Less than a week after Apple released the newest version of their mobile operating system iOS, the iPhone Dev Team has released its updated client for jailbreaking. Called redsn0w, this client allows iPhone users to install third party apps without the use of iTunes or the Apple approval process. For a lot of people, this is a very tempting offer even in the face of potentially voiding the warrantee. As of the writing of this article, only the iPad 2 remains impervious to redsn0w.In their blog, the iPhone Dev Team announced the release of redsn0w 0.9.6rc14 on Tuesday, merely five days after Apple released iOS 4.3.2 for its devices. Having the update come so soon after the official release is thanks to the lack of a patch for the vulnerability which allowed the last version of iOS to be unlocked. Earlier this week, the iPhone 4 was only able to be jailbroken in a 'tethered' way. This meant that every time the device was rebooted, it would have to be connected to the user's Mac before it would work again. Obviously this is not the ideal situation for a mobile device, but that issue has since been rectified. Anyone who used this 'tethered' jailbreak can download the new client and simply patch their current install to the 'untethered' version.
I am not trying to justify jailbreaking. There are reasons why people do and there are reasons why Apple doesn't want them to, but in the end the decision lies with the user. The iPhone Dev Team strives to make the process as easy as possible for those willing to break out of Apple's so-called 'walled-garden' and install unverified apps. And they do make it look easy by exploiting vulnerabilities in the mobile OS created by a company who prides itself on its security.
netizens left a footprint.