Jail-Breaking iPhones at the Apple Store

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article in Xconomy, iPhone hacker and author Jonathan Zdziarski was invited to speak at an Apple Store in Cambridge, MA last week where he talked about the history of iPhone hacking, jail-breaking, and limitations of the official SDK. From the article, "Zdziarski was one of the first software engineers to figure out how to hack the iPhone, and he's the author of a forthcoming O'Reilly Media book called iPhone Open Application Development, which gives readers explicit instructions on jail-breaking iPhones. So for Apple to give Zdziarski the podium at an Apple retail location is a little like Steve Ballmer inviting Linus Torvalds to speak at a Windows product launch." Zdziarski reports in his own blog how the open source community was on the iPhone developer scene as early as 2007, long before enterprises got there, and estimates that nearly 40% of all iPhones have been jail-broken to run the third-party community software installer. Finally, this story from Top Tech News suggests that open source software might actually create competition for Apple's "official" developers, because applications using the open source iPhone compiler are not subject to the same limitations as official Apple SDK programs are."

Comments

Trap...

[Manip]

I wonder if this is like that police sting in which they told criminals they had won a boat / car and got them to basically walk into jail...

I for one won't be surprised if Apple loses an expensive piece of equipment while he is there and it mysteriously turns up in his jacket pocket. :P

this is a hoax -- iphones are 100% secure

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is a hoax. iPhones are provably 100% secure.

Re:Understanding Competition.

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Twitter, why do you even bother to come back and post? Seriously. I'd rather read GNAA posts than yours.

not really though

[foo fighter]

This got cut from the submission:

"And when I say it's like Torvalds speaking at a Windows launch what I mean is its not like that at all."

Re:Good Cop, Bad Cop? Both Bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with his argument is that his understanding of information theory and communications is pre-Shannen This statement is bizarre to me because, according to Shannon, information capacity is directly proportional to bandwidth. No, no, no. You got it all wrong. He means pre-Shannen Doherty. He is saying that the argument only worked before 90210 and is not Charmed at all, kind of like a Little House on the Prairie instead of Our House in the modern city.

In fact, in a post-Shannen Doherty model, information capacity is directly proportional to boobwidth.

Re:Hardware iPhone unlocker?

[Macthorpe]

Sorry if I didn't spell it right I have most of the cards in my deck still so I don't mind ;)