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The Life, Death, and Legacy of iPhone Jailbreaking
- bitsoda 9y agoRegardless of its eventual fate, I'm deeply grateful to the jailbreak community for speeding up Apple's implementation of the useful tweaks power users wanted most like 3rd party keyboards, picture-in-picture, control center, F.lux, etc. iOS is a better platform today because of the JB community, so cheers all around.
- damnfinecoffee 9y agoand yet none of the original devs get any credit or compensation for the ideas that were taken by apple which is kind of sad
- phoenix3200 9y agoWe sure didn't. I think one guy got hired by Apple because he came out with an innovative app switcher, and I know a few others who got internships there, but largely speaking, Apple took over a lot of features we put into play. P.S. There's another reason why jailbreaks are few and far in between. There is close to no trust between the people who create the jailbreaks...I had several good exploits that became public without my permission.
- fareesh 9y agoI remember it being a practice at one time in various IRC and other online communities to share hashes of the exploit payloads between teams so that they knew whether or not there was one or more than one, and whether or not they were going to collaborate.
- willstrafach 9y agoNah, hashes were public as proof (Usually later followed by a zip file matching the hash). On IRC, we generally knew who did or did not have vulns and trusted not to BS. That implicit trust did make things difficult.
- willstrafach 9y agoMan, you forgot the most annoying aspect: No CVE credit when fixes came out until around iOS 6 or 7. Although not super consequential, it seemed petty to not do it.
- snuxoll 9y agoApple is pretty rampant about Sherlocking, this isn't new.
- hellbanner 9y agoYep, and they've closed down apps like Twitter interfaces and IIRC a camera app because they rolled the use into their own iOS.
- acdha 9y agoIs there any reason to think the jailbreak community inspired those? I'd think competition with Android, Windows phone, etc. was a lot more persuasive.
- willstrafach 9y agoThere were many instances in which a feature became available via jailbreak tweak, then showed up in the next major iOS revision. Sometimes implemented in almost the same manner. It is possible that each instance was a coincidence, but that seems unlikely.
- Laforet 9y agoA lot of the features, seemingly taken from the jailbreal scene, were rather obvious additions previously found lacking in iOS, e.g. custom keyboards, call filtering and a common filesystem. Tweaks may have hastened.their development however I am yet to be convinced that Apple relies on other people for ideas.
- joshschreuder 9y agoEven so I don't think it would be surprising if they used the popularity of certain jailbreak tweaks to prioritise their own implementations
- boyce 9y agoIt'd be crazy not to pay attention to, I've no doubt they keep an eye on these things to inform their feature development
- willstrafach 9y agoSafari Private Browsing comes to mind. The functionality and UI was very similar to the jailbreak "tweak" available for this. Also, the new iOS notification system on iOS 4/5 was directly nabbed from a jailbreak tweak, though it was because they hired the developer so I am assuming it was not "copied" in that case.
- yoodenvranx 9y agoswipe the spacebar to move the cursor is the one thing I missed the most when I switched from a jailbroken iPhone to Android. Luckily the Google keyboard recently implemented that function.
- 8ytecoder 9y agoWordflow keyboard allows you to use the entire keyboard as a cursor with force press.
- chrisballinger 9y agoThe stock keyboard does that as well.
- nvahalik 9y agoJust tried this and... wow!
- jsmthrowaway 9y agoThis just might be the best thing Hacker News has ever done for my life. Seriously, life changing.
- throwanem 9y agoMeanwhile, I now have a legit reason to want a phone with force touch support, which the SE does not have. But the SE actually fits into my pockets and hands. So now I'm hosed either way. Thanks, ̶O̶b̶a̶m̶a̶HN.
- justjonathan 9y agoFive shortcut icons, how I miss you...
- ivm 9y agoThird party keyboards are still second-class citizens on iOS. They lag on switching, they don't have access to native keyboard settings, they crash debugger, their layers can't be viewed in Xcode, they sometimes break on app update and then users blame developers.
- rexf 9y agoThird party everything seems to be 2nd class citizens on iOS. Apple's apps get special provisioning (not to mention default system app status) that third party apps don't.
- epmaybe 9y agoI don't own an iPhone currently, but I haven't had any problems with Gboard on a number of iPhones that I've used that have it. Is your statement applicable to all third party keyboards, or most of them?
- ivm 9y agohttps://medium.com/@inFullMobile/limitations-of-custom-ios-keyboards-3be88dfb694 https://medium.com/@inFullMobile/limitations-of-custom-ios-k...
- kolinko 9y agoAlso, worth noting, many of them send whatever you type in back to the companies that built them, and they resell the anonymised data. I run an ASO company, and received an offer from one of the keyboard companies for the purchase of the data of what people type into search. Reported them to Apple as a potential security risk. Apple didn't care.
- verylittlemeat 9y agoNot to mention simple cut copy paste editing and being able to easily place the typing cursor inside words
- amelius 9y agoYeah but imagine this happening to the IBM PC in the old days. We wouldn't have lots of things now, including Linux.
- myrandomcomment 9y agoI had the 1st iPhone on T-mobile via jailbreak and unlock. My company paid the bill and used T-mobile so... Thank you to the Jailbreakers and Unlockers.. Today I can see no reason to Jailbreak. There is no kill application I care about that anymore. Given the state of security and the stance of some governments I am happy Apple is locking things down!
- peteretep 9y agoEvery time Apple tells me I can't tether due to carrier settings or iTunes refuses to download over 3G I wish back fondly on jailbreaking
- freewizard 9y agoIt feels boring without ability to jailbreaking your device but overall that's better for end-user security (less malware) and developer profit(less pirate).
- toufka 9y agoI've mentioned it before, but it's frustrating how linked 'freedom' and 'free' are. If you buy into the security walled garden, you must too accept the commercial walled garden. I don't think those things must theoretically be intertwined, but in today's market they certainly are.
- saurik 9y agoIt is absolutely possible to build a device that no only is secure but also lets you--the owner of the device--actually run anything you--again, the owner of the device--want to run; as it stands, the device is secure despite you, by saying that only Apple--who is actually the owner of your device, which they have effectively only lent to you and which they heavily restrict your usage of--can decide what can and can't run on your device... to me this is like saying "my apartment is secure because I am not trusted with a key: in order to get in, I have to call Apple and give them my password, and they open the door"... honestly, that seems a lot less secure to me than "I have the key".
- freewizard 9y agoThat's certainly technically possible to achieve both security and "hack-ability", but having a reasonably attractive business model and user experience to make it available for general public is another layer of challenge. The analogy of apartment is interesting, as today people may have equal or more to lose on a cellphone breach comparing to apartment, while managing the security is much more difficult on cellphone for common users. That fact certainly contributes to the prospers of walled garden (apartment management company) like Apple. btw thanks for all the great work, saurik. //hatoff
- blissofbeing 9y agoJailbreaking iOS devices might be dead but rooting android based devices is thriving. With a jailbreak / root you can get around carrier restrictions on tethering, which in some areas without high speed wired internet options this is very important.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- klondike_ 9y agoBack in the 2.xx days rooting was basically mandatory to get decent performance and regular updates, but now the OS is more optimized and has most of the features of rooted devices anyways. Regardless, Google is trying their best to kill off rooting and custom ROMs. Apps like Snapchat and Google Pay don't work without hacks on rooted/unlocked devices because of Google's SafetyNet, which is a huge disincentive to root
- alinspired 9y agoAlthough it's an extra step, Magisk is there for rooted phones to hide root/custom roms.
- LeoNatan25 9y agoAs someone who used to jailbreak devices almost instantly when a tool was out, I have found myself really not needing a jailbreaking in recent years. The OS itself has matured a lot, I seem to have outgrown the "tweak mentality" and no longer find join in it, but most importantly, the security implications of jailbreaking (breaking the sandbox, running untrusted 3rd party software at the root level and the jailbreak tool itself - blob binary that has rarely been open sourced in recent years). It's just not worth the risk anymore. On the other hand, for low level development on a lab device, jail-breaking is invaluable.
- willstrafach 9y agoYou're not alone there, Apple has integrated a whole lot into iOS now, so there is much less reason to need a jailbreak.
- csydas 9y agoI would say that Apple has definitely done a lot with iOS to achieve feature parity with Android and the Jailbreak tweaks, but when I am on iOS, I still jailbreak in order to control the less desirable features of various apps. Youtube backgrounding, for example, is something I had forgotten was not standard until I switched to an Android based phone; years ago I had installed a Youtube tweak on iOS to allow backgrounding (without Youtube Red) and was very frustrated when I found out this wasn't the default behavior. Likewise, complete control over button remapping, complete control over the size and duration of notifications, granular control over notification badges, and also there is a tweak that allows you to slide across the keyboard anywhere to control the cursor, not just the spacebar (a feature I desperately wish was available on Android) There's a lot to jailbreaking still, I think, and the business of "for pay" tweaks seems pretty stable at the moment.
- pitaj 9y agoCan you explain what you mean by the keyboard slide thing? I want to know what I'm missing out on.
- 9y ago
- valine 9y agoI feel like downward trend in jailbreaking is temporary. iOS 10 has proven to be the most secure version of iOS. iOS 11 adds some additional complexity with the new file system and the possibility of sharing files between apps. I can only imagine there are new vulnerabilities to go along with that. In addition, the new, faster hardware provides opportunities for mods that were previously not possible. My hope is that the severe lack of jailbreaks this year lulls Apple into a sense of complacency opens up new opportunities for jailbreaking iOS 11.
- kfriede 9y agoI think the lack of jailbreak in iOS 10 was not only due to lack of availability, but also lack of demand. Jailbreaks on early iPhones added tons of great features that made the risk of jailbreaking worthwhile. These days, I think most users are generally happy with the status quo.
- vgb2k11 9y ago>but also lack of demand Unlikely. The demand for pirated material (games) has not diminished. Also its hard to explain why the iPhone suddenly lacks demand for jailbreak when the Android modding community still thrives. >These days, I think most users are generally happy with the status quo Jailbreaking was not a thing for most users.
- saurik 9y agoYou do not need to jailbreak to pirate, and most people who pirate don't jailbreak: the way people pirate is they either download applications from China that use enterprise certificates (which Apple vaguely tries to find and stop by revoking the certificate, but doesn't do very well at) or they share developer certificates (you can even pay a tiny subscription fee to get your device added to someone else's account with a download link for a wildcard provisioning profile), and then they can just install whatever they want to their device. Even the US Copyright Office has gone explicitly on the record as stating that they do not feel there is a link between piracy and jailbreaking mobile phones (unlike for other categories of device, such as video game consoles, where they consider that problem to exist and be serious).
- marmshallow 9y agoJailbreaking my iPod touch taught me a lot about technology and software at an early age. I'm not sure I would be where I am today (working in technology and very well off compared to my peers) if I didn't pick up that hobby in middle/high school.
- mattkevan 9y agoI used to automatically jailbreak all my iOS devices right from the first iPhone. From installing apps before the App Store existed , to attachments in mail, to download managers in safari, to a fully featured files app, the ingenuity of the early jailbreakers and coders was incredible. I have fond memories of my wife and I spending hours playing iZoo, a pre App Store candy crush-like game.
- miles 9y agoI miss having the date in the status bar[1] through SBSettings[2]. I still keep a jailbroken iPhone around to auto-reply to text/iMessages[3] via iBlackList[4]. [1] http://www.iphone-tips-and-advice.com/image-files/sbsettings-extras.jpg http://www.iphone-tips-and-advice.com/image-files/sbsettings... [2] http://cydia.saurik.com/package/sbsettings/ http://cydia.saurik.com/package/sbsettings/ [3] https://tinyapps.org/blog/misc/201307210700_iphone_text_auto_reply.html https://tinyapps.org/blog/misc/201307210700_iphone_text_auto... [4] http://www.iblacklist.com.br http://www.iblacklist.com.br
- funnyfacts365 9y ago"It started as a group of teenagers writing NSA-grade exploits intended to spread software freedom," said a former Apple employee It wasn't them who were sloppy programmers, it was the teenagers who were writing NSA-grade exploits... SMH Apple employees need a reality check...
- willstrafach 9y agoI look forward to hearing about your contributions to the jailbreak community.
- saurik 9y ago(I am pretty sure that person was not insulting what people in the jailbreak community do, but instead was poking at the idea of that Apple employee "shifting the blame" from "I can't believe that Apple managed to fix that wrong three times in a row... are they incompetent or something?"--a thought process we have all had about many of the bugs in dyld over the years ;P--to "damn those meddling kids and their stupid decompilers".)
- zyx321 9y agoYou think very highly of the NSA. There's been plenty of "NSA-grade" exploits recently leaked, and they didn't seem significantly more complex than what jailbreakers use.
- funnyfacts365 9y agoAnd I'm pretty sure what the apple developer who called the jailbreaks NSA-grade meant was that NSA was the pinnacle of professionalism.
- funnyfacts365 9y agoAre you calling Google Keyboard the stock keyboard? EDIT: It's an honest question. If you're not going to answer or don't know, shove the downvotes up your ass, OK?
- legulere 9y agoHe/she is talking about the standard iOS keyboard. Please be more civil.
- funnyfacts365 9y agoWow, someone answered. I just had to be uncivil... FFS
- legulere 9y agoMe answering you was despite your rudeness, not because of it
- dang 9y agoWe've banned this account for breaking the HN guidelines. Please don't create accounts to do that. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14673840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14673840 and marked it off-topic.
- funnyfacts365 9y agoFuck off
- clairity 9y agoi've never understood comments saying jailbreaking is no longer needed, particularly among technical people (it comes up in every single story about jailbreaking across the web). jailbreaking gives you root access to your mobile computer, which means you actually own and control it, not some corporation. one thing you can do after jailbreaking is install a real firewall on the device so you can control what information passes into and out of it. that's a real boon to privacy (it's not perfect secrecy of course).
- gommm 9y agoNot having a jailbreak is a deal breaker for me and the lack of jailbreaks available is the reason I won't buy a new iphone (my current iphone 6+ is jailbroken). I understand that a non jailbroken device is more secure but it also restricts what I can do on my own device which I bought with my money and I can't abide that.
- willstrafach 9y agoThe unfortunate part is that a "secure" jailbreak is absolutely possible, or at least mitigations for the vulnerabilities used to achieve the jailbreak. It seems there is not much demand for it though.
- saurik 9y agoThere are always other vulnerabilities that might not have been noticed that Apple fixes in later versions, though; like: jailbreaks that fixed their own exploit behind them and the handful of other known bugs weren't really sufficient. What really needs to happen to make this viable is for Apple to just let people do this kind of stuff without the need for them to have made a mistake in their security. They think they are smarter than everyone else, though, and if you are building something great that would run on their hardware that can't be done as an "app" you should just be working for Apple and be part of the smart club, so with that attitude they have this strategy to just coddle the user base so that they can't do anything dumb (as, to be very clear: I absolutely do not consider "user downloaded something evil from someone random and explicitly gave it permission to do something horrible" a security problem any more than a user can pick up a knife and stab themselves with it: that doesn't mean that all knives everywhere should be designed with a DRM that makes their sharp edges only work on certain kinds of branded food).
- givinguflac 9y agoI love this analogy. Thanks for providing your perspective Saurik!
- comex 9y ago
- arca_vorago 9y agoEither the user controls the program or the program controls the user. It's time already for a truly FOSS phone (and no, android doesn't cut it... lineage/replicant barely do). I shouldn't have to use some strange third party questionable methods to get root on my fucking device.
- simonh 9y ago>Either the user controls the program or the program controls the user. It's time already for a truly FOSS phone And McDonald's is an instrument of oppression because you can't order pancakes after 10:30am. Either the customer controls the restaurant or the restaurant controls the customer! If you want root on a device, buy a device that allows root. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on smartphones. Meanwhile people who want a reliable device with billions of dollars worth of investment in industry leading security and standout features like first class accessibility can have them. And yes, it turns out there's a trade off between platform security and user system access. We're all better off because there are a range of platforms available to us that provide different choices between those trade offs. Nobody is stopping the FOSS community break by my out first class phones with industry leading features. The fact that it hasn't isn't a failing of Apple and smashing Apple wouldn't make it happen anyway.
- emsy 9y ago>And yes, it turns out there's a trade off between platform security and user system access. I'm an iPhone user for security reasons but this arument rubs me the wrong way. You can allow users system access at their own risk, if you design it correctly. The problem with Android is that "Install from unknown sources" is merely a checkbox away and opens the gateways to hell.
- solarkraft 9y agoBut not really, though. Yeah, Android apps have a lot of power and how they do is poorly documented (imo), but they still can't break out of their sandbox. Unknown sources is not a replacement for root.
- HenryBemis 9y agoJailbreaking is the best thing that could have gone to iphones, IMHO. The reality that I can modify my hosts file, install a firewall with "learning mode" (too bad it hasn't been updated for iOS10), all these cool switched on Control Center, and many many more fun tweaks. To begin with, Apple's privacy settings are pretty good, but things like PMP and AppAdmin (downgrade apps to previous versions) rock! especially when you lose functionality or you get a revamp you never asked. I hope JB will continue as long as Apple does, and PLEASE update the Firewall IP :)
- xgbi 9y agoCould you elaborate on the intelligent firewall? I haven't rooted my device since ancient times, but this might make me reconsider.
- GolDDranks 9y agoI just recently got my first iOS system, an iPad. I was planning to write in cafes with it and a bluetooth keyboard. Too bad I'm a customisation freak, and in the end, I didn't find a suitable setup. The problem is that I use three languages daily: Finnish, English and Japanese. Besides that, I use The Dvorak keyboard layout. There is no commonly used Dvorak layout for Finnish and Japanese, but it's jarring to have to change the key arrangement when changing language, so on my Mac, I customized myself a layout that contains the English alphabet, the Finnish extra characters ä and ö, and type also Japanese with that. On iPad, I couldn't find a keyboard that allowed that. The 3rd party keyboards are a step into a right direction, and I think that the JB community has played their part at that. Needless to say, I'm not willing to switch away from Dvorak after 10 years of muscle memory and a generally more pleasant typing experience. I'm still hopeful for the future of my currently read-only device.
- im3w1l 9y agoJailbreaking is dead, and now Apple is deciding which symbols are and aren't acceptable in apps. I think we are approaching the worst point ever in software freedom history. Very sad development.
- limeblack 9y agoAndroid is open source and the Pixel allows custom ROMs. Worst point ever seems like a stretch of a statement.
- pcwalton 9y agoNot to mention we have the whole Raspberry Pi ecosystem for embedded ARM development. That's been a huge leap forward for open embedded systems. And Broadcom deserves credit for hiring Eric Anholt to make open drivers for the hardware. I think freedom will be fine as long as low-cost open devices like the Pi exist. If they go under and Android continues on its trajectory of becoming more closed, then I'll be more concerned.
- saurik 9y agoWhat makes it fun for a kid to pick up a device and play with it often comes down to "a bunch of my friends also have this same device and so my software can be used by them and it makes them happy", not "I get to sit alone with the Pi that my parents got me and play with technical stuff". This is the same argument for why platforms with more market share get more innovation as there are more developers all over the world who think "if I bother to build that, there are people out there who can use it and might even pay me for it". That's why the programmable TI calculator ecosystem was so powerful, why jailbroken iPods as a development platform for kids was so powerful, why having open PCs with compatible open expansion ports was extremely powerful, and why it just isn't sufficient or really even terribly relevant that there exists an open platform but that the platforms people have are open.
- pcwalton 9y agoI agree to some extent, and I'm worried about the war on general purpose computing too, but in the case of the Pi it's mitigated by the fact that the hardware starts at $5. That's a fraction of the cost of, say, a PC in the '90s.
- everdayimhustln 9y agoI jailbroke for these reasons: GuizmoDNS - OpenDNS+DNSCrypt TetherMe - free tethering Pandora Downloader Pandora Skips Unrestrictor 3G - Remove IAS and other limits by fooling apps into thinking they are on Wi-Fi. Bytafont2 with Futurama font iTransmission - torrent client Also nice were bandwidth meter in the status bar, Fake Carrier, Five Icon Dock and Freeman's work porting aptitude, yum and deb packaging to iOS to make installing tweaks and apps easy. It's a shame that Apple doesn't provide more app/os integration, customization and middleware hooks.
- imron 9y agoIf you discover an exploit for iOS, it can sell for up to $1 million on the open market. Not sure how many people would choose to make a publicly released jailbreak instead of taking the $1 million.
- stevewillows 9y agoAbout two years ago I switched back to IOS, purely for iMessage. The desktop SMS applications for Android just aren't there yet. With the 9.3.3 JB, I am basically set. I'm an extremely light mobile user and I'm going to hold onto this 5S for as long as possible. I might be completely wrong about this, but has Apple brought out any significant feature that wasn't first available through Cydia?
- notadoc 9y agoDo people still jailbreak their phone? What's the point now?