Is iOS7 jailbroken yet?
isios7jailbrokenyet.com
isios7jailbrokenyet.com
Is it because you are forced to use an iPhone by external factors, like your employer? Are there critical features missing from Android and all the others? Is it just your personal preference?
I really don't mean to offend anyone, it's just that I perceive the closed ecosystem of the iPhone as an intentional "feature" and as I personally don't like it, I would never put my money into such a closed system just to try to jailbreak it afterwards.
I work in the mobile healthcare space, and right now, we’re starting to move away from iOS as a platform for future projects because of the restrictions and hassle of the App Store. We’re not making 99-cent games and artisan to-do lists, so the fact that iPhone users are far more likely to spend money on apps doesn’t matter to us – we need a platform that lets us communicate with medical devices and display information for healthcare professionals without a mercurial third party deciding what we can and can’t do.
As the signed binary and app store only is the default, it's unlikely that non-technical users will actually change it.
Android seems to have caught up quite a bit, but now we have momentum behind iOS. We could switch without too much difficulty, but we're in no rush to start supporting a second platform.
Apple's solution for running business apps and distributing them outside the app store is actually not that bad.
I'm now stuck between a rock and a hard place. Stay where I am and many apps (like Spotify which I pay for) no longer work, or upgrade to iOS7 and know that the iPad 2 just isn't powerful to run it in the same way in runs iOS5 (for which it was designed for).
I'm desperately waiting for a jailbreak so I can install iOS6, which I see as a half way house.
The reality is that Apple are deliberately degrading older devices, in order to make them obsolete. Of course I understand they are just building software that is designed to run on the most current and powerful of their devices, but the deliberate prevention of installs of older iOS versions when a user specifically wants it is frustrating.
In hindsight I shouldn't have bought an iPad, but there wasn't a viable alternative at the time.
Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, and other enterprise companies will never agree to a 30% Apple cut for their Mac software, and Apple will never allow their kludgily-accreted codebases onto the App Store. Apple’s executive team may have the balls to cut all these companies out of the platform, but they’re not stupid.
Isn't that Apple?
I could get these on Android, but generally find that I must then sacrifice on form factor (I don't like very large phones), stability, build quality (this is getting better on Android though), and ease of use (Facetime with family, iMessage, etc.).
In the end it's not a single killer feature, but tight integration with my life. I might be able to do this all on Android, but it would take more time and probably more maintenance.
Then again, I haven't used a jailbreak for anything significant in a long time, so for me, the openness is more in theory.
Try out an AOSP based build (maybe the ROM from the google play edition?) on your phone. It's like night and day.
The bluetooth connection seems a bit better, and the screen is bigger, but usability wise, iOS7 is better.
I don't want most of the customizability (i.e., separate home screens/themes) and the keyboard is simply harder to use than iOS.
The whole OS feels laggy (still) even with almost-comparable hardware to the latest-get iPhone.
The only reason I want jailbreak is for something like F.lux/Twilight on iOS.
... it is 2013... get with the program and use Swype. It is impossible to go back.
Swype causes keyboard popup delay of several hundred milliseconds on my N5. I stopped using it after 3 days.
Also what's with the default throb on key press in Android? Why would anyone find that useful?
I blame TouchWiz primarily, as my fiancees N4 and my N5 are both an absolute dream to use.
So perhaps one of the things in Apple's favor here is the unified UI across all devices.
Oh, and the main reason? 'cause we can :)
Your argument about Mac integration seems valid, I did not think about it as I am no mac user :)
2. insert other end into ipad
3. get a dialog "trust this computer"
4. click "trust"
5. goto 3.
#*@! you apple.
After two years I am still using this old Atrix. I might switch to Nexus one day if I had the budget for it. iPhone isn't my cake so I'd passed on. But I have to praise a closed system like iOS - update is great. No fragmentation.
Why would I buy into an ecosystem that then forces me to hope someone far smarter than I is able to break the security of that system for me? Jailbreaks are worrisome because they introduce a potential loss of security on mine, and all users phones.
/sarc
I put a SIM connected to one of T-Mobile's $30/5GB prepaid accounts in my iPhone 5. When I try to turn the tethering function on, I get a prompt telling me to go to a T-Mobile website to get on a plan that supports tethering.
The carrier control of tethering made sense back before the iPhone had market dominance. Now it's stupid and user-hostile.
There are a number of reasons I like the flexibility afforded by a more open system than an out-of-the-box iPhone (from my pre-iOS 7 jailbroken days, mostly F.lux and being able to set non-Apple apps as default handlers for links/maps/etc).
For me, the former list is more compelling than the latter, so I'll happily keep using a non-jailbroken iPhone rather than switch to Android/Windows Phone/etc.
Yes, this one applies for me. Low-latency audio and all the music making apps that iOS has.
Jailbroken iOS is just icing on the cake. When there's a major iOS upgrade that causes me to lose my jailbreak, I lose a few niceties (the biggest of which is the ability to "try," as in pirate, applications), but it's not a big deal.
1) Vender lockdown & habits - I've been using an since the second iPod Touch (as a PDA). I'm not ready/eager to change "my workflow".
2) Accessibility - iOS (and the mac os) has had some the best (or at least easiest to setup) accessibility support. I'd be happy to be wrong about this but Androids documentation is either really lacking on these features or the features aren't there.
Yes, this one for me. Audio latency and all the music making apps that iOS has.
It's not perfect, I'd like to be able to load FOSS onto it without going through the app store (I don't trust TOR browsers in a marketplace like that), and a few UI niggles, but for the most part I now just use my phone for phone tasks, Siri to dump stuff into Reminders for processing later, and playing Poker on the go. I was as surprised as anyone; I've been hacking smartphones since the Sony Ericsson M600i!
And yet Pingit is still in the app store. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/barclays-pingit/id496552142
Case in point: When I plug my iPhone 5 into my car's USB port, the Music app's display changes to an "Accessory Connected" splash screen. I can only control my music through my car's awful dashboard interface. Jailbreaking allows me to disable that splash screen.
Other things like 5 column springboard/dock, FakeClockUp (reduce or speed up slow animations), and BiteSMS (Messages app replacement that can be used on the lock screen), are just minor interface and functionality tweaks that, together, make my jailbroken iOS6 a far superior UX than iOS7.
This reason, while good and noble, feels really wonky. From what i understand, iOS's accessibility has much miles better then Android's accessibility options. If their main motives is to give a better mobile experience to people with special needs, maybe focusing on implementing these improvements system wide changes would be time better spend.
You work hard to make these changes then iOS 7.x.y comes out and the user updates by mistake and loses all the changes a jailbreak gives. It is this constant fighting with the system that has made staying with iOS less appealing these days.
It's true that Apple's accessibility features are miles better than Android's, but they aren't perfect. Jailbreaking allows people to add the functionality they need that isn't currently supported.
A great example of this is f.lux which is an amazingly useful app for people with low-vision, but is not supported on non-jailbroken devices.
Absolutely no way I'd use a phone with regular lighting now.
But anyone with visual disability will still have to scavenge for a phone with actual buttons. And good luck with that...
I've seen the effects of bounties in the Android ecosystem, and they are quite negative. I tried to explain this to the person behind this project (Elizabeth Stark), but she really didn't seem to care: in essence, she's currently working on a project that is a crowd funding platform for software, and she wants to use the iOS community as a test case; she didn't want to spend any time thinking about the ramifications of her decisions going into the project, and she didn't send me a response about the issues I saw with her project until this morning (coincident with the release of her website).
However, I think there are cases where extrinsic motivation can be beneficial. This campaign provides a good example.
Those with the programming skills necessary to jailbreak the iPhone may not be as intrinsically motivated to do so as the OS matures, and so they stop dedicated time. But these engineers are by no means the only people who might benefit from jailbreaking.
The disabled community is one such group. They, in general, may not have the skills necessary to write the software necessary to jailbreak their devices, but could benefit greatly if such software existed. Offering a bounty is a way for them to cross that skill gap.
These campaigns aren't meant for the benefit of software developers. They are for the benefit of those who have great ideas, but lack the skills to fulfill them.
Extrinsic motivation may not be the ideal condition, but that does not mean it is something that should be avoided.
And it's not like anything is keeping evad3rs from getting donations if they release a closed source jailbreak, or even if they or anyone else releases a FOSS one and claims the prize (in fact with other related campaigns, lots of donations came in after the fact).
(responded to elsewhere, maybe with more emphasis on openjailbreak.org)
> ...and given that the site I'm building is designed to incentivize things like free and open source software, this was a huge component. I've also been told there are a good number of people that have jailbreaks, and it's possible that they might be motivated to release it as FOSS if enough funds are raised.
I believe my response to this notion (when it was brought up by the other person who contacted me about your bounty a few weeks ago) was that you would be better off then attempting to do this for a later version of iOS, as the kinds of numbers that had been thrown around as "the magic number" to make that happen was hundreds of thousands of dollars... it will take a lot of time and a lot of really hungry users that don't see jailbreaks (open or closed) on the horizon, to generate that kind of money. Releasing this now kind of calls that goal into question: that goal incentivizes waiting.
(Also, on the last point about when you sent the e-mail, which is the closest you can get in my comments to "ad hominem" and to me was a defense against why I wasn't more prepared for this: you were more than willing to get involved in a "synchronous conversation" with me at the time, which would have taken even longer and been even more difficult ;P.)
So, your e-mail seems to make four points. The first point, taking up two paragraphs, is related to your career and your project. In these paragraphs, you did not address any of the specific example reasons I could come up with for why you were involved, and if anything simply raised a few more. These paragraphs, however, are largely ignorable.
The third point (setting off the second for a minute) was the argument made to attempt to address an incentive change on the side of the people building jailbreaks. This argument hinges on a specific example of a previous bounty, claiming that it did not cause the ramifications I am predicting.
> While I am sensitive to your concerns around community incentives, it’s unlikely that our approach will threaten them. For example, when Adafruit created a prize for open Kinect drivers, instead of devolving into a community of mercenaries, it enabled an ecosystem of Kinect hackers to flourish.[1]
[1]: https://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/04/the-open-kinect-pro...
The problem with this argument is that it is looking at entirely the wrong level: you are claiming that by having the driver for Kinect get constructed, people were able to start hacking on Kinect, causing an ecosystem on the other side of the driver to flourish. We already have that ecosystem on the other side of the jailbreak.
Instead, we are looking at the actual construction of the jailbreaks here; the correct analogy is to instead look at the market for construction of drivers for closed video game controllers. What you need to demonstrate is that a "success" for that crowd funding doesn't lead the people who were working on that driver to end up with different incentives, or cause other people watching to expect the same (again, in a "success" situation: I know people who work with Kinect, and I'd never heard the driver was crowd funded, so any community effects would be quite narrow due to the limited reach; likely as it was so little money).
FWIW, that people's incentives change in these situations is well documented: this isn't just my assertion, this is something you can read about in books like "Punished by Rewards". Given that a new jailbreak is needed at least once a year (and in a perfect world, would happen no less than twice a year), this is critical: you are playing an iterative game, and have to think about the ramifications on incentives not immediately, but a few steps ahead.
In reality, the community is already anticipating the release of an iOS 7 jailbreak (evad3rs has already publicly stated that they have all the pieces they need and are just working on implementing and finalizing). We (the community of people who use these jailbreaks: I do not build them myself) thereby are not in a position where this bounty is going to change anything: it is just going to change how funds are directed (5%, for example, will be given directly to your new company, rather than all of it to the people who build the tools) and the expectations people have related to them, it isn't going to incentive construction of a new community that otherwise wouldn't exist.
You then had a forth point, the goal of which was to assuage concerns that people leaving contributions would have different expectations. This argument was just "we state this clearly on the website"; <sarcasm>which, as we all know, works out wonderfully in the case of Kickstarter projects: it isn't like I've ever heard of people angry that they didn't get the thing they wanted, or that it didn't work well, as Kickstarter is very clear that they are not a way to preorder products</sarcasm>. You will need to come up with a much stronger argument here... if anything, I think you've just dug a deeper hole ;P.
[my comment is apparently too long for Hacker News; given that I often write very very long comments, I'm really surprised I've never run into this limitation before, and so wonder if it is new ;P. however, this comment is thereby split and I will reply with the rest]
"Finally" (in the aforementioned second point), your e-mail makes the argument for the jailbreak tool being open source. You feel like this "could open the doors to greater community contribution, encouraging larger groups of people to work together to solve the problems more quickly". The argument makes sense: if jailbreaking were secretive and closed (which is a bullet you dodged, btw: on Android, where bounties are common, jailbreak tools are not only often closed source but techniques are hoarded and under-described so as to win more bounties <- you actually need this open source clause to not fall into the obvious trap) people are not in a position to learn how all of the systems of Apple's device work in a way that would let them later build their own tools.
Would it surprise you to find out that most of the code in a jailbreak is already open source, and that the only parts that are not tend to be the GUI and the specific exploit technique for that one specific version of iOS?
- All of the libraries that are use to connect to the device in its normal mode are licensed under LGPL (they are part of a suite called libimobiledevice, which was primarily developed by members of the iPhone Dev Team, and now maintained by nikias from evad3rs).
- The libraries used to talk to the device in recovery and DFU mode are open source and licensed under GPL (developed by posixninja, who has been maintaining them recently under the openjailbreak project).
- The libraries used to decrypt and modify image files (kernels, devices trees, disks, and bootloaders) has been open source for years (developed and maintained by planetbeing from evad3rs). The same developer (planetbeing) has released a number of utility libraries like this, including ones to download portions of IPSW files from Apple's servers without having to download the whole file (this is why jailbreaks never need to distribute copyrighted content). All of this code is under GPL.
It is thereby not just useless but insulting that in your e-mail you make the point that "the jailbreaking teams are not an island—they rely heavily on FOSS software in their work": the people who build these tools (which again, does not include myself) quite often release code for large or critical parts of their work, and almost exclusively do so under "free software" licenses.
In fact, many previous jailbreak tools have been or have become open source, and currently the tool to jailbreak the iPhone 4 on iOS 7 (opensn0w) is itself open source (under GPL). Now, one thing that is really interesting here: this project (which has now existed for years) actually tried to crowd fund itself (which, to be 100% clear, doesn't cause the same kinds of issues as a third-party bounty program) and failed. Out of its $3,000 it got $30.
http://www.indiegogo.com/opensn0w
This, of course, flies in the face of your comment that the goal is to set a precedent of jailbreaks being open source: and in case you think I'm playing up one example, the iOS 4 jailbreaks from comex were open source as well; the source code for both JailbreakMe 2.0 and JailbreakMe 3.0 were released (I believe fairly soon after the jailbreak, but clearly as this was all years ago "soon" is relative: there are tons of open source examples).
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/07/19/jailbreakme-now-open...
The team behind the tool greenpois0n (which includes the aforementioned posixninja) also open sourced much of their work as "syringe". The opensn0w tool in fact uses a lot of this code, as have been a number of third-party tools based on this older limera1n exploit (which, interestingly enough, was itself released to the community by geohot giving everyone a few lines of source code for how to implement it, as he wanted people to use that exploit instead of SHAtter).
http://www.ijailbreak.com/applications/greenpois0n-jailbreak...
The argument that people are somehow not able to learn how to jailbreak things because nothing is open source thereby doesn't make any sense even on the face of it; again: the only things that tend to be closed source are GUIs and transient one-off device-specific techniques. The main reason these things tend to be closed source is that our community has a serious problem with scams: people like to try to charge people for jailbreak tools or claim they have tools that work in places they don't; everyone wants to "build a jailbreak", but in practice people just want "to take someone's tool, change the GUI, claim it works better than it does, and then charge $20 for it".
In your mind, this seems to be related to the idea that "I don't want them making money when I'm not making money: I want to make the money, so that's why it is closed source", but that just demonstrates you are seeing this through the eyes of the wrong kinds of incentives. You say that "getting financial support up front reduces the perverse incentive to keep the source closed so that other groups cannot profit from it without having built it", but in fact that doesn't change that users will get scammed and lose money: the argument made by the jailbreak teams has never been "you should give money to us, not them", but instead "jailbreaks should be free". It is simply clear that you don't understand the incentive structures already in place in this community, even while you feel like you want to change them.
You might then argue that it is horrible that these techniques are hidden, but that itself could not be further from the case: the people who build these jailbreaks generally give talks about how the jailbreaks work at conferences around the world, and they are well documented in the security community through everything from articles on websites to entire books. (At JailbreakCon, Nikias from evad3rs gave an hour and a half long presentation on exactly how the iOS 6 jailbreak worked as part of a time slot that was only a half an hour long, a story which I continue to find absolutely hilarious ;P.)
Really, the only sentence I can come up with from your e-mail that has some weight behind it is the argument that "users of such a jailbreak will be able to audit the changes made to the firmware of one of their most important pieces of hardware". FWIW, this is a cause that I appreciate.
However, you are addressing an audience of people who are primarily getting software from Apple, none of which is itself audited by the community, and which the people you are attacking (and yes: an implication "you can't trust these people" is an attack) have demonstrated on numerous occasions is insecure or actively damaging (such as with the various logging and reporting daemons). The modifications made are also fairly easy for people in the community to pull apart: maybe not to you, but to 99.99% of users the source code isn't helpful anyway... that doesn't mean that results are not able to be "audited".
I feel like the best you could thereby hope for is some kind of "strife" that you want to cause: to pit people against one another, spiting one movement (open hardware) to help another (open software). Open hardware is a much more serious problem that very few people are really fighting for, and iOS jalbreaking is one of the few case examples that can be pointed to when lobbying (such as with Congress, or the Library of Congress) for why these freedoms are important and potentially obtaining laws to guarantee them. It would be an absolute shame to see one of the few weapons we have in that war be sacrificed because you felt that tens of millions of people had incorrectly allocated their trust.
It seems to me that that opensn0w campaign may have been fake (there are a lot of those on IndieGoGo).
And to be clear, in talking to friends in the security space, the auditing the code aspect was a huge concern, so I'm glad we can at least agree on something. :)
We're also planning on helping to fund many open hardware projects, and I'll actually be speaking at the SF Hardware Startup meetup tonight to solicit ideas from the community.
In other places you've stated the reason he wanted this prize was to get software on his iPhone so he could help with some accessibility issues. This is an incentive that aligns with long-term open hardware, not short term open software. You can't have it both ways. If you are really dropping all of the incentive arguments I'm making and want to concentrate on open source, that's fine: but let's get our stories straight.
> It seems to me that that opensn0w campaign may have been fake (there are a lot of those on IndieGoGo).
I just contacted the developer of opensn0w: no, that was not fake, it just didn't take off. I personally can assert to you that opensn0w (which many people are using right now) is not itself a fake (and I'm one of the people who generally are asked to determine this ;P).
> And to be clear, in talking to friends in the security space, the auditing the code aspect was a huge concern, so I'm glad we can at least agree on something. :)
I talked about auditing changes, not auditing code, and I even explicitly stated that the code was not in any way a concern to someone who really knows what they are doing, so no: we don't really agree on this :/. I have on many occasions, in articles and talks, made the argument that open source is overrated, and that what really matters is open hardware: that in addition to the gap between source code and machine code decreasing over time due to better analysis tools and frameworks, that as long as hardware is capable of being closed off it doesn't matter how much of the code is open <- the iOS jailbreak community is at the front line of this particular battle.
> We're also planning on helping to fund many open hardware projects, and I'll actually be speaking at the SF Hardware Startup meetup tonight to solicit ideas from the community.
FWIW, having third-parties construct open hardware doesn't really help the cause of forcing large companies who make closed hardware to provide means of opening it; that said, I do appreciate that you have future goals, but it may have been more useful to start with them.
I do wish you could JB the last ATV version that has been out over a year for XBMC goodness. ATV2 is still one of the best XBMC devices out there but only support 720p.
Cory doctoraw, ifixit ceo... It's just a publicity stunt.
And everyone in this thread? They keep dumping their money happily on the latest device. Even though ios7 does zero more than a rooted ios6 (the only new feature that is not aesthetic is the control bar, which is better on ios6 with unofficial code anyway)
However, it turned out that the real solution was just to switch to an Android phone that not only allows me to use my phone as a drive when plugged in, but also doesn't have the software restrictions that made running a daemon impossible in the first place.
I haven't really kept up with ios so this might not be a problem now, though.
You're right, all the people working on it are amazing and deserve more accolades and less heckling.
I can remember scanning the forums for hours, knowing that there would be a jailbreak soon, but not knowing when. I remember when the first untethered jailbreak got released, in all it's sketchy, poorly explained glory, and carefully going through the lengthy procedure to make it work.
Aaaahhhhh memories...