Apple Hires The Guy Who Hacked Together A Better iOS Notifications System

I like that one better too. Can't say I'm a fan of MobileNotifier, it's a change but not an improvement.

How long ago? Asking because notifications should be an huge part of the new iOS and it would make sense for him to have helped with iOS 5.

I sometimes suspect them of not really minding jailbreaking that much. Sure, they want to make sure it's not widespread, and the constant treadmill of crack-and-patch is enough to keep the hoi polloi from trying it. It provides a useful escape valve for the types that would never be confined by jailbreaking anyway. You don't think they could make it harder to crack if they tried?

Apple doesn't seem to fight jailbreakers at all. It seems that most jailbreaks rely on a security hole, and Apple has a responsibility to patch said hole.

Back in iOS 2(?), for example, you could jailbreak your phone by visiting a webpage that automatically executed code on your device. That's SO shady, and I'm SO glad they fixed it.

If Apple actively wanted to stop users doing this, I'd imagine they'd have very little trouble given they have full control over the hardware and software stack.

In what way is Apple fighting them? Other than fixing the security holes used to jailbreak.

A jailbreaker already gave Apple their money for the hardware. It's like how Apple doesn't go after software piracy all that much, relying on a serial number at best. OS X doesn't even use one.

What do you mean, he could end up like him? What do you think happened to that engineer?

Apple is actually quite fond of just hiring the developer. I can't cite examples, but it's been done quite often.

"Apple's usual ways is beating down the little guy."

Some sort of cognitive bias is probably at play here since Apple engineers are generally not allowed to publicly comment on most of their work while Arl-- the people who get screwed over by Apple tend to be more vocal.