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Two Major Cydia Hosts Shut Down as Jailbreaking Fades in Popularity (macrumors.com)
Joe Rossignol, writing for MacRumors: ModMy last week announced it has archived its default ModMyi repository on Cydia, which is essentially an alternative App Store for downloading apps, themes, tweaks, and other files on jailbroken iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. ZodTTD/MacCiti also shut down this month, meaning that two out of three of Cydia's major default repositories are no longer active as of this month. ModMy recommends developers in the jailbreaking community use the BigBoss repository, which is one of the last major Cydia sources that remains functional. The closure of two major Cydia repositories is arguably the result of a declining interest in jailbreaking, which provides root filesystem access and allows users to modify iOS and install unapproved apps on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. When the iPhone and iPod touch were first released in 2007, jailbreaking quickly grew in popularity for both fun and practical reasons. Before the App Store, for example, it allowed users to install apps and games. Jailbreaking was even useful for something as simple as setting a wallpaper, not possible on early iOS versions.
I stopped jailbreaking when ios incorporated enough of the features I wanted.
Alongside net neutrality, laws should exist that dictate no owners of general technology devices can be artificially/intentionally restricted from accessing any part of their device.
I don't mean "thou shall include a JTAG port and dongle" .. I mean that it becomes illegal to import for commercial sale any device that the manufacturer/reseller has locked down for the sole purpose of excluding access to tinker.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
And bittorrent is used for self-created techno albums and linux distributions, too...but of course jailbreaking was mostly about playing bootleg apps.
I'm not interested in installing illegal Soviet hacker tools like Comet Cursor or Bonzi Buddy. Also it is a severe DMCA violation, which is something no true Apple citizen would not do. So keep your so called "jail breaking" away from me, I prefer using my iPhone the way Steve intended.
Don't know why this is being touted as a "decline in interest" when the real story is that there hasn't been a clean useable jailbreak available for a LONG time, nothing really useable for IOS10 and nothing for IOS11, despite reports of "demos". Apple has done a good job of shutting JB'ing down, whether by patching holes, or.... I wonder if Apple pays these hackers off not to release the JB after a demo is released.
Yes IOS has offered many of the features that JB'ing used to provide, but not all... I still would JB if I could. But I can't be forever stuck on IOS8 either.
Usually I've got an iPhone (I'm an iOS developer) but I've got a Nexus 5 as well. There's one feature I miss, and that's to turn on the Do Not Disturb mode for a set time. For example, you walk into a meeting, and turn on Do Not Disturb for 1 hour.
iPhones don't have that, it's an on/off thing and I'm _very_ likely to turn it on, and then forget to turn it off.
I bet there's a jailbreak app for that.
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Even with a working iOS JB, (and working doesn't mean that half the phone functionality is glitchy), there is also the fact that if I want to update iOS due to a bug, I have to do a complete DFU restore and re-JB, with downloading all my Cydia apps.
Also, there are only a few things I want from a JB these days... one is a firewall, so I can control what apps phone home to where, and a way of backing up individual app data and archiving it off, so an old game I completed doesn't keep wasting space on my device, but I still have the save game, just in case I do try it again.
Rooting has faded in popularity on Android too.
Even on xda-developers.com , which is the place to go for everything related to root, some people start discouraging the practice.
The reason is that most legitimate reasons for rooting have disappeared, and even some illegitimate ones. Most tweaks that required root can now be done without it, and features that were only available to custom ROMs are now stock. Also, by rooting, you lose regular security updates (if your phone is still supported) and some features like NFC payment.
Im a brain surgeon who owns an iPhone you insensitive clod.
When I first started jailbreaking, I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of crap that was available. The overwhelming majority of the stuff (by what appeared to be multiple orders of magnitude) was "themes" and other trivial nonsense. Of the stuff that was useful, it seemed like 9/10 of it was no longer maintained and/or didn't work for the version of iOS I had installed, or were buggy enough that the phone became unstable. I think out of the 10s of thousands of packages available, the number of genuinely useful ones amounted to possibly even less than 10.
Once Apple introduced new features that addressed the immediate pain points I had, the effort to maintain a jailbroken phone just wasn't worth it anymore.
This is what happens when you have a free-for-all repo that anyone can contribute to. A cesspool of unmaintained crap that quickly self-immolates, and is probably one of the best examples of what happens to uncurated repositories. It was even worse than Wordpress's plugins repository, IMO, and that's saying something.
It's been a long time since I've touched iOS, but I wonder if part of it is the old JB scene moving over to Android? A lot of features I used to have to Jailbreak my phone for were readily available OOTB or in the Play Store with no need to root the device.
My main motivation for jailbreaking my ipad was to gain access to the filesystem and use it like a normal tablet/computer. Has this been resolved yet or does iOS still regard RAW/DNG image files as hazardous to my health?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Im a brain surgeon who owns an iPhone you insensitive clod.
i'm a clod who owns an iPhone you insensitive brain surgeon
Or perhaps that the jailbreaks never left the "tethered" state because they couldn't find a boot level flaw to make them permanent.
There's a lot of jailbreaks out there, but most only persist until you reboot, at which point you need to hack the phone again to jailbreak it.
I think interest also dropped off considerably when the piracy scene left the jailbreak scene. For a long while you needed to jailbreak in order to pirate, so a lot of people would jailbreak just to pirate. Thing is, since iOS 9 I believe, Apple made it so you didn't have to jailbreak to side load stuff - there was an official sideload channel available with XCode. And pirates drew upon that because that way it didn't require jailbreaking, so they created the tools using Apple's official method.
As for devices still using older iOS, the App Store has supported older versions of apps for a little while now - if you attempt to install an app on an older device, it would ask if you wanted an older version downloaded instead (it says something like "this app requires a newer OS version that what you have, do you want to install an older version that supports your OS version?". This is developer controlled - sometimes an older version is removed for legal reasons, other times the developer doesn't want to support an older version alongside the current one, etc.
iOS11 gives you a file browser for iCloud files, so you can browse files in a way you could not before... also many apps can open files "in place" now which means you are editing the version that is in iCloud, so you don't have to round-trip it to the app and back to iCloud.
If you are using RAW/DNG you should take a look at Affinity Photo on the iPad which provides a full desktop photo editor on the iPad.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It was always destined to be a losing battle. How do you convince people to not only "hack" their phone but trust a third party service that was shady at best to purchase and support applications from a place that by definition requires you exploit security bugs in your phone to use. The risk/reward may be in favor for the few that like to tinker but not for the other 99.9% of the world. For those that will chime in that they own the phone and should be able to do as they please with it, if you don't like it there are other phone manufacturers to choose from that allow you to customize to your heart's content but if you want to play in Apple's world you have to follow their rules.
This is the correct answer.
Apple's market share, based on number of active devices / new devices sold, continues to plummet compared to Android.
The people who care to jailbreak / root / pirate have mostly left iOS.
Apple continues to rely on high margins and the willingness of their customers to pay for apps. However, they're getting squeezed on both ends. Fewer potential App Store customers due to people leaving for Android, and more people leaving for Android due to lower device prices.
If they lower their prices, they directly hurt their bottom line because they rely so much on those high margins. If they look for a bigger cut of sales in the App Store, developers will raise prices / move to Android, and customers will spend less / move to Android.
The first 2 quarters of sales for the latest iPhones will be critical for Apple.
iphones primary user base is people that barely know how to install an app
Stop. Just stop right there. The primary user base is people who don't want to have to know how to install an app. Everyone here on Slashdot should be able to do that stuff with zero problems, but even a huge percentage of us here simply don't want to. I spend enough time fighting computers at work, thanks.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
i always thought of jail breaking an iPhone was taking away what security is baked in... and since i don't can't vet the code of side loaded apps even as little vetting that apple does is more security than i can provide.
If you are using your ipad that way then you are using it wrong. The "computer" is dead. these are appliances that just work and don't need stupid shitty things like "filesystem"s.
... bit "app" is short for "application", and those are older than your mom! Probably literally!
For those who can get past the imperative to own Apple hardware, Sony is taking somewhat the opposite approach with their Open Device Program. The high resolution of the premium model makes it nice for diy VR as well.
iphones primary user base is people that barely know how to install an app, and jailbreaking would be like brain surgery for them
Im a brain surgeon who owns an iPhone you insensitive clod.
Hey, I know you! You're Ben Carson!
You humanoid livestock are ridiculous.
How afraid are you of existing yourselves??
where will apple steal its new innovations from? I guess they still have a lot of app developers they can exploit.
There's that, too: you're deliberating exploiting a local root security vulnerability to replace parts of your OS. Yeah, no. I'll pass.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
So why not just buy a dumbphone then?
Recent updates allowed more granular permissions, blocking autostart, and many other things that traditionally I used root apps for.
There is the aspect of maybe blocking Google's own shenannigans though, but not sure if it's worth having a device with other potential attack vectors due to having an non-updatable rooted OS.
I stopped rooting my android phone, and flashing anything other than stock roms, after Jellybean 4.3 I went from Jellybean to lollipop, then marshmellow, nougat, and now Oreo. All have been smooth as silk (huawei + nova launcher). Buying direct from the manufacturer, leaves out most of the bloat, all features are unrestricted and what built in apps I don't want, are either uninstalled or just blocked. I don't bother rooting or flashing now, which I'm guessing is pretty much the same reason some of the jailbreaking has gone. It isn't as necessary as it use to be.
this kind of makes sense. ive had this 6s plus for like two years now and for some reason until seeing this i actually kind of forgot jailbreaking was even a thing. iirc the ios 10 jailbreaks were not keeping up with updates fast enough- and the real clincher for me was when att redid their plan packages so i could share the full quota tethering for 2$ less than my old grandfathered unlimited plan without tethering.
Are you having a stroke?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Because I like the apps. I know some people (not saying you) here think this is crazytalk, but there are a lot of good productivity and geeky apps on smart phones. I like being able to SSH to do stuff when I need to. I like the task management system I use. I like encrypted chats with my family. I like streaming music. I also like being able to do that stuff through a relatively trusted app store running on a relatively secure device.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I believe you could also choose other storage options and open in place from there - sadly Dropbox I seem to remember does not support opening files in place. The key point is that you can have some kind of central file repository and work on files in it without copying, wither that is Apple's or some other is up to you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Most of its devoted users are 32-bit and they gave up on it and Apple doesn't sign older versions anymore.
Rooting is still common for android, because android vendor unlike iPhone won't stop putting system bloatware. To completely remove them, you'll still need to root. One example, Galaxy Note 8 rooted on Oct 8. Another example, Galaxy S8 rooted on Aug 20.
They only major things are there are more custom roms than root thread on xda-developers, and xda devs have their life too where they can't provide that much support on an exponential phone market.
What if you want to work on a local file?
That's what all apps do by default (local file in app storage).... but I'm not quite sure what you mean, since any file you work with will be "local" - if you choose a file from iCloud, it will be downloaded locally and that's what you will work with - if you save changes they would be pushed back up to iCloud.
Or one stored on your own server and accessed via SMB or WebDAV?
There are probably a million apps (I know there are at least a few but it seems so easy to do there must be a number of them) that let you access SMB file shares, some of them probably push back up changes to the SMB server.
I'm personally setting up a system for travel that lets me work with images stored on a drive shared over WiFi (the hub device has it's own WiFi, lets you plug in a USB drive and an SD card then access either over an app on the device).
Why should you have to share a file with a korporate kloud service just to be able to view it?
Well you don't have to use a "Korporate" service but I choose to use iCloud because one thing they are better at than I can be is maintaining file integrity in backups. I maintain regular backups including offsite but a worry is that someday I'll toast a perfectly good backup with a silently corrupted file. That's not going to happen on iCloud or Dropbox if I delete the local copy.
Sadly though I get the sense you aren't really looking for answers, but just want to bitch about things that are not really bitchable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"iphones primary user base is people that barely know how to install an app..."
When you presume that iDevice users are too stupid to hack their phones, you are reflecting more upon yourself than them. Many iDevice users have other things to do. Our elected officials, corporate executives, doctors, scientists, engineers and schoolteachers. They don't live in Mom's basement hacking their phones. They want an easy, reliable, secure phone that won't interfere with what needs to get done.
Every hour you spend hacking your Android phone or Windows computer is a lost hour. You could have been doing something useful, something unselfish.
...omphaloskepsis often...
encrypted chats with my family
Do you *really* think the NSA cares what you're having for dinner? If you were that paranoid about privacy (and intellectually consistent) you'd run screaming at the very thought of owning a smartphone.
You're actually straight-up calling people immoral for not buying iToys. That's some next-level shilling right there.
Since iOS has allowed Sideloading of Apps outside of the App Store through XCode since iOS 8, and, coincidentally enough, using a Cydia cross-platform tool called "Impactor", without requiring XCode or a Mac, Jailbreaking of iOS devices has become less and less desirable.
So, it doesn't surprise me that Jailbreaking has fallen off in recent years.
iBlacklist was the only reason I ever jailbroked(?), but my provider now has their own service (of course it's paid, like a dollar a month), that has a huge list of known cold-callers that it blocks for me, as well as allowing to block no-caller-ID, create my own blacklist or whitelist.
Blocking no-caller-id is a godsend, as my family has been on the receiving end of repeated nuisance calls in the past, and it has the added benefit of blocking calls from work by anyone who can't figure out how to attach their ID to the call :D
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
You are right - you are much more secure inside a jail. Most of the baddies will indeed be on the other side of those walls neither you or they can cross.