do jailbreak my phone, I then have to start babysitting it. I have to watch for updates, be careful about syncing to iTunes when new updates are out to avoid any upgrades on top of the hacked phone so it’s not broken, which means if any security bugs are fixed, my phone is vulnerable in the meantime, etc.
I hate to say it, but I think I’m starting to get a little too old to deal with the “arrows in the ass” from pioneering my own path, as my father once put it. It’s fun, but I question whether I want to do this on something I require to use daily (cell phone has been and probably always will be my only phone). I used to do it more like 4-5 years ago and even before that because I couldn’t afford much, and my inquisitive mind demanded I tinker. Now, I’m better off, but still paying down credit cards (I can’t wait until I can say that I’m done with them, hopefully by year’s end). So really, I can’t afford to bork my phone of my own doing at this point, and I don’t believe in/support getting a company to replace something you break because of what you did when it violates the AUP/EUA and/or voids the warranty. I dunno, I’ve just never been a fan of “sticking it to the man”, even when I was barely making ends meet. Some people live for that kinda stuff, I dunno. Call me weird.
So the question remains, will I jailbreak my phone? I’m leaning towards probably not. I may do it just to check it out, see what apps are available, see how the terminal is, and so on. But I’ve also been reading that some apps in Cydia/Icy (the apt ports) are actually pay to use as well. Well that sorta ruins the point, doesn’t it? Also, I have no desire to “unlock” my phone either. I have a 2 year contract with Ma Bell, and I plan to ride that out fully. So short of emulators or some cool free apps that aren’t supported (or themes, that’s kinda cool to do), I’m not sure if it’s worth it to ditch my nice, supported iPhone.
Time will tell.