It’s a mix - for years I wanted root on my iPhones, just like you got on android. In practice, once I had it…? I never did much beyond installing Cydia.
With today’s hardware I might have a different take - the 18 has more than enough hardware to be a laptop so maybe I’d use it for a docking mode. But my gut is I’d probably still want a laptop even then.
To me the upshot is : billions of development, software and hardware, have gone into the platforms - it’s hard to quickly make them significantly better.
When I owned an iPod touch, the advantage of jailbreaking was to give your device certain features that the OS just didn't support. (Hell, I remember early days when iOS didn't even have a concept of wallpaper, the background was just black.)
iOS has come a long way since those days so a lot of the most common use cases of the past are no longer necessary. But the principle is the same - the hardware is a general-purpose computer but the software is locked down unnecessarily in many ways. Jailbreaking lets you do things that are outside of Apple's box.
A much-needed advantage is also keeping old devices useful. Every Apple phone slowly outlives its supported software to the point where the official AppStore has almost nothing in it. Today, it's extremely difficult to find 3P apps that work with my current iPhone 7, which is not that old, because the ecosystem cuts off old phones very quickly.
I agree, and, if you have a developer certificate from Apple, the list of wants I have is ... not that long? zero? I'd love to be pitched on it. In practice, I wanted freedom, but didn't really want to do anything with it.
The value of general computing freedom is like any other freedom: it is needed when it people are trying to express you.
And not just you. Anyone! So evaluating whether a freedom is necessary turns into a much more nebulous question of “would anyone really need this at one point now or in the future? Is this a thing we should protect in general, even if it does seem like we need it exactly now?”
For example, could Apple/Google at one point be strong armed (by any government) into including spyware onto all devices? And listeners to make sure no one ever says bad things about $DEAR_LEADER?
If the probability of yes is anywhere around 10% over the next decade, maybe it’s a good freedom to have.
The equalizer is easily 20 years old, and is restricted to presets. Presets! A parametric EQ is the only thing that can make Apple's own Powerbeats Pro sound good. And for several golden years (despite lots of Apple's work against it) we had a really good jailbreak equalizer that worked with Apple Music. Eventually I just gave up on the whole thing. But I remember going out for trail runs with good sounding music without worrying about losing my earbuds.
This is one of several things I'm considering for an Apple Music client I'm writing (they are one of the few streaming services that actually allows such a complete level of API integration, via MusicKit). Apple Music as an app is pretty mediocre, but with a 3rd-party app you can add custom EQ profiles, and even detect the type of device when it connects over Bluetooth and apply the EQ profile automatically on the fly when it is connected, to add it to the DSP processing path.
There's just less reason today for someone like me that liked the utilitarian benefits of a jailbroken iPhone. I used it for gestures, caller mini preview, grouped notifications, etc. All things that are now baked in.
I jailbroke every iPhone I had for many, many years. Most of the time it was silly skins/tweaks but there were a number of things that were huge QoL improvements. I remember BiteSMS and using it as a way to reply to a text directly in the notification instead of having to leave the app. This was before iOS had that feature and before multitasking, back when if you left the game you were playing the app would quit. Also had folders before stock iOS, things like Control Center, and a whole slew of little tweaks for other apps I used.
The downside to jailbreaking was often the instability but that was also back when the phones were way less powerful. Today, armed with LLMs, I would love to have root on my iPhone again. I'd love to rip out Siri and replace it with Claude Code or something like that.
You can do that already without jailbreaking with a-Shell[1]. It includes a wasm compiled ffmpeg binary and you can install (Python only) pip packages.
I'm for being able to hack your own device to do whatever you like with it, preferably without active resistance from its manufacturer. I'm against anybody who can convince you to open a PDF being able to hack your device to do whatever they like with it.
The point the parent commenter is making is that they want Apple to allow people the freedom to intentionally mod the functionality of their device. Not that they literally want single-click PDF exploits to be a thing.
> I'm against anybody who can convince you to open a PDF being able to hack your device to do whatever they like with it.
Who is saying this part?
Asking for an open device does not mean supporting malicious hacking of others. This is the single biggest false equivalence used by Apple and the rest of the industry to keep a closed ecosystem and restrict users' control over stuff they paid for. And people continue perpetuating it for some reason.
Nobody said exactly that, but your first comment pointed out how cool the capability is without acknowledging that it is trivial to exploit maliciously.
We're on the same side here. I daily a Pixel with LineageOS and root.
If you phone is hackable by you, what stops someone else from hacking it? Ultimately, it's a trade off between security and openness, and I think it's good that there are choices on both sides.
This comment is tricky because "hack" can mean different things in different contexts.
If I run software the OEM didn't authorize on a phone that I own and know the password for, that might be described as a "hack". Unless you're one of the horrible people trying to push OS-level DRM on everything, my doing that is a positive or neutral thing.
If a third party gets software that I didn't authorize to run on a phone that I own by tricking me into opening a malicious PDF, that's also a "hack". Almost everyone considers that a bad thing.
Once you have used an exploit to get system access to your own device, you can patch the software to prevent anyone else from using the same vulnerabilities. See e.g. https://github.com/EolnMsuk/AntiDarkSword (but of course, as more and more vulnerabilities keep being found, it becomes basically impossible to backport all the fixes)
What in these videos is so much cooler than what you can do on an Apple approved one? Other than, "As a programmer, I can do anything", I just personally don't see any capabilities unlocked that I can't have with an app or whatever. But I might be missing something.
One of the primary markets for cracked phones is for spying on partners.
In the abstract I’m a strong supporter of the idea that you should be able to use and modify a device you own as you see fit…but in the real world “ownership” is a whole lot murkier than the mental model a lot of tech people have.
The only thing I really miss from my jailbreak days is an app that could talk to the cellular baseband and display all cell towers nearby on a map and showed which you were using.
I used to have my home screens fully customized but that’s a lot of work creating icons for hundreds of apps. Or even dozens.
This is one of the strongest arguments for why ordinary users need the ability to do this. Not only because they would actually benefit from it (e.g. better ad blockers), but because things like that have a network effect that you can't get from the four people who root own their iPhone with a PDF being the only ones able to install a third party browser engine.
Retro game emulators were allowed only 2y ago and bold retro. JIT is still not allowed so they are restricted in being run in interpreted mode. Also, neither is allowed executing arbitrary arm64 binaries. And, of course, no hypervisor access. The Linux-using term (iSH) works by utilizing a x86 emulator / compatibility layer (basically translates x86 binaries and maps Linux calls to native ones). In the sole VM host available, UTM SE, the "SE" means "slow edition". Now jailbreak and you've full, JIT-capable, UTM (QEMU) and NewTerm (kinda Termux for iOS). Hypervisor access still not possible though.
I watched the “Can your iPhone do this?” video, assuming that was the coolest one. The others seemed like they’d just be showing the exploit.
It seemed like a silly party trick with no practical purpose, and required the terminal to reset things back to normal so the phone was useful again. Why does anyone want this? Surely there are better uses than what was demoed?
I used to jailbreak during the first few years of iPhone. I remember being able to drag out from the bottom right corner of the screen to have a launcher, similar to the Dock, but with more stuff. But over time, the iOS got more features and the argument for jailbreaking became less compelling. This is especially true now that so much sensitive information is in our phones… so I trust all this stuff that effectively has root?
It’s a mix - for years I wanted root on my iPhones, just like you got on android. In practice, once I had it…? I never did much beyond installing Cydia.
With today’s hardware I might have a different take - the 18 has more than enough hardware to be a laptop so maybe I’d use it for a docking mode. But my gut is I’d probably still want a laptop even then.
To me the upshot is : billions of development, software and hardware, have gone into the platforms - it’s hard to quickly make them significantly better.
When I owned an iPod touch, the advantage of jailbreaking was to give your device certain features that the OS just didn't support. (Hell, I remember early days when iOS didn't even have a concept of wallpaper, the background was just black.)
iOS has come a long way since those days so a lot of the most common use cases of the past are no longer necessary. But the principle is the same - the hardware is a general-purpose computer but the software is locked down unnecessarily in many ways. Jailbreaking lets you do things that are outside of Apple's box.
A much-needed advantage is also keeping old devices useful. Every Apple phone slowly outlives its supported software to the point where the official AppStore has almost nothing in it. Today, it's extremely difficult to find 3P apps that work with my current iPhone 7, which is not that old, because the ecosystem cuts off old phones very quickly.
I agree, and, if you have a developer certificate from Apple, the list of wants I have is ... not that long? zero? I'd love to be pitched on it. In practice, I wanted freedom, but didn't really want to do anything with it.
Let me try to pitch you:
The value of general computing freedom is like any other freedom: it is needed when it people are trying to express you.
And not just you. Anyone! So evaluating whether a freedom is necessary turns into a much more nebulous question of “would anyone really need this at one point now or in the future? Is this a thing we should protect in general, even if it does seem like we need it exactly now?”
For example, could Apple/Google at one point be strong armed (by any government) into including spyware onto all devices? And listeners to make sure no one ever says bad things about $DEAR_LEADER?
If the probability of yes is anywhere around 10% over the next decade, maybe it’s a good freedom to have.
> I never did much beyond installing Cydia.
Watusi was great, it let you disable the blue checkmark on Whatsapp. (Since been added as a setting)
I also used a tweak that let me auto-block certain phone prefixes that spammers used. Quite useful.
Was also useful that it allowed you to install multiple copies of an app (such as whatsapp), though no longer a need for that either.
You can delegate an app to filter calls now, so you don’t need a jailbreak for any of these.
The equalizer is easily 20 years old, and is restricted to presets. Presets! A parametric EQ is the only thing that can make Apple's own Powerbeats Pro sound good. And for several golden years (despite lots of Apple's work against it) we had a really good jailbreak equalizer that worked with Apple Music. Eventually I just gave up on the whole thing. But I remember going out for trail runs with good sounding music without worrying about losing my earbuds.
This is one of several things I'm considering for an Apple Music client I'm writing (they are one of the few streaming services that actually allows such a complete level of API integration, via MusicKit). Apple Music as an app is pretty mediocre, but with a 3rd-party app you can add custom EQ profiles, and even detect the type of device when it connects over Bluetooth and apply the EQ profile automatically on the fly when it is connected, to add it to the DSP processing path.
There's just less reason today for someone like me that liked the utilitarian benefits of a jailbroken iPhone. I used it for gestures, caller mini preview, grouped notifications, etc. All things that are now baked in.
I jailbroke every iPhone I had for many, many years. Most of the time it was silly skins/tweaks but there were a number of things that were huge QoL improvements. I remember BiteSMS and using it as a way to reply to a text directly in the notification instead of having to leave the app. This was before iOS had that feature and before multitasking, back when if you left the game you were playing the app would quit. Also had folders before stock iOS, things like Control Center, and a whole slew of little tweaks for other apps I used.
The downside to jailbreaking was often the instability but that was also back when the phones were way less powerful. Today, armed with LLMs, I would love to have root on my iPhone again. I'd love to rip out Siri and replace it with Claude Code or something like that.
I just want to be able to run things like yt-dlp on iPhone
You can do that already without jailbreaking with a-Shell[1]. It includes a wasm compiled ffmpeg binary and you can install (Python only) pip packages.
[1]: https://holzschu.github.io/a-Shell_iOS/
The only reason to do this today is to turn your iPhone into a tool for other nefarious purposes or clickbot type farms.
I'm for being able to hack your own device to do whatever you like with it, preferably without active resistance from its manufacturer. I'm against anybody who can convince you to open a PDF being able to hack your device to do whatever they like with it.
The point the parent commenter is making is that they want Apple to allow people the freedom to intentionally mod the functionality of their device. Not that they literally want single-click PDF exploits to be a thing.
Who is saying this?
The link here demonstrates an exploit which runs arbitrary code on an iPhone when the user opens a PDF.
> I'm against anybody who can convince you to open a PDF being able to hack your device to do whatever they like with it.
Who is saying this part?
Asking for an open device does not mean supporting malicious hacking of others. This is the single biggest false equivalence used by Apple and the rest of the industry to keep a closed ecosystem and restrict users' control over stuff they paid for. And people continue perpetuating it for some reason.
Nobody said exactly that, but your first comment pointed out how cool the capability is without acknowledging that it is trivial to exploit maliciously.
We're on the same side here. I daily a Pixel with LineageOS and root.
If you phone is hackable by you, what stops someone else from hacking it? Ultimately, it's a trade off between security and openness, and I think it's good that there are choices on both sides.
This comment is tricky because "hack" can mean different things in different contexts.
If I run software the OEM didn't authorize on a phone that I own and know the password for, that might be described as a "hack". Unless you're one of the horrible people trying to push OS-level DRM on everything, my doing that is a positive or neutral thing.
If a third party gets software that I didn't authorize to run on a phone that I own by tricking me into opening a malicious PDF, that's also a "hack". Almost everyone considers that a bad thing.
One does not imply the other.
Once you have used an exploit to get system access to your own device, you can patch the software to prevent anyone else from using the same vulnerabilities. See e.g. https://github.com/EolnMsuk/AntiDarkSword (but of course, as more and more vulnerabilities keep being found, it becomes basically impossible to backport all the fixes)
iOS has enough zero-click exploits that you don't exactly get a choice between the two.
You don't get that choice on any mobile platform.
[dead]
What in these videos is so much cooler than what you can do on an Apple approved one? Other than, "As a programmer, I can do anything", I just personally don't see any capabilities unlocked that I can't have with an app or whatever. But I might be missing something.
One of the primary markets for cracked phones is for spying on partners.
In the abstract I’m a strong supporter of the idea that you should be able to use and modify a device you own as you see fit…but in the real world “ownership” is a whole lot murkier than the mental model a lot of tech people have.
I don't want folding iPhone, I want an iPhone I that turns to desktop once I plug it into USB-C monitor. It has faster CPU and more RAM than Neo.
The only thing I really miss from my jailbreak days is an app that could talk to the cellular baseband and display all cell towers nearby on a map and showed which you were using.
I used to have my home screens fully customized but that’s a lot of work creating icons for hundreds of apps. Or even dozens.
1. install apps without the app store so we dont ahve to pay 100 bucks yearly for it to apple
2. run linux
3. run emulators
4. run VMs
5. install steam
6. make it a media server
etc
run a real browser!
This is one of the strongest arguments for why ordinary users need the ability to do this. Not only because they would actually benefit from it (e.g. better ad blockers), but because things like that have a network effect that you can't get from the four people who root own their iPhone with a PDF being the only ones able to install a third party browser engine.
Apple added emulator support a couple of years ago. Delta works great.
I’ve seen and used terminal applications from the App Store that seem to run a Linux VM locally, which would check off items 2 and 4.
Retro game emulators were allowed only 2y ago and bold retro. JIT is still not allowed so they are restricted in being run in interpreted mode. Also, neither is allowed executing arbitrary arm64 binaries. And, of course, no hypervisor access. The Linux-using term (iSH) works by utilizing a x86 emulator / compatibility layer (basically translates x86 binaries and maps Linux calls to native ones). In the sole VM host available, UTM SE, the "SE" means "slow edition". Now jailbreak and you've full, JIT-capable, UTM (QEMU) and NewTerm (kinda Termux for iOS). Hypervisor access still not possible though.
I watched the “Can your iPhone do this?” video, assuming that was the coolest one. The others seemed like they’d just be showing the exploit.
It seemed like a silly party trick with no practical purpose, and required the terminal to reset things back to normal so the phone was useful again. Why does anyone want this? Surely there are better uses than what was demoed?
I used to jailbreak during the first few years of iPhone. I remember being able to drag out from the bottom right corner of the screen to have a launcher, similar to the Dock, but with more stuff. But over time, the iOS got more features and the argument for jailbreaking became less compelling. This is especially true now that so much sensitive information is in our phones… so I trust all this stuff that effectively has root?
I took this as a demonstration of ownage on the latest release, versus an attempt to show some jailbreak-only feature.
The evidence of hack is the feature.