Slashdot Mirror
New iPad Jailbroken Already
An anonymous reader writes "Just hours after the new Apple iPad was released, it was jailbroken in three (how appropriate!) separate ways. This means that hackers have already found and exploited security holes to run custom code on the new iPad with iOS 5.1. The tools for jailbreaking your new iPad aren't yet available, but this first step means the software will be developed sooner rather than later."
I have to admit it, I got caught up in the hype and I bought an tablet. The novelty wore off after a couple of days. Since then, it has sat on my desk, almost completely unused. In fact, it's one of the worst purchases I've ever made.
Tablets in general are rather pointless devices. They're far bulkier than my smart phone, so they're not very good on the go. They're much less comfortable to use than my netbook or my laptop, especially when I have to do a lot of typing. They're so vastly underpowered relative to even an old desktop that they're not usable for anything computationally intensive. My Kindle is a much better e-book reader.
I learned the hard way that the usefulness of tablets is purely a marketing creation. They look like they have potential, but in practice they're just the combination of the worst of every other type of computer or computing device.
Remember: Jailbreaks are code execution vulnerabilities. On your oh so secure Apple device.
I always wondered when people would start saying that the Apple OS was less secure than Windows.
Hopefully the jailbreaking community will only use one exploit at a time so that when Apple patches the first, they can use the next and so on. What I would like to know is whether there are multiple groups working on this, and if so, do they communicate their exploits so that no more than one is revealed to Apple at a time?
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Yeah, maybe they'll work on that in the next few hours. I guess it's not good enough for you that they found three seperate ways in the first few hours to jailbreak it.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I have to admit it, I got caught up in the hype and I bought a smartphone. The novelty wore off after a couple of days. Since then, it has sat in it's charger, almost completely unused. In fact, it's one of the worst purchases I've ever made.
Smartphones in general are rather pointless devices. They're far bulkier than my flip phone, so they're not very good on the go. They're much less comfortable to use than my netbook or my laptop, especially when I have to do a lot of typing. They're so vastly underpowered relative to even a netbook that they're not usable for anything computationally intensive. My Kindle is a much better e-book reader.
I learned the hard way that the usefulness of smartphones is purely a marketing creation. They look like they have potential, but in practice they're just the combination of the worst of every other type of computer or computing device.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It's terribly unfortunate that Apple has decided that iPad owners have no right to install whatever software the owner sees fit on his or her own tablet, thus necessitating (and encouraging) the jailbreaking community.
Mad props to these guys and their reverse engineering skills. Perhaps one day Apple will decide it's simply not worth the effort to keep up with the cat-and-mouse game of jailbreak/patch and just finally allow people to sideload apps and use their tablets however they want. Sadly, I don't foresee this happening.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
What does it do for the average consumer? Answer: nothing.
What does escaping for the USSR do for the average Soviet citizen? It is not like there was any censorship on the part of the Sovie^H^H^H^H^HApple:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/194387/apple_rejects_pulitzer_prize_winners_app.html
Palm trees and 8
This is all speculation... but perhaps Apple purposely leaves the holes in the OS to allow this type of circumvention. Hear me out if in for a good conspiracy theory...
I imagine there might be three areas of pressure to keep the OS closed:
1. I'd speculate the main pressure on Apple to keep the OS closed is to prevent the piracy of app store apps to keep application authors happily creating apps for the device and not having to worry about the general population being able to copy and install them. More applications = more iPad sales to the general public.
2. Since many iOS devices are enabled on mobile network not owned by Apple, I'm sure the networks "encourage" Apple to do their best to limit the ability of a user to use the network in unauthorized ways, such as tethering when not paying for the plan.
3. A tertiary focus on keeping the OS closed to keep support costs down. Limiting options = easier troubleshooting.
However, there is a contingent of users who will not buy the device unless they can do whatever they want with it / jailbreak it. Whether it's to load non-approved software or to pirate App Store applications or circumvent carrier restrictions in the mobile network enabled models. As far as I know, Apple doesn't take a loss on hardware sold, so Apple still wants their money and market share, so they leave these exploits available for them. This gives Apple the plausible deniability to the App Store application authors and the mobile network carriers ("Sorry, these dang HACKERS keep breaking through our security... we're doing our darndest but they keep getting around it... but don't worry, it's a pretty complex process and the average user doesn't bother.") and allows them to completely cut off support to people who have voided their warranty by performing the jailbreak.
It's genius if you think about it.
....because they make lots of money from the App Store, and they can appease various friendly politicians by banning political cartoons, banning pornography, etc. Why would Apple want to give up that sort of control? It is not as if the company were founded as part of a movement to free computer users from that sort of control or anything like that...
Palm trees and 8
Faceplant? I agree.
to have a platform where the user can modify/upgrade/repair the device without the golden permission slip some pretentious cunt?
The App Store offers many apps for free, and charges for others. Cydia offers many apps for free, and charges for others.
It's not the free software that makes jailbreaking attractive, but rather the ability to customize otherwise locked-down aspects of iOS and to evade Apple's regulations.
/* No Comment */
Actually, it lets you pirated apps, instead of paying for them. Lots of consumers see that as a feature.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Of course not..but not because it cannot but rather no Linux user could conceive of buying an iDevice without risking a spiral of self-loathing that could only result in suicide or being accused of being gay.
There are lots of examples of walled gardens in the world--Apple provides those who want it a brief repose from the malware infested cesspool. The smug technoratti hate this because (a) they don't think that nontechnical people should be allowed to safely use technology without having to kiss their rings, and (b) they want hundreds of millions of nontechnical users to subsidize their desire to tinker.
Totally off topic: I saw a job post the other day for iPad support, I had to laugh as I can imagine the calls "Plug it in and restore....that didn't work? Ok plug it in and restore"
Are you sure it just wasn't some rich dude wanting a human iPad holder?
In reality, I could give up my tablet, probably give up my laptop, and maybe give up my desktop - but you can have my smartphone when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. Despite the horrendously expensive plans they require, even with minimal data or phone usage (I use about 200 minutes and 50-60MB of cell data in a typical month), it is indepensable and the most efficient use of space I own.
It is my media player, holding most of my 8000 audio files and a couple of audio (and print) books. It's my emergency communication line - my iMessage account is only shared between me, my daughter, and my wife. It is my business office - I have my business line as a Google Voice number, giving me access to call from my work number and get transcribed emails anywhere. It's my general notebook, with Evernote keeping all the stupid slips of paper I used to keep in my wallet. It's my personal phone, with a separate number from my work one. It's my contact book. It's my GPS. It's my general answer machine (Google, not Siri). It's my calendar - no, it's my planner for the entire family. See, we each have a Google calendar - and with Pocket Informant I can bring in all three, plus the calendars for the three boards I sit on - all in their own color. When I find out I might have to have a meeting in the evening or on a weekend, I know instantly if there's a conflict. Just as great, when I put that oddball meeting in, my wife knows I'm going to be late for dinner, or that I won't be around Saturday afternoon.
There are so many things, and so much efficiency, wrapped up in that little device which - since I don't jabber on the phone much - will last a solid three days between charging if needed.
Could I live without my smartphone? Yes, but I would have to replace it with 3-4x the devices or items, and I would be far less efficient. It's not something I would do voluntarily.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
On one level, saying "why has Apple locked down my iPad so I can't run whatever code I want?" is a bit like saying "why has Krups locked down my coffee maker so I can't use it as steam energy source to power my lights?" or "why has Bosch locked down my washing machine so I can't control the RPM of the centrifuge for analysing soil samples?". The iPad is a consumer device sold with the purpose of performing particular functions specified by the manufacturer who will support and guarantee it for that purpose. If you want to hack around with it in order to make it perform some other function, then that is (arguably) your prerogative. But it's not necessarily a failing of the manufacturer not to have facilitated your hacking about.
Now, the situation is admittedly a little more complex in the case of an iPad because, just like your DVD player, graphic calculator, electronic keyboard and various other devices, you might argue that what you have is *technologically* a multi-purpose computer. But that doesn't mean that *conceptually* it is intended to be a multi-purpose computer. The distinction is maybe just a bit more blurred with the iPad than with other devices.
Personally, I don't really see the grand purpose of jailbreaking an iPad. After spending a day battling with my PC over the graphics driver being incompatible with the bluetooth driver or the antivirus not being able to update because of too many flibbles in the patch server or the printer software exiting unexpectedly because I waited the incorrect number of milliseconds before pressing the "Scan" button or whatever other spuriosity one might encounter in the course of an average day's computing, I'm quite happy to sit on the sofa with my iPad at the end of the day and have an hour or two away from that nonsense. That's what it was designed for. I'm quite happy in the knowledge that if I really wanted a tablet for "hacking about" or doing something that the Apple-approved iPad software doesn't do, then I could have bought something else instead.[*]
And I suspect that most iPad users fall into that category.
Now, Apple probably don't care terribly much that jailbreaking exists, provided that-- just like using your washing machine as a centrifuge for your home-grown chemistry lab-- it clearly has the perception of being "a bit of unsupported hackery that the user makes a conscious decision to indulge in". If it became so mainstream that it prevented Apple from selling the iPad fundamentally as a "consumer ecosystem" as intended, then they might care more.
[*] P.S. I should say that I am also a programmer and have a few iOS apps in the App Store. But even as a developper, I don't find the idea of "going through a manufacturer-approved procedure to develop for a particular device" as being terribly terribly shocking-- especially when (unlike, say, console manufacturers) Apple actually make the procedure very accessible to small developers.
And the bullshit Apple line continues to be spewed.
Ah yes, the classic pro-Apple, authoritarian "argument to the masses."
a) fails because Apple could keep the same restrictions on the market they have now, and would inconvenience no one. This is about giving people direct access to what they own.
b) allowing people to tinker costs virtually NOTHING
Yet Apple defenders repeatedly spout bad rationalizations, often taking the form of attacks on groups they dislike, "nerds" and "tinkerers," while successfully omitting any and all valid points.
I've heard this before and it is crap--you claim that Apple could provide an easy option to use a non-curated means of loading native apps onto their iProducts and still maintain the same robustness and quality of user experience because people who don't want to won't exercise that capability. This attitude betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how users interact with technology. To put it briefly, it fails the "Re: Re: Re: Here try this out!" attack. A nontechnical user receives an email that claims they can unlock a free copy of Angry Birds Extreme by following some simple instructions to enable non-curated apps--they click through all warning messages (because that is what Windows has trained them to do over the last 20 years) and boom--they are using a buggy malware infested piece of crap app. Now they need to run virus checkers, take their phone into the Best Buy guys, or maybe over to that nerdy kid next door. Oh wait, I can just download this other app that promises to clean up my phone and make it run faster.
Of course you'll say that the user got what he deserved, because fundamentally you think the point of technology is to make those who understand it feel righteously indignant towards those who don't. That is not the point of technology. People who design bridges don't intend that the bridge should work properly only for those with civil engineering degrees. People who design elevators don't feel offended when some obnoxious prick says it has a "dumbed down interface". Your microwave also doesn't allow you to side load apps onto it. Get the idea yet?
You know what? people who design computers (I'm one of them) also really want those computers to be safe and usable for nontechnical folks, as do people who design operating systems and most apps--these are people who have far more technical cred than most of the wannabes that hang out on slashdot. So who is it that is complaining about Apple? frankly it is a bunch of insecure bratty little script kiddies. Losers.