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The Life, Death, and Legacy of iPhone Jailbreaking (vice.com)
From a Motherboard article: Jailbreaking is the art of hacking into Apple's ultra-secure iOS operating system and unlocking it -- and thus allowing users to customize the phone, and write or install any software unimpeded by Apple's restrictions. At the time I met with Todesco (a person who offered jailbreaking service), in December 2016, there was no known jailbreak (for the iPhone 7) -- no public knowledge of this hack -- for the latest iOS version that was installed on my iPhone (iOS 10.2). The world's first jailbreaking step-by-step procedure, discovered in 2007, was posted online for all to see. Subsequent jailbreaks were used by millions of people. At one point, there was even a website -- called jailbreakme.com -- that was free for all to use and jailbroke your phone simply by visiting it. [...] Ten years after the iPhone hit the sleek tables of Apple Stores worldwide, and the first-ever jailbreak, that Wild West is gone. There's now a professionalized, multi-million dollar industry of iPhone security research. It's a world where jailbreaking itself -- at least jailbreaking as we've come to know it -- might be over.
Well, of course. Using that narrow definition of "purpose", the purpose of every commercial product is to generate income for the company that is manufacturing and selling that product; any desirable functionality of the product is only a means toward that end.
That's a true observation, but also an obvious and unremarkable one, except to anyone who was under the impression that corporations were a type of public-service-oriented nonprofit.
What's relevant is whether or not the product serves the customer's needs well, or not.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Jailbreaking the iphone back in the day, like my 3GS, it made sense.
Why the heck did Apple decide you could only have a black background anyway? And only three text tones? No hiding iconseither. It wasn't like they sold background apps or SMS tones for a fee, they just said "no, not your phone."
It's obsolete now because... you can just get an android. And apple decided to give users some control over things like the background.