First Jailbreak for iOS 14 Limited to Devices With A9(X) Chip and Below

[darkpaw]

While I certainly feel for you, I don't think it's quite right to blame the jailbreak for your lost revenue.

If there was no jailbreak for iOS, then no one would be sending out copies of my apps for free and with all features unlocked etc. This is definitely the fault of the jailbreak and those who pirated my apps.

I'll ignore the rest of your comment about macOS as that's not at all what this is about.

 

[Bandaman]

I miss the tweak that allowed you to change the animation when swiping through pages on the home screen.

Yes. That one was super cool.

 

[Pow!]

I haven’t jailbroken for years, but for me the best reason was to have a real firewall (like Little Snitch on the Mac) to deny connections systemwide at will.

 

[Bandaman]

Which removes income from the developers.

One of my apps was pirated, and made freely available, and I saw the income drop right off. It never recovered. People didn't want to pay $0.99 for an app. By allowing this to happen, these checkra1n people are hurting thousands of developers, including one-man setups like me.

Lots of people happily pay 99 cents for an app. Not to be rude, but the reason people don’t buy apps is because they’re not worth buying. If you think the jailbreak community is why you never sold your app again, that’s some heavy disillusionment.
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I haven’t jailbroken for years, but for me the best reason was to have a real firewall (like Little Snitch on the Mac) to deny connections systemwide at will.

You’d think with Apple’s privacy focus they’d have implemented this already.

 

[HiVolt]

Jailbreaking a thing of the past.

Yes, because they haven't figured out a fully untethered jailbreak since iOS9. That's when I threw in the towel, and I had been jailbreaking since iOS2.

Not for crazy customization or pirated apps, but to get rid of Apple annoyances & restrictions.

 

[MisterAndrew]

Journalists (or others) who want to be able to record phone calls can do that on a jailbroken iPhone (or at least it was possible a couple of years ago on my iPhone 4S). Just one example, but I'm sure there are more.

Note: I know that secretly recording phone calls might be illegal in some countries/jurisdictions - which might be the reason for why there is no built in feature for this in iOS - but it's definitely not the case in all countries (e.g. in Sweden it's allowed as long as you are taking part in the conversation that is being secretly recorded).

Why does it need to be secret? Just say, “I’m recording this phone call.” Or “Do you consent to this phone call being recorded?”

 

[Bandaman]

Journalists (or others) who want to be able to record phone calls can do that on a jailbroken iPhone (or at least it was possible a couple of years ago on my iPhone 4S). Just one example, but I'm sure there are more.

Note: I know that secretly recording phone calls might be illegal in some countries/jurisdictions - which might be the reason for why there is no built in feature for this in iOS - but it's definitely not the case in all countries (e.g. in Sweden it's allowed as long as you are taking part in the conversation that is being secretly recorded).

There are several apps that can record phone calls without jail breaking.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I jailbroke my iPhone 4 because there were features and apps I wanted that were missing. iOS includes those features now and there are a lot more apps in the App Store so I don’t see a reason to do it now myself. You also have to consider the security risk. It’s not worth it unless you have some very specific need.

 

[Max48]

I understand the dangers Apple sees with hacking. I also don’t support pirating. I am torn on the ‘walled garden’ debate (for issues like App Store independence )

However, Apple still forbids lots of customization.

just a couple things I believe are still useful (and harmless):

Lock4GLTE was essential for when LTE signal was weaker than 3g, but 3g data rate was low/inoperable due to multipath interference or something else. The LTE signal would then show up with 0 bars but still work well enough to read/send emails, load websites, basic data usage.

DathUI gave the device have a personalized color scheme without changing anything fundamental about the system default theme. Even the springboard physics that Apple forces on you could be changed (e.g. scrolling intertia ).

if I pay $1k for a phone, I believe it’s my right to have control over these things.

 

[The1andOnly]

Just to chime in, I’m gonna JB my backup phone (Orig. SE) and my iPad Pro (1G).

 

[chinito77]

Lots of hate regarding this article. I personally don't see care of it but there are several uses. For example, an employee at work left the company and did not sign out of their iPad. Jailbreaking allows you to break activation lock. That's a huge win if you work in IT.

In the early days, I used to "try" games before purchase. If I liked it, I bought it to show support, plus I'm a whaler so they love that. However some games truly suck and I was glad I didn't pay for them.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

Which removes income from the developers.

One of my apps was pirated, and made freely available, and I saw the income drop right off. It never recovered. People didn't want to pay $0.99 for an app. By allowing this to happen, these checkra1n people are hurting thousands of developers, including one-man setups like me.

Really? The <1% of iPhone users who jailbreak and can get the pirated version of your app are the reason your revenue dropped off? I highly doubt it. Maybe someone else put out a similar but better, or a free app, that does a similar thing? Or maybe your app momentarily got put on a recommended list, so you made a bunch of sales, but then it dropped off the list, and your sales dropped off. Lots of possibilities, but a pirated version only for jailbroken phones surely isn't the one. If you had a winner, then maybe you should invest in some marketing for it?!

 

[thadoggfather]

Really? The <1% of iPhone users who jailbreak and can get the pirated version of your app are the reason your revenue dropped off? I highly doubt it. Maybe someone else put out a similar but better, or a free app, that does a similar thing? Or maybe your app momentarily got put on a recommended list, so you made a bunch of sales, but then it dropped off the list, and your sales dropped off. Lots of possibilities, but a pirated version only for jailbroken phones surely isn't the one. If you had a winner, then maybe you should invest in some marketing for it?!

Of the small jailbreak base relative to all of Apple’s, even fewer people use it to pirate. For most its just for customization purposes.

I say this is an incorrect claim as well

 

[Momof2.1107]

I still jailbreak, as my XS Max is currently jailbroken. I jailbreak for the customization that I can’t get with iOS 14. I love haptic feedback when typing, etc. I actually hope a jailbreak for iOS 14 for A10 devices and up is released after the new iPhones launch.

 

[muscular.nutsack]

I'm not going to bother reading the majority of these comments trying to justify jailbreaking to the poor humble app developer just trying to make ends meet or the vendor lock zealots.

I'm speaking on behalf of academics, electrical engineers and otherwise payrolled research teams (with mostly boring, tedious tasks) must jailbreak to fully evaluate system and application security.

We do this because it's a job someone must do for various public and private sector entities.

Apple is very much a blackbox when it comes to internals and from my experience ios developers make exponentially more mistakes when it comes to security because they rely on restricted, obfuscated and undocumented entitlements.

 

[Billyk711]

You do know Apple 'borrows' many jailbreak ideas and bakes it into future updates, right?

'Lost control of their life' - merely over what they do with their phone? odd.

Funny enough most JB users dont care whether you too are a JB user, stock user, or even an Android or Jitterbug customer. Tech isn't a cult. For some.



if it was a thing of the past, tools wouldn't continue to be released and the user base would be 0.

It's a thing of the past, for YOU. Which is fine but

100 people might as well be zero,
I tried and thought was interesting, but my iPhone would constantly freeze up requiring restart and the battery life was cut in half.
So not worth it.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

So much judgment in this thread right off the bat lol. Jailbreaking is a great option to change things in iOS that you just don’t like. For example, jailbreaking would allow me to watch 4K YouTube videos on my iPad Pro 10.5, a feature I should’ve already had.

The 10.5 inch iPad Pro has a 2224 px by 1668 px screen. That would make 16:9 videos 2224:1251 pixels, which is hardly better than 1080p even if you play in 4k.

 

[thadoggfather]

100 people might as well be zero,
I tried and thought was interesting, but my iPhone would constantly freeze up requiring restart and the battery life was cut in half.
So not worth it.

So you both dont know what you're doing and blame the freedom aspect of rooting, and you are wildly inaccurate in you estimations of the user base. Good deal.

Not worth it for you. It's not worth it for many. But more than 100 are into it. lol I dont even know why I bother tbh

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

Of the small jailbreak base relative to all of Apple’s, even fewer people use it to pirate. For most its just for customization purposes.

I say this is an incorrect claim as well

Yep, I am even wondering if the entire claim was simply pro-Apple fanboi fantasy, and he hasn't even developed an app.

 

[elfy]

If there was no jailbreak for iOS, then no one would be sending out copies of my apps for free and with all features unlocked etc. This is definitely the fault of the jailbreak and those who pirated my apps.

I'll ignore the rest of your comment about macOS as that's not at all what this is about.

Fixed that for you.

 

[0924487]

I’m not being sarcastic, snarky, etc but why is jail breaking still a thing? I agree in the early 1.0 and 2.0 days there were tons of customizations that added functionality or perhaps utility like Personal Hotspot or even recording video. These days iOS seems so customizable (down to icon changing and widgets) that jailbreaking doesn’t seem to have value anymore.

I jailbreak to patch the YouTube app for background playback and remove ads. I also do the same for Reddit, Facebook etc.

 

[0924487]

Please explain.

Explain what, he said it all. 4K YouTube on iPad and no ads in the YouTube app

 

[laptech]

I liked the idea of jailbreaking a phone due to being able to customise nearly everything to how you wanted it. I once tried it on my daily use iphone 4s but then found all the important app's I use refused to work because they had some kind of security check in place to see if the iphone was 'rooted' (jailbroken). Any financial app I had and utility app I had refused to work, banking app, credit card app, utlity company app, insurance company app, apple pay, public tranpsort ticket app. I therefore decided not to try jailbreaking any other iphones I had or planned to have.

 

[Baldilocks]

For iOS 14, i’d Jailbreak to disable the App Library if such a modification became available.

I don’t need jailbreak to remove ads systemwide as I already do that with a VPN and I have YouTube Premium.

 

[spelt]

• Running unsigned apps without having them tethered to a disposable Apple Developer Account is possible with a jailbreak.
• Can use older versions of existing apps, assuming you’ve retained the .ipa.
  • Old Music.app without the AM tabs and other visual regressions, if you’re not an AM subscriber.
  • Old Fantastical.app is nice, for example.
• Crontab-style functionality can keep stuff running in the background, such as server ‘health checks’, UNIX shell scripts
  • Obviously it’s your responsibility to ensure you don’t drain your battery.
• Piracy or .ipa’s with all in-app purchases unlocked, etc
• Location spoofing
• Things like Picture-in-Picture, which I guess they’ve finally introduced in iOS 14, but you’ve been able to do it for quite some time.
• Removal of the ‘Widgetsmith’ NSLabel from widgets (not actually sure if that’s a thing yet, but I’m guessing it will be due to limitations of iOS 14 still)

& 500+ other, very specific reasons that 98% of iOS users wont really care for, and that’s okay.

I couldn't have said it better myself. And if people only knew to how many social media exploits a jailbreak opens a window, many people's brain would short circuit.