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Speaker 1: Stole from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone
Speaker 1: in Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poette
Speaker 1: and I am an editor here at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Sitting across from me, as usual is senior
Speaker 1: writer Jonathan Strickland. It's a hundred six miles to Chicago.
Speaker 1: We've got a full tank of gas, half a pack
Speaker 1: of cigarettes. It's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk today about something that we received tons
Speaker 1: and tons of requests for. Um. We received requests for
Speaker 1: this through email, through Twitter, through Facebook, through singing telegram. UM,
Speaker 1: there was I think someone hired a plane to write
Speaker 1: this across the sky above the house stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com headquarters. But here's here's just a quick list of
Speaker 1: some of the people who wrote in to ask us
Speaker 1: about our topic today. They include Daniel, Jack, Jaden, Josh John, Miguel, Trey,
Speaker 1: Mark Nicholas, and Tom. That's just a selection. And we're
Speaker 1: going to talk today about jail breaking. Yes, And I
Speaker 1: don't believe that any of the people that you've listed. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're actually writing us from jail, so we must not
Speaker 1: be talking about prison cell know what we are talking
Speaker 1: about specifically. Really, jailbreaking can can be a fairly general term,
Speaker 1: but it tends to focus more often than not on
Speaker 1: Apple products, and jailbreaking is all about how uh people
Speaker 1: who buy Apple products. You know, Apple has a very
Speaker 1: specific way that they like to to design their products.
Speaker 1: They want to design very beautiful, useful, uh, user friendly
Speaker 1: products that quote unquote just work well. In order to
Speaker 1: do that, they have to have control. Yeah, Apples kind
Speaker 1: of big on the control thing. Yes, not necessarily what
Speaker 1: you say and do under normal operation, but really the
Speaker 1: they want control of the experience for you, which is
Speaker 1: why if you want to buy something for your iPhone,
Speaker 1: iPod or i've had, uh, you should be buying it
Speaker 1: through the iTunes store according to Apple, because that means
Speaker 1: that they have had someone look at it and say, yes,
Speaker 1: it works as advertised, and we approve of this. Here
Speaker 1: it goes, and they put it in the store. Theoretically,
Speaker 1: it also helps them keep out things like malware, right
Speaker 1: it would it would prevent them if they have verified
Speaker 1: that it is not dangerous for you. To run that
Speaker 1: on your eye device. Um, you know they should be
Speaker 1: able to you should be able to buy something from
Speaker 1: the the app store and go, I know that this
Speaker 1: is safe and not going to cause any harm or
Speaker 1: make a brick out of my iPhone, right, So it's
Speaker 1: all about that's their argument. Yeah, exactly, that's one of
Speaker 1: their arguments. But that's a big one, that's the main
Speaker 1: one they use. Yeah, So if we're going to make
Speaker 1: a comparison, let's say that you go to a an
Speaker 1: electronics store, specific kind of electronic store, so you know,
Speaker 1: we'll just call it OWLS Electronics, and you go to
Speaker 1: OWLS Electronics and you buy a stereo. IL cut you
Speaker 1: a deal, by the way, and you take that stereo home,
Speaker 1: and then you want to play music on it, and
Speaker 1: then you discover that Owl's the stereos from Owls Electronics
Speaker 1: will only play music that was purchased from OWLS Electronics.
Speaker 1: That's why I'll cut you such a deal. So you
Speaker 1: can't go buy music anywhere else. You have to go
Speaker 1: back to OLS Electronics if you want to be able
Speaker 1: to play it on your stereo. And not all the
Speaker 1: artists are are are carried by OWLS Electronics. So there's
Speaker 1: some music you're just not going to get to listen to,
Speaker 1: no matter what. Same sort of thing here, except instead
Speaker 1: of music, we're talking about apps, applications. Little well, minish
Speaker 1: your applications if you prefer. But these are the various
Speaker 1: games and and uh and and apps that you can
Speaker 1: run on iPhones certain well iPod touches in the iPad uh. Now, normally,
Speaker 1: if you just go to an Apple store and you
Speaker 1: buy one of these products you taken home, the only
Speaker 1: apps that you have at your disposal will be the
Speaker 1: ones that are carried in the iTunes store. You can't
Speaker 1: go and find them anywhere else. Right, as long as
Speaker 1: you don't jail break your device, you are limited to
Speaker 1: what is in the app store. Now, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of apps in the app store. Here's another one of
Speaker 1: Apple's arguments. So whyever would you want to go outside
Speaker 1: the app store? Well, part of it is that control
Speaker 1: system we were talking about. Apple has a very um
Speaker 1: it's hard to say if it's strict, because it's so
Speaker 1: it's not understood very well. Apple's policies about what can
Speaker 1: and cannot go into the App Store seem to at
Speaker 1: least be somewhat veiled in secrecy. You'll see some apps
Speaker 1: getting an approval and go into the app store and
Speaker 1: everything seems to be fine, and another app that, as
Speaker 1: far as you can tell, meets the same criteria as
Speaker 1: the first one will get denied. And sometimes app is
Speaker 1: forthcoming about why a particular app did or did not
Speaker 1: make it into the store, and sometimes they're not. So
Speaker 1: that's this can be a very frustrating experience. And if
Speaker 1: you're the type of user who does not want to
Speaker 1: have which apps you can and can't use dictated to
Speaker 1: you by the manufacturer, you may be tempted to find
Speaker 1: a way to get around that. And that's what jailbreaking is.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've that was a roundabout way to get
Speaker 1: to it, but jailbreaking is essentially hacking your device so
Speaker 1: that you can put whatever apps it is capable of
Speaker 1: running on there without it being dictated to you by Apple. Yes,
Speaker 1: and um, it's a very very low level system hack,
Speaker 1: so I mean it's not you're you're not messing with
Speaker 1: the very top layer of software. You're getting into the
Speaker 1: system software to do this, which means it could be dangerous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's actually, uh, here are the arguments that Apple puts
Speaker 1: forth as to why you should not jail break your phone.
Speaker 1: Argument number one that you pointed out that the app
Speaker 1: store already has thousands of apps in it which have
Speaker 1: passed presumably have passed Apple quality control, so they are
Speaker 1: going to do what they're supposed to do and they're
Speaker 1: safe to use, so you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: it screwing up your phone. That's argument number one is safety.
Speaker 1: Argument number two is uh not you know that the
Speaker 1: the experience is going to It's not none of the
Speaker 1: apps that you're going to get in the Apple Store
Speaker 1: going to affect the other apps you have. Whereas if
Speaker 1: you jail break your phone so that it does stuff
Speaker 1: that it's capable of doing but was not meant to do, um,
Speaker 1: one app could screw up another app so that you
Speaker 1: end up with essentially a broken device. That's that's where
Speaker 1: you're getting towards the bricked version. UH. Argument number three
Speaker 1: it violates warranty. Yes, so if you were to try
Speaker 1: and circumnavigate this whole UH system that Apples put in
Speaker 1: place that restricts you to the apps in the iTunes store,
Speaker 1: you violated your warranty. And if something goes Apple is
Speaker 1: not obligated to help you. So, uh, that's another issue
Speaker 1: that's putting the fear into the user. And the fourth
Speaker 1: one I think I'm on number four now is that
Speaker 1: until recently, Apple also said that it was a copyright violation,
Speaker 1: which no longer necessarily no no longer applies in the
Speaker 1: United States. In the United States, that's not the issue anymore.
Speaker 1: But it used to be that Apple would say that
Speaker 1: if you were to jail break your phone so that
Speaker 1: you could access unauthorized apps, you were violating copyright. And
Speaker 1: we currently specifically the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, yes, d
Speaker 1: m c A. But section twelve oh one A one,
Speaker 1: Title seventeen of the United States Code on Copyright now says,
Speaker 1: and this this is a direct quote, persons making noninfringing
Speaker 1: uses of the following six classes of works will not
Speaker 1: be subject to the prohibition against circumventing access controls until
Speaker 1: the conclusion of the next rulemaking. And then it lists
Speaker 1: the six different classes. The second class is computer programs
Speaker 1: that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications where
Speaker 1: circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability
Speaker 1: of such applications. When they have been lawfully obtained with
Speaker 1: computer programs on the telephone handset, which is a long
Speaker 1: way of saying, if you if you create a software
Speaker 1: program that allows you to break this this restriction on
Speaker 1: a handset device, that's okay. It is not violating copyright.
Speaker 1: There is a word in there that I would like
Speaker 1: to point out, what's that lawful? Yeah, that gets tricky,
Speaker 1: I mean, And it's essentially what this does is help
Speaker 1: take some of the teeth out of what Apple tells you,
Speaker 1: and that Apple's saying, hey, this violates copyright. Therefore it's
Speaker 1: against the law. Therefore you are breaking the law if
Speaker 1: you jail break your phone. This makes it a little
Speaker 1: muddier where it's it's like, well, now it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like it's legal. Now Apple can still create a a
Speaker 1: user agreement that states that you do not jail break
Speaker 1: your phone, and if you violate that, then Apple can
Speaker 1: still deny you your your support, you know, and still
Speaker 1: said that it violates warranty. It's not like it's a
Speaker 1: get out of jail free card for jail breaking. It's
Speaker 1: just that you're not going to get prosecuted in a
Speaker 1: in a in a legal system for creating distributing a
Speaker 1: jail breaking program. Well, there's another aspect to that as well.
Speaker 1: What's that? Um? From what I understand, if you jailbreak
Speaker 1: your eye thing that it will used eye device earlier. UM.
Speaker 1: If you if you do decide to jail break your
Speaker 1: your device, UM, it could allow you to pirate applications. Um.
Speaker 1: Because see what's going on when you buy something from
Speaker 1: the app store is uh, there is an embedded layer
Speaker 1: of rights metadata involved with that that says that you
Speaker 1: own the license to run this on your I device.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, once you have removed, once you
Speaker 1: have jailbroken that and you have freed it from Apple's control,
Speaker 1: then you can install stuff from other people's that other
Speaker 1: people have bought on there as well. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that I have seen in doing research for
Speaker 1: this podcast and comments on on blog posts and articles is,
Speaker 1: you know, from developers who are you know, the upside
Speaker 1: being hey, you've got a lot more freedom now, the
Speaker 1: downside being, hey, don't copy our apps by them. You know.
Speaker 1: That's that's the that's the thing is so you jail
Speaker 1: breaking is not a a It frees you to use
Speaker 1: whatever you want to on your device, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: give you a right to go around and pirate apps. Right,
Speaker 1: you can't go you can't just go and steal stuff
Speaker 1: that's that's legitimately for sale. Um. What you can do
Speaker 1: is you can go to various directories that have apps
Speaker 1: that were never included in the in the store to
Speaker 1: begin with, and access those and in some cases you
Speaker 1: may be purchasing them. In some cases it may be
Speaker 1: a free download, kind of like it is in the
Speaker 1: iTunes store. It's just it's just that in this this case,
Speaker 1: these are applications that, for one reason or another were
Speaker 1: never approved or perhaps were never even submitted for approval.
Speaker 1: It's some some developers, you know, may not want to
Speaker 1: go through the uh the process, the approval process. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know you've got to remember also that the customers
Speaker 1: who have iPhones that you know they've just put through
Speaker 1: the jailbreaking process, that's a small number compared to the
Speaker 1: overall number of of iPhone, iPod and iPad users. UM. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's not like if you are a
Speaker 1: developer and you decide to create an application and you're
Speaker 1: going to offer it up for people who have uh
Speaker 1: use jail break to free up their phones. Uh, you
Speaker 1: do that knowing that you're hitting a smaller audience than
Speaker 1: you would if you went through the quote unquote legitimate process. Right.
Speaker 1: I'd also like to point out that jail breaking is
Speaker 1: not unlocking, and it's not the same thing as unlocking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Unlocking your phone means that you have you have enabled
Speaker 1: it so that it will work on multiple carriers or
Speaker 1: on a different carrier than the one that was associated
Speaker 1: with your phone. So, United States, the iPhone is exclusive
Speaker 1: to a T and T. Uh. If you were to
Speaker 1: unlock your phone, you could theoretically have it run on
Speaker 1: T Mobile because T Mobile uses the same general technology.
Speaker 1: Now granted it's same technology, but different frequencies. So some
Speaker 1: of them are they don't they There's a couple of
Speaker 1: them overlap. I think one or two of them overlap.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, the you know, you couldn't have
Speaker 1: it run on Verizon or Sprint just because you're talking
Speaker 1: about two different cellular technology. Yeah, G S M versus
Speaker 1: C d M A So uh, Yeah, unlocking is different
Speaker 1: from jailbreaking. However, if you do want to unlock your phone,
Speaker 1: you pretty much have to jail break it first. So
Speaker 1: how do you jail break your phone? Well, it all
Speaker 1: depends upon or or really your eye device to use
Speaker 1: your phrase. It depends on which device you have, and
Speaker 1: it depends on which version of the iOS you're running.
Speaker 1: Because here's here's how this works is that you have
Speaker 1: hackers who examine the code that is in this operating
Speaker 1: system and they see the way to to create shortcuts
Speaker 1: and workarounds so that you can uh circumvent the whole
Speaker 1: iTunes exclusivity part of owning these devices. Um. Once they
Speaker 1: find a way of doing that, they create a program
Speaker 1: that again kind of creates this shortcut for you, and then, uh,
Speaker 1: what will happen is Apple will take a look at
Speaker 1: and see that people have found workarounds, and then when
Speaker 1: they start updating the OS, they will patch those holes,
Speaker 1: which means that you start all over again. The hacker
Speaker 1: has to find a new route to accomplish the same thing.
Speaker 1: And you've got dozens of different people working on this
Speaker 1: independently of each other. So there are many, many, many
Speaker 1: versions of jailbreaking software out there, written by different people
Speaker 1: for the various operating systems. And I'll by the way,
Speaker 1: if you do jail break your phone, one of the downsides, um,
Speaker 1: because we some of the stuff. Apple says, it's absolutely true, right,
Speaker 1: like you could download an app that's harmful to your phone. Theoretically, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean there are two different viruses that have come
Speaker 1: out for the that that we're designed for the iPhone,
Speaker 1: but would only affect your phone if you had a
Speaker 1: jailbroken iPhone, so you could get a virus. You could
Speaker 1: break your phone, which is where it freezes and it
Speaker 1: becomes unresponsive. I'll tell you a little bit about how
Speaker 1: you can fix your phone, by the way, if it
Speaker 1: is bricked. UM, it's pretty In most cases, it'll work
Speaker 1: and it's pretty simple. It does mean that you'll lose
Speaker 1: some data though, UM. But another downside is that when
Speaker 1: Apple updates its operating system, you're left out. If you've
Speaker 1: decided to jail break your your device, be haus you can't.
Speaker 1: If you update your your OS, it's going to UM,
Speaker 1: it's going to remove the jailbreak feature on your phone,
Speaker 1: or it's going to break it one of the two. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's a good chance we'll do is they'll just
Speaker 1: wipe all that off your device, so you'll lose all
Speaker 1: the apps that you have and you won't be able
Speaker 1: to download apps independent apps anymore. Until someone comes up
Speaker 1: with a new way to jailbreak and again you have
Speaker 1: to just start all over again from scratch. Yeah. That's
Speaker 1: one of the sort of weird things about this is
Speaker 1: once your phone or or pod or pad is unlocked,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, jail broken. Um, you can unjail break it. Yeah. Um. Actually,
Speaker 1: and returning to the original thing, the thing is that
Speaker 1: when when you when you do this, you're going to
Speaker 1: lose your data. Yeah, so it's it's always a good
Speaker 1: idea if you're gonna mess with this, to back up
Speaker 1: your your data before you jail break it or unjail
Speaker 1: break it if you need to, because say something goes
Speaker 1: awry and it's just not your device is not working well,
Speaker 1: but it's jailbroken. If you take it to Apple and
Speaker 1: ask them for help, they will say no because they
Speaker 1: will say that you violated or if they if they
Speaker 1: don't know, what they'll do is they'll immediately reset your
Speaker 1: phone to factory settings end up deleting all that stuff. Anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: I assume that it probably has still a lot to
Speaker 1: do with the humor of the person who is talking
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah. Yeah, Some some people, like disgruntled Apple
Speaker 1: employees might think it's funny. Uh. Still, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: get your phone fixed, there's a good chance that you're
Speaker 1: not gonna keep the jail breaking stuff. You'll have to
Speaker 1: fix it or they will do it for you. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you'll have to start over if you want to
Speaker 1: go back that route. Um. So Yeah, if you don't
Speaker 1: mind the fact that you're not going to get updates
Speaker 1: from Apple on their OS, you can just keep your
Speaker 1: device the way it is forever and you can go
Speaker 1: and download whatever apps you want from whichever independent sources
Speaker 1: there are, um and just not worry about it. But
Speaker 1: most people, I think, when they find out there is
Speaker 1: a slightly better version of whatever it is they have
Speaker 1: and it's available to them, um, they jump on that.
Speaker 1: So like when the new OS comes out and a
Speaker 1: new feature is added, I think most owners want access
Speaker 1: to that feature. So it becomes a battle of well,
Speaker 1: do I resign myself to the fact that I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to start the jailbreaking process all over again
Speaker 1: and I may have to wait for someone to find
Speaker 1: those shortcuts for me um, Or do I go ahead
Speaker 1: and uh and and ignore the update and just keep
Speaker 1: my jail broken phone and realize that I'm not going
Speaker 1: to have some functionality that other people do. That's true. Well,
Speaker 1: and in some cases Apple has actually followed a jail
Speaker 1: break and app um basically the functionality provided by those
Speaker 1: to the operating system itself. Um. An example of this,
Speaker 1: I believe is theming where you can actually, you know,
Speaker 1: put a different skin on it and you know, now
Speaker 1: it's part of the OS, but before it wasn't and
Speaker 1: if you wanted to do that, you needed to jail
Speaker 1: break your your device. Yeah, things like um, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: running multiple applications at the same time would be another
Speaker 1: good example. Or tethering or cut and paste. These are
Speaker 1: all things that the phone, the hardware was capable of doing.
Speaker 1: But for one reason or another, and there are different
Speaker 1: reasons depending upon which which feature you're talking about, Apple
Speaker 1: did not implement them right away in the earliest models.
Speaker 1: In many cases it was a battery issue. In some
Speaker 1: cases it was a security issue. Yes, And I would
Speaker 1: like to add that my use of tethering there was
Speaker 1: not is still not approved by Apple, nor is it
Speaker 1: approved by a T and T, So it is not
Speaker 1: It is something that has been enabled by jailbreaking, but
Speaker 1: is still not part of the true Apple Os right.
Speaker 1: And in case you're you don't know what tethering is,
Speaker 1: that's when you are using your your device as essentially
Speaker 1: a WiFi like a moodem. You're using it like a mootem. So, um,
Speaker 1: you might have your laptop and you're not at a
Speaker 1: WiFi hot hotspot, so you use your iPhone to get
Speaker 1: data over the three G network and transfer you act
Speaker 1: as a modem to your computer. That's what tethering is.
Speaker 1: And you can do that either by you know, some
Speaker 1: will do it through a Bluetooth connection or a WiFi
Speaker 1: connection or even a physical connection like a USB cable. Um,
Speaker 1: So tethering doesn't have to require a physical tether. Just
Speaker 1: so you know. The two ways that you generally jail
Speaker 1: break your phone, because we've talked a lot about what
Speaker 1: it is, but not about how you do it. Um.
Speaker 1: And now, assuming you're not a programmer, so assuming you're
Speaker 1: not someone who's doing this him or herself like going
Speaker 1: in and physically looking at code and creating hacks to
Speaker 1: get around it. You just want to quicken and easy
Speaker 1: solution to jail break your device right there. They're generally
Speaker 1: two different methods depending upon uh where you're getting your
Speaker 1: your jail break software from UM, and there are tons.
Speaker 1: Like I said, there's dozens and dozens of hackers who
Speaker 1: are working on this, so there are lots of different variations.
Speaker 1: One of those would involve going to a website on
Speaker 1: your computer and finding the jail break software, running it
Speaker 1: on your computer, and then hooking up your phone and
Speaker 1: UM and putting it into recovery mode. And instead of
Speaker 1: recovering the normal OS the way it would in UH
Speaker 1: if it were just a regular recovery UM, it's going
Speaker 1: to pull the jailbreaking software onto the phone and allow
Speaker 1: you to access uh those those apps. So that's that's
Speaker 1: one way of doing it. And the way you put
Speaker 1: your device and recovery mode is generally you hold the
Speaker 1: home button down and then you dock it with your
Speaker 1: computer as while you're holding down the home button. In
Speaker 1: some cases you may have to hold down a power
Speaker 1: button too, but that's what allows it to load that information.
Speaker 1: It's almost like you know, you're you're booting it directly
Speaker 1: from the the application that's on your computer. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: back it up before you do this, right. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can use iTunes to back up your iPhone for example,
Speaker 1: But the other way you can do this, which is
Speaker 1: actually even easier because I mean that's not hard really.
Speaker 1: You go, you find the right website. You've pretty much automated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you find the right website, you find the right application,
Speaker 1: you download it to your computer, and you run it
Speaker 1: while your phones and recovery your set. But there's one
Speaker 1: that's even easier than that, which is, um, this is
Speaker 1: what jail break me uses. Uh. You can you can
Speaker 1: use Safari on the device to navigate to a website that,
Speaker 1: like jail break me, that has the jail breaking uh
Speaker 1: software designed as a an app that can run on
Speaker 1: your device through the web. Before you pause the podcast
Speaker 1: and do that, listen to the rest of what we're
Speaker 1: going to say at any rate, So you can go
Speaker 1: directly to this website and uh and run the thing
Speaker 1: and it'll it'll install the jail breaking software on your
Speaker 1: phone directly. You don't have to hook it up to
Speaker 1: your computer first. UM. Yeah, okay. So one of the
Speaker 1: things you need to know before you do this is
Speaker 1: buy or be ware, UH you never you need to
Speaker 1: make sure if you are going to jail break your phone,
Speaker 1: do some research on the various uh, the various options
Speaker 1: you have out there UM try and find some message
Speaker 1: boards find out whether or not this is a reliable
Speaker 1: way if people have experienced problems UM if UM. You know,
Speaker 1: it may be that in some cases that the hack
Speaker 1: code it just isn't up to snuff, because not everyone's
Speaker 1: a great hacker, you know, the people who design these
Speaker 1: things have varying levels of skill. And in some cases
Speaker 1: it's an elegant solution that works very well, and your
Speaker 1: phone is not gonna behave oddly and everything should still
Speaker 1: work properly, and you'll still even be able to get
Speaker 1: apps from iTunes. You know, you'd be able to purchase
Speaker 1: them through their ideally without any issues. But that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the case with all of them, so a little
Speaker 1: research goes a long way. Yes, and UM I should
Speaker 1: point out that what's going on with jailbreak me is
Speaker 1: is not and and this is not to implicate them
Speaker 1: in doing anything uh dirty other than you know, jail breaking,
Speaker 1: but they are the The developer who created jailbreak me
Speaker 1: found a security flaw and the Safari browser, which is
Speaker 1: how he's able to do this. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: it's it's the way that UM the iOS handles UM
Speaker 1: pdf files and UM. This is the thing. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, you need to be aware if you are
Speaker 1: using um iOS three or four. UM. You know, they're
Speaker 1: they're basically two different vulnerabilities. One of them is the
Speaker 1: way that the Safari browser UM runs pds when it
Speaker 1: runs across it, So be careful when you download PDFs
Speaker 1: with uh uh with Safari as actually anything that comes
Speaker 1: from a site that you're not familiar with UM and uh,
Speaker 1: you know that's just apparently that that has to do
Speaker 1: with what's going on. But he's fooling the computer into
Speaker 1: doing or i should say, the device into doing something
Speaker 1: that it normally wouldn't do through a security vulnerability. And
Speaker 1: that's why you're you're able to do it, and you
Speaker 1: can do it right now at least as of the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast. But I'm sure it won't be
Speaker 1: long before apples fixed. Well, I mean, it's a security flaw.
Speaker 1: It should be patched regardless, but but yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's probably once they patch that up, they'll have to
Speaker 1: find a different way to do it. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that case they're aware. In that case, it may go
Speaker 1: back to the point where the only real way to
Speaker 1: do it is to to download the application to a
Speaker 1: computer first. Um, and that and that like again, like again,
Speaker 1: I say, uh, um, jailbreak me is not not up
Speaker 1: to anything no good, So don't don't worry about them.
Speaker 1: Other people, however, could be could be yeah, so and
Speaker 1: and just for you to get an idea of what
Speaker 1: kind of stuff could be no good. Uh, it's not
Speaker 1: just that they could maybe screw up your phone. It's
Speaker 1: that they could perhaps mine data from you over your phone.
Speaker 1: So not just your information, but any information that might
Speaker 1: be transferred over that device through various means, be at email,
Speaker 1: instant messenger, web browsing. Uh. You know, just think about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about anything that would that you would
Speaker 1: transfer over your phone could theoretically be intercepted with the
Speaker 1: proper uh malware app out there. Um So, once you,
Speaker 1: once you have jail broken your phone, you're gonna need
Speaker 1: a directory for those apps that we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: these these independent apps. UM. I think one of the
Speaker 1: most popular ones is Sidia. Just see why d I ah,
Speaker 1: it seems to be the one that I think most
Speaker 1: people prefer. Now. I don't own an iPhone, so I
Speaker 1: have no need for this jail breaking business. Um So
Speaker 1: I can't tell you about Sidia from a personal standpoint,
Speaker 1: but that does seem to be the one that I
Speaker 1: think is favored by most of the writers I read
Speaker 1: from what I from what I've seen there, it's probably
Speaker 1: the most popular. And again it doesn't it's sort of
Speaker 1: like an alternative app store, but it doesn't prevent you
Speaker 1: from using the actual Apple App Store. Right. So I
Speaker 1: did mention the possibility of breaking, and that it's not
Speaker 1: that hard to fix most of the time. Here's so
Speaker 1: let's say your let's say you've jail broken your phone
Speaker 1: and it's frozen, it's become unresponsive. You don't want to
Speaker 1: take it into the Apple Store because you've already violated
Speaker 1: your warranty. Yeah, one thing that you might try, and
Speaker 1: this will work in most cases, is again hold down
Speaker 1: that home button. And then once you've held it down
Speaker 1: and it's uh, you know, the little screen comes up.
Speaker 1: You you connected to the dock, connected to your computer,
Speaker 1: and what will have is iTunes will see the phone
Speaker 1: and they'll see it'll see it that it's in recovery mode,
Speaker 1: and it will then load the latest version of whatever
Speaker 1: the firmware is for that phone or other device, iPad
Speaker 1: or iPod and then that will reset it. You'll you'll
Speaker 1: lose some data, it won't be jailbroken anymore. Um, but
Speaker 1: it will work, which is probably more important anything else.
Speaker 1: I got that, by the way, from Digital Trends. I
Speaker 1: should say Digital Trends had that specific fix listed. And
Speaker 1: uh so if you have experienced that problem, that is
Speaker 1: one potential solution. And the other nice thing about that
Speaker 1: is that unless um, unless the Apple workers are particularly vigilant, uh,
Speaker 1: if you have cleared that, if you've got into recovery
Speaker 1: mode that way and reset the firmware, uh, there's a
Speaker 1: good chance they won't know that you've violated your warranty.
Speaker 1: Not that I writ not that I'm condoning that, but
Speaker 1: that there's a there's a pretty good chance no one
Speaker 1: would ever know that you had jail broken your phone
Speaker 1: in the first place. So if if you have come
Speaker 1: to the conclusion after that rains that maybe it wasn't
Speaker 1: worth it, Like maybe the apps you saw weren't really
Speaker 1: your thing in the first place. Um. You know, most
Speaker 1: users I think would be satisfied with what's in the
Speaker 1: iTunes store. It's really kind of power users and hackers,
Speaker 1: those type of people who really want to have more
Speaker 1: freedom with their devices, who are more interested in h
Speaker 1: in jailbreaking. Um, So if you do decide that's not
Speaker 1: worth it, you can recover your phone and there's there's
Speaker 1: a good chance that it's going to be safe enough
Speaker 1: so that you know, nobody's the wiser. Um. Not guaranteed though,
Speaker 1: So don't don't be standing at the Genius bar yelling.
Speaker 1: But Jonathan Strickland said that you wouldn't even notice because
Speaker 1: you're stupid, because, uh, that's not cool, dude. Don't bring
Speaker 1: me into it, man, don't I don't even own an iPhone,
Speaker 1: doesn't know. I have Android, which has a totally different
Speaker 1: set of problems but doesn't need to be jailbroken. Now,
Speaker 1: it doesn't need to be jail broke in, but it
Speaker 1: has its own issues. Uh. No, no system out there
Speaker 1: is perfectly. You just have to decide which one is
Speaker 1: best for you exactly. Uh So, anyway, that's our jailbreaking podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm sure some of you are out there kind of
Speaker 1: wondering why we didn't talk specifically about the steps you
Speaker 1: need to take to jail break your phone. And that's
Speaker 1: again because each one is different, and in most cases
Speaker 1: there's someone out there who has done all the work
Speaker 1: for you. You just have to find the right the
Speaker 1: right solution for the particular OS you are running. Um
Speaker 1: and most of you are probably running the latest O
Speaker 1: S anyway, so that's not that hard unless you're running
Speaker 1: an old device that can't run the latest OS. Case
Speaker 1: you're probably running the latest one that is possible on
Speaker 1: that device. Yeah what what I put touch? Do you have?
Speaker 1: That would be the first generation? Yeah? Okay, so there's
Speaker 1: no I OS four? Does that? Things? Playing music? Anyway?
Speaker 1: If you guys have any questions, concerns, comments, you have
Speaker 1: some topics you want to suggest to us so that
Speaker 1: we can get yet another huge avalanche ship requests and
Speaker 1: finally given, if you could write us our email addresses
Speaker 1: tex stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon if
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