If you are a loyal Apple users, say you’ve switched and updated your iPhones for several generations to keep up with their updated products, you might be familiar with the term jailbreaking. According to Wikipedia, jailbreaking is a concept that’s been around since 2007. That’s 15 years ago. In a nutshell, jailbreaking is gaining total access of your device, by compromising its operating system and installing necessary components. Some people may wonder if jailbreaking an iPhone is still a thing in 2022, well let’s see!
What is jailbreaking?
Technically, jailbreaking your device means you perform 2 things, replacing and installing. Well, what exactly do you replace? basically jailbreaking involves replacing or modifying vital components of Apple’s iOS operating system with custom components. As a result, it opens up your device to some number of possibilities beyond what Apple normally allows. What do you install? Automatically, after a successful attempt of jailbreaking, you’ll find an app called Cydia installed on your device, this is one of the many components you just allowed to be put in your device.
Why do people jailbreak?
The answer is total control, well at least that was a thing many years ago, see, with Cydia, you can download pirate apps, games and tweaks that standard Apple operating system won’t allow you to . Piracy was cool back then, and the prices of games and apps were a factor of jailbreaking. See how cool it was having a paid game for free installed on your iPod or iPhone.
Finally, do people still jailbreak in 2022?
The answer is yes, you can easily find tutorials on how to jailbreak your devices in 2022, but some of them probably won’t even work on your iPhone or iPad or even your iPod, why? Because it’s clear that Apple has been consistently updating their devices, and Apple pays good attention to their products, meaning that they care about their older products as well.
And a certain way of jailbreaking or some jailbreaking tools only work on certain iOS too, you you need to find the right tool for the right iOS, that’s a little challenging, since after you successfully jailbreak your iPhone, you’ll have to re-jailbreak it after a reboot, that’s one issue you’ll probably find. Also not to mention, that after you update the iOS on your device, you will probably lose Cydia, and whatever it is you have installed on your phone that you download from Cydia.
The no no about jailbreaking
There are benefits in jailbreaking, as I mentioned earlier, jailbreaking allows you to install ‘stuff’ that Apple wouldn’t recommend you to. This may benefit some people who want to explore more. But, jailbreaking comes with its drawbacks too:
- you will lose your warranty
- you are installing from unknown resources
- you remove necessary components, which includes removing a number of security layers
- if something happens, say you experience a data leak, you have nowhere to go.
In a nutshell
Jailbreaking might not be so necessary these days, as many apps and games are available for trial and there are alternative ways of achieving things, losing warranty is not worth the fun of jailbreaking. So the question is not that whether people still jailbreak devices or not, but is jailbreaking worth the loss and risk?
