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iPhone Jailbreaking Still Going Strong
snydeq writes "Despite the productivity promises of Apple's forthcoming 3.0 firmware update, jailbreaking should continue to push the iPhone's productivity envelope, as users increasingly demand the Holy Grail of smartphone power use: applications that run in the background, InfoWorld reports. Copy and paste, video recording and streaming, Internet tethering, and content search are just a few of the features over which iPhone users have sought to jailbreak their devices — a practice Apple itself has done little to crack down on. Jailbreak apps circumvent hardware and software restrictions that Apple says ensure a consistent, responsive user interface and optimal battery endurance. In particular, jailbroken phones can run apps in the background, a capability Apple reserves for its own apps but prohibits in third-party programs. Jay Freeman, creator of the Cydia iPhone installer and Cydia Store, however, believes a free-market approach is the best way to satisfy power users' demands for features without compromising the performance of their iPhones. And given Apple's App Store overcrowding, it seems likely that jailbroken phones and app venues like Cydia Store will continue to be popular with iPhone customers and developers, even after the 3.0 firmware ships."
You have to first jailbreak the phone if you want to unlock it. But I recently switched to Google Android so I don't have to deal with this. It's a less nice experience, but I imagine a lot of people who are willing to go through the trouble of jailbreaking a phone are also willing to put up with the less polished UI.
i swear there was a story last month how Apple had it in the newest SDK EULA that you can't make jailbroken apps with it. Apple gave up a technical solution and just told people that if you want to write jailbroken apps then do it from scratch and don't use their code
The phone, ipod, email and Safari apps that run in the background are Apple apps. Apple can make background apps, no one else.
if your PC is infected no one cares. if your cell phone gets infected by a virus and you can't call 911 in an emergency than Apple is going to pay out a lot of money in a lawsuit.
I highly doubt that. Someone might try to sue, but I guarantee that every cell contract you sign has some clause saying they don't guarantee 24/7 access, access may be interrupted unexpectedly for any reason, etc. Otherwise people would be suing just for a regular network outage.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Heh. Android users can get those without having to hack anything.
You're telling me you can't change the text ringtone on a stock iPhone? Seriously?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Unless their app is inefficient in its use of CPU power or RAM, you're almost certainly wrong about that. The iPod functionality of an iPhone can and does run in the background. Just start the music playing, then run the app. You can even control the iPod functionality while running other apps by clicking the headphone control once to pause, twice to skip to the next song, or three times to skip back to the previous song.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Except it's not a faux tech expression. It comes from breaking out of a chroot jail. Lern2Unix plox.
Seriously, Apple's not going to haul you off to jail any more than will KDE for adapting their desktop software to fit your needs.
The rest of the internet disagrees with you. See http://cultofmac.com/apple-calls-jailbreaking-iphones-a-crime/8330 for example.
GIven the nascent field that is mobile computing
The field is "nascent" only in minds of Apple fanbois, who believe that iPhone is the first smartphone evar. Meanwhile, Symbian - which also allows for full multitasking - is still 2/3 of the whole market, and unit sales are measured in millions; and that has been going on for several years now. Ditto for Windows Mobile. We are long past the stage where any theoretical security problem with background applications (and other notions that are generally assumed to be obvious anywhere but on iPhone) would have already manifested itself in practice.
The reason I jailbreak is because my favorite app will NEVER be approved for the App Store. MxTube - lets you download YouTube videos for watching later. Do it over WiFi, 2G (ouch), or 3G. Load up your phone with YouTube videos and watch them at your convenience.
As for background apps, Apple's case is fairly strong. Developers suck. Writing a battery-friendly app is extremely difficult. Even something as simple as polling for data every hour has a huge impact on battery life. And most developers will pick a simple solution over one that will be battery friendly, but may take a lot of workarounds to do. That's partly why Apple has to do the whole back-end notification thing. Also, waking up the processor is expensive, so you want to do as little of it as possible. It means when the processor has to wake up to do something (get data off the network), it better go about doing other periodic tasks as well because it's really stupid to go to sleep and wake up immediately again.
I've done a TON of work trying to get processor spikes to happen in a synchronized fashion - when the processor wakes up, do every bloody thing that needs to be done so we can maximize the time the processor is sleeping (near off), and minimize the time the processor has to wake up. Everything that woke the CPU had to be analyzed to find out what it's doing, and why, and what could be done to avoid having to do it (is it necessary? Could we delay it until say, the user is interacting or a phone call?)
It just takes one badly written app to turn your battery life from 500 hours standby to sub-24 hours. And chances are, you'll hit that app because "battery friendly" is extremely difficult.
Go to an AT&T store and tell them you're tethering, they'll be happy to cancel your account for you I'm sure.
I'm not so sure about that. An iPhone is (in Netherland at least) a lot cheaper than an iPod Touch exactly because it comes with a cell phone subscription. The subscription is where they make the real money. If the same is true in the US, then I really doubt AT&T is just going to cancel that subscription. They're more likely to severely restrict your bandwidth while still charging the same amount of money, or something like that.