Super Freedom Friday: Um, what?

So, Kevin and I were discussing what we wanted to do in the way of regular Blog posts throughout the week- we already have (hopefully from here on out) the episode and show notes on Monday, the Aftercast Tuesday with all the things that didn’t quite make the show, and Gaming Wednesdays- and I suggested that I use one of the days to blog about something a bit different but still reasonably encompassed by our purpose of discussing Apps. Specifically, applications and functions uniquely available to Jailbroken iPhones like mine. So, for the first Super Freedom Friday, I’m going to start at the very beginning (a very good place to start…) with some general information about what Jailbreaking is and isn’t and why people do it.

First off, a bit of clarification and explanations as I know that there is some confusion between the difference between Jailbreaking and Unlocking. Jailbreaking is a modification to the phone that allows apps not approved by Apple and access to essentially every aspect of the phone’s software. Jailbreaking is officially frowned upon by Apple, but while they could break the ability to do so via firmware updates, they choose not to since it really doesn’t do any harm- though if you bring in a Jailbroken phone for warranty service without restoring it to its original settings, they can claim it to be out of warranty. Unlocking means to remove the restriction that limits the iPhone from being used on one carrier (in the US, AT&T) exclusively so it can be used on different carrier networks. My iPhone is Jailbroken but not Unlocked- I have no real reason to Unlock it, and about the only reason I’d give it more serious thought would be if I were to be sent overseas to work for a while and wanted to get an account with a local cell carrier where I was working.

When talking about Jailbreaking, a bit of a history lesson is in order. Don’t worry, I’ll try and not make it too dull and I promise there won’t be a quiz at the end. When the original iPhone was released in last June of 2007, it have one issue that people made note of almost immediately: there was no way to add more applications to it outside of web-based ‘applications’, so you were limited to the applications that came with the phone (largely the same ones that they come with now). It was largely from this limitation and people’s desire to simply be able to use the iPhone for more than Apple was allowing that Jailbreaking was born. Industrious hackers found chinks in the armor locking down the phone and were able to exploit them to install additional software on the phones. Until the App Store went online in July 2008, Jailbreaking was the only way to get new true applications on the phone. The advent of the App Store changed the game a fair bit- though there are a number of restrictions in place regarding what apps allowed in the store can do, there are now over 15,000 apps available to download- far more than were ever available for the Jailbroken phones.

And yet, many people- like myself- still Jailbreak their phones. Why? Well, you can do a lot more besides just install apps onto the iPhone with it- you can heavily customize the look of the interface for starters as well as change almost any system sound you want. You can get much deeper access to the phone and move files around between apps. There’s an app that allows you to (in effect) put apps into ‘folders’ to clean up your Springboard. And there’s still a large number of apps that are only available for the Jailbroken phones because they need access beyond the ‘Sandbox’ that Apple restricts or simply do things that Apple doesn’t allow, live record video.

But put most simply, many people just like having the choice and not being limited by the sometimes frustrating (but often understandable) limits that Apple puts on what software can be run on the phone. It’s in Apple’s best interest to ensure that the iPhone platform is stable and, as they’re fond of saying, ‘Just works.’ They also want to protect themselves and ensure that it meets the claims they’ve made as far as things like battery life, which many of the Jailbreak mods can definitely impact.

My initial reasons for Jailbreaking Yunocchi were twofold: I wanted the functionality of Categories to put the apps into folders, and I wanted to be able to modify the sounds that you can’t normally upload custom sound files for (SMS & Email are restricted to the choices the phone comes with). Since then though, I’ve found a whole lot of really useful things that I can do with it and it’s made the iPhone far more useful and powerful than it was before Jailbreaking it. I’ll be using this space to document some of these features in coming weeks and highlight some of the really spiffy stuff that a Jailbroken phone can do.

Probably the most noticeable and visible effect of Jailbreaking is that you can make massive changes to the appearance of things on the iPhone.  It’s possible to do everything from very subtle tweaks and changes (what I tend to prefer- both visually and for the fact that these changes tend to not impact performance nearly as heavily) to completely changing the way things look and act, and even using video files as the background.

To give an example, below is a screen-cap of Yuno’s homescreen how it looks normally for me these days:

While it should be obvious fairly quickly that this isn’t the standard iPhone homescreen, it’s also not a massive deviation from the usual.  The list of mods to the screen are:

• AT&T ‘Death Star’ (OK, not what it’s actually called, but…) logo replacing normal logo
• Numeric battery charge level enabled
• Menu bar notifications- email, SMS, etc. are shown on the menu bar at all times
• It’s not very obvious from a static shot, but the clock icon actually keeps time (you can see the passing of a few minutes between this shot and the next one)
• Standard dock image replaced with a OS X Leopard-style ‘3D’ dock
• Five-icon dock enabled
• Dock icon labels hidden
• It’s also not obvious, but somewhat implied by the fact I only have 3 pages of apps- I’m using Categories to put many of my related apps into folders

Now, let’s take a look at one of the more obviously modified setups- the following image uses a full OS-X Leopard theme that uses a custom background and replaced many of the stock icons apps use with ones of its own, including simulating the reflection that icons sitting on the dock have (you can tell which icons are part of the scheme and which are stock by the absence of the ‘reflection’ below them.

Personally, I much prefer the most stock look- it’s just easier to read for starters, and it’s easier to manipulate however I want. Most themes are set up to have the standard icons down on the dock, for example, and don’t look quite right if you have a different setup- for example, if you look closely you’ll notice that the ‘reflection’ below the phone icon at the upper left extends down below the ’shelf’- that’s because it’s supposed to be sitting down on the dock.

It is worth noting however that while there are a massive number of reasons to Jailbreak that it’s not without its downsides as well- though almost anyone who has done it will tell you that the disadvantages are heavily outweighed by the advantages. First off, depending on how fancy of a UI mod you have, you can definitely impact the available memory the system has to run apps and their performance can suffer. It’s easy to avoid this though by not going overboard and realizing the impact the mods have on the system. There’s also the perception that the Jailbroken phones are less stable and more prone to crashing- honestly, this hasn’t been something that I’ve really noticed to be true. I’ve had the phone reset and lose my icon location setup and revert to the stock setup several times- both before and after Jailbreaking the phone. I recently had an issue with a conflict between a particular JB app and a beta version of a App Store app that I was testing out, but removing the JB app (which I wasn’t happy with anyway) resolved the problem. There’s also a slight security risk- both directly and indirectly. The standard Jailbreak setup involves enabling SSH access to the phone remotely, and if you leave it enabled and don’t change the default password, anyone could access the phone and the data on it as well as largely modifying it at will. And though the applications you can install via the Jailbreak ‘app store’ (Cydia, primarily) are usually tested out and confirmed to be non-malicious, it’s almost certainly less thorough of a process than the official App Store. Installing from sources other than those approved by the Cydia team is obviously at your own risk. There’s also a slight lag in upgrade cycle… for example, the 2.2.1 firmware was released a few days ago. Those of us with Jailbroken phones had to wait for the team responible for the Jailbreak mod to test things out and work out what needed to be done for us to upgrade to get the advantages of the new firmware without losing the advantages of the Jailbreak (or Unlock).

In the end, it’s up to the individual iPhone owner to determine whether it’s worth it or not. Personally, I very definitely think it is- but it’s not for everyone. From here on out, I’ll be going more in-depth about particular apps and mods available- and I’ve got no shortage of things to talk about, so I’ll see you next Friday!