As I’m sure you’ve seen in the press recently, there’s been a lot of news relating to iPhone 4 web based jailbreaks, the legality of the jailbreak process, and questions on whether people should go down this path and jailbreak their much loved iPad or iPhone device in the first place.
Most people jump straight in to jailbreaking – as they are fully aware of the advantages / pros of jailbreaking their iPhone or iPad device, but do so without being aware of the potential disadvantages / cons. Therefore, before you consider going down either path, I present you with the Jailbreak challenge…
The Jailbreak Challenge:
The challenge is for you to read the complete list, and then give me your vote at the end as to whether after reading all the pros and cons you would consider jailbreaking your iPad or iPhone or not. I’ve tried to be as neutral and unbiased as possible, but factual in the points discussed. I’ve tried to find as many valid pros and cons as possible, and have summarised all of these in a list below.
Rather than provide a list of pros followed by a separate list of cons, I’ve combined them into one alternating list. Reasons why people jailbreak are highlighted in red, and the reasons why people don’t do this are in blue.
Please note – I do not personally encourage anyone to jailbreak their Apple device, however I wish to further understand the drivers as to why people choose to do so in the first place. The intent of this challenge is to take the results, and use them to make further recommendations from an iPhone & iPad enterprise adoption perspective:
- Jailbreaking enables an iPhone or iPad user to break the baseband of the device, ultimately allowing them to use the iOS device on any mobile phone carrier of choice. This is more relevant to US users, as currently there is only one carrier – AT&T. To those in Australia extra with multiple providers and unlocked phones, this is not such a big deal.
- Once an iPhone or iPad is Jailbroken, a user can then install any applications or make any modifications to the operating system & existing apps. A user can modify / remove security controls such as the “Passcode-lock”, “Auto-lock” etc thus weakening the security of the device and access to it.
- Jailbreaking is even easier than ever. You don’t even need to Jailbreak using the traditional method (by restoring the iPhone / iPad and installing a modified version of the iOSX) – you just need to visit jailbreakme.com on the device you wish to jailbreak. Only takes a few minutes using this process and anyone can do it.
- Because there is no control or vetting of applications installed on a jailbroken device, there is potential for malware or rouge apps to be installed and run. This increases the risk of a user installing a rogue / bad app, or malware infecting a device as the security features are broken. An example of this is where an iPhone worm propagated through jailbroken iPhones. If you consider the various personal bits of data stored on each device, you wouldn’t want a rogue app to have access to this data or to use your data / device for malicious purposes.
- It gives you freedom to install any iPhone / iPad applications you like including apps that haven’t been reviewed or approved by Apple.
- The app store has lots of variety and various content negating the need to jailbreak and install ‘alternate’ apps (e.g. via Cydia). Those who are real tech heads might disagree – however if your the typical end user – aren’t the majority of your needs catered for (and yes I know you have to pay!)?
- When jailbroken, you can fully customise your iPhone / iPad, including changing the look and feel of the interface, sounds, mods, utilities etc.
- Jailbreaking voids your warrantee with Apple – and they may not assist with any support issues if a jailbroken version of operating system is found on the device. Obviously you could restore your device back to it’s original non jailbroken configuration, however for those who have jailbroken but don’t know how to do this, it may be a concern.
- Jailbreaking breaks the security features of the device so you can run illegal / pirated iPhone applications. This is obviously illegal – but another reason why some people choose to jailbreak.
- Now that iPhones & iPads are more popular, they have become an increasingly larger target for hackers. More people are therefore trying to find security vulnerabilities with iPhones and are becoming an increasingly large malware target.
- Apple are too restrictive with regards to the handling of the app store, censorship and which applications are approved. Jailbreaking gets around this limitation.
- You will not be able to install iOSX updates as they come out, as you will have to wait for the latest iOSX release to be jailbroken. Usually iOSX updates provide both functionality updates as well as fix security vulnerabilities. You don’t get either of these until you upgrade and therefore are potentially vulnerable to the security holes.
- In the US it is now legal to jailbreak an Apple iPhone or iPad device. Although this is kind of irrelevant (as most people don’t care if it’s legal or not) the recent press coverage and interest in this topic may encourage users to do so.
- Depending on the tool used to jailbreak and the level of technical competency there is potential that the end user may ‘brick’ their iPhone or iPad, whereby it is unusable and cannot be restored to it’s original unmodified condition.
- Potential to write your own code and run it on your own iPhone / iPad seeing as there is no control of sandboxed secure apps.
- Jailbreaking impacts the stability of the iPhone / iPad. Some jailbreak OS users experience unusual issues with the device - ranging from apps freezing, call drop outs, unexpected reboots, and general instability.
So what’s your vote?
Now that you’ve read the entire list above – would you jailbreak your new Apple iPhone / iPad or not? Use the comments link on this page to vote:
“YES” – I’D JAILBREAK
or
“NO” – I WOULDN’T JAILBREAK
and feel free to add any further comments or feedback.
My main concern is that either way – there is little any enterprise who has adopted Apple devices into their corporate environment can currently do to prevent their staff from jailbreaking devices, and modifying / removing security policies implemented in order to protect the enterprise in the first place. An end user might not care – but the enterprise surely would?
It will be interesting to see how Apple respond to the latest firmware holes, and if one day they finally make their devices secure enough for it no longer to be possible to jailbreak.
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