I remember back in the day when people would “Jailbreak” iPhones, but never really picked up on what they were doing other than that it let them do stuff that those of us with “non-jailbroken” iPhones couldn’t do.
Are they just booting another OS, e.g. android? Also: why haven’t I heard of it in a while? Is it not possible on newer iPhones?
It meant getting root access to the device, which means you can do anything you want. People would get apps for free, install ones that aren’t on the app store and customize their home screen in ways that Apple doesn’t allow (like placing apps where you want). It’s still IOS, just with the ability to screw around under the hood.
For Android, rooting is pretty much the same thing and it’s still common.
Ahh, that makes sense. How did you go about doing that? It’s not like you have a terminal to mess around in on an iPhone? Is the reason I haven’t heard of it in a while that it’s harder/impossible in newer iPhones?
Also: Why would apple prevent you from having root access? The way I see it, when I buy a phone, just like a pc, I should be allowed to do what I want with it.
The argument is that, for most people, letting them do what they want with something they don’t really understand is not a good idea. In this case it also creates a support headache for Apple. At first, they kind of tacitly accepted that jailbreaking was just going to happen and didn’t really actively fight it other than to close exploits used to root devices. As more and more people did it, for the reasons outlined above, more people wound up with bricked, or otherwise malfunctioning iPhones. When they went to Apple to fix it, at first there was an effort to help (you know, to retain customers), but they had voided their warranty. Because of that, Apple wasn’t really interested in spending lots of time troubleshooting something when they didn’t really know the full status of the OS (b/c there were multiple ways to jailbreak, and most of the fools taking their rooted phones to support didn’t understand enough to tell them what all was done beyond, “my kid’s friend said this would be cool”). Eventually Apple washed their hands of the whole thing and started refusing any support for rooted phones. That part, I have no problem with. They also started actively working to stop folks jailbreaking. That part, I thought, was too much. Just tell them they void the warranty by jailbreaking and refuse support. They dug their hole.
FWIW, I use an iPhone for personal use and android (Pixels) for work.
This is all such bullshit and just justifies apple’s locking down of their phones for their own profit. You have root access on your macbook, a phone is no different except that companies felt like they could force people to buy through their app stores. There is 0 difference between allowing people root on their phone versus on their computer.
I am super scared that they eventually start locking down macOS too. I agree that it makes little sense that they do it for one platform and not the other, and I don’t see them ever backing down on it for the iPhone, so… hopefully they never feel like making that consistent across OSes.
I can definitely see them leaving macOS alone though. I can’t imagine anyone would buy a macbook to use for development if they don’t have root access, while, as far as I know, nobody buys iPhones or iPads to develop anything. If they do it would only be for testing purposes, which I assume should be fine without root access, as you’re developing for an end-user that doesn’t have root access.
To be fair, @d00phy did say that
They also started actively working to stop folks jailbreaking. That part, I thought, was too much. Just tell them they void the warranty by jailbreaking and refuse support.
I think it’s fair to void support for someone that goes ham in the terminal and breaks a bunch of shit, at least if you explicitly state that doing so will void support. You have root access on your macbook, but I assume the average person using it knows more about what they’re doing than the average person jailbreaking their phone (which was pretty much anyone as far as I can remember). Also: If you tell support that you opened the terminal and typed a bunch of stuff and now your macbook is broken, I assume support is likely to tell you “tough luck…”
I think voiding support is only reasonable if it’s directly related to the jailbreak. Not fixing a hardware issue because you rooted is total bullshit
This is the reason why I will never buy an iphone, way too limited. On android I don’t even need root access to install alternative app stores und custom apps.
On the first iPhone once jail broken, the camera would also record video. Apple came out with video on a future release. The hardware was there all along, the software blocked it. Who knows what is locked down on current phones.
I just want to add jailbreaking iOS is still very much a thing today. I’ve been doing it for several years. You can take a look in r/jailbreak, as there is not a comparably-active community in Lemmy.
As for the main reason, as others have stated, is to have root-level control to your device, which alows you to install alternative stores, which besides providing apps not sanctioned by Apple, also provide tweaks to alter various things in your system (i.e. alter your homescreen look and feel, change your statusbar color and icons, notifications behaviour and style, etc etc.).
