Two Major Cydia Repositories Shut Down as Jailbreaking Fades in Popularity

[MacRumors]

ModMy today announced it has archived its default ModMyi repository on Cydia, which is essentially an alternative App Store for downloading apps, themes, tweaks, and other files on jailbroken iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices.

A jailbroken iPhone running iOS 6 via New Atlas​

ZodTTD/MacCiti also shut down last week, meaning that two out of three of Cydia's major default repositories are no longer active as of this month. ModMy recommends developers in the jailbreaking community use the BigBoss repository, which is one of the last major Cydia sources that remains functional.

The closure of two major Cydia repositories is arguably the result of a declining interest in jailbreaking, which provides root filesystem access and allows users to modify iOS and install unapproved apps on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

When the iPhone and iPod touch were first released in 2007, jailbreaking quickly grew in popularity for both fun and practical reasons. Before the App Store, for example, it allowed users to install apps and games. Jailbreaking was even useful for something as simple as setting a wallpaper, not possible on early iOS versions.

Even in later years, jailbreaking remained popular for a number of popular tweaks that Apple has eventually implemented into iOS, such as system toggles, lock screen widgets, quick reply for text messages, screen recording, multitasking, picture-in-picture mode on iPad, and keyboard trackpad mode.

With many of those features now available out of the box, the allure of jailbreaking is considerably less for many people.

"What do you get in the end?" asked Cydia creator Jay Freeman, in an interview with Motherboard. "It used to be that you got killer features that almost were the reason you owned the phone. And now you get a small minor modification."

One downside to jailbreaking is that it has always been a violation of Apple's End User License Agreement that every iOS user agrees to. While not illegal in the United States, due to an exemption in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, jailbreaking also technically voids your device's warranty coverage.

In a statement provided to Cult of Mac back in 2010, Apple said jailbreaking can "severely degrade the experience" of an iPhone.

Apple's goal has always been to insure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience. As we've said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably.

Apple's cat-and-mouse game with jailbreaking has been ongoing for over a decade, and it may be finally winning the battle given advancements in iOS security and decreasing interest in jailbreaking.

iOS 11 is the first major version of Apple's mobile operating system that has not been publicly jailbroken. A few developers have claimed to exploit iOS 11 at various security conferences, but no Mac or PC tool like Pangu has been released for the public to download and jailbreak their own devices with.

The lack of a public jailbreak for the latest iOS version after several months has fueled a so-called "death spiral" for jailbreaking.

"When you get fewer people bothering to jailbreak, you get fewer developers targeting interesting things, which means there's less reasons for people to jailbreak," said Freeman. "Which means there's fewer people jailbreaking, which causes there to be less developers bothering to target it. And then you slowly die."

iOS users still interested in jailbreaking can visit our Jailbreaks and iOS Hacks forum section and /r/jailbreak on Reddit.

Article Link: Two Major Cydia Repositories Shut Down as Jailbreaking Fades in Popularity

 

[FelixDerKater]

Obey. Comply. Remain in the walled App Store.

 

[Slix]

I'm not surprised at this point that jailbreaking is on the decline. I hardly hear anyone talk about it these days.

I've never understood the fascination with it anyway.

 

[seanmcbay]

It’s pretty easy to install “unapproved” apps even without jailbreaking these days so I’m not surprised.

 

[sinsin07]

I'm not surprised at this point that jailbreaking is on the decline. I hardly hear anyone talk about it these days.

I've never understood the fascination with it anyway.

Seems like you didn't read the article.
The "fascination" was covered to some extent.
There were things available in the jailbreak not available in the default OS.

For example, back in the day, ATT, the only carrier of the iPhone in the US at the time, didn't allow certain traffic over 3G. To use Slingbox you needed a jailbreak.
Many other examples like tethering.
Some things you take for granted in iOS was available for years in jailbreaks.

ATT and Slingbox

 

[ThunderMasterMind]

Jailbreaking allows you to do whatever the heck you want with iOS. It wasn’t just apps, it was tweaks and themes to make the experience better, and oh man iOS needs it right now. iOS 11 is one of the worst iOS versions I’ve ever seen.

 

[mrzz]

No, "declining interest in jailbreaking" is just a consequence of missing JB, not the reason, and appl explanation is just their typical bs response

 

[joonyaboy]

I used to be all about it. Only thing I’d change now is eliminate the animations and maybe some sort of tap to lock the screen.

 

[bruinsrme]

I didn’t have the time to keep up with it.
Plus using my phone for work an loading the company’s profiles had a lot to do with it as well.

 

[brendu]

No, "declining interest in jailbreaking" is just a consequence of missing JB, not the reason, and appl explanation is just their typical bs response

Eh, Apple added most of the most popular Jailbreaking tweaks over the years. There is far less reason to do it today compared to 5 years ago.

 

[doelcm82]

Obey. Comply. Remain in the walled App Store.

When I hug my children, enjoy a nice steak dinner, or hop on the Auto Train for an overnight journey to Washington, D.C., I'm not in the walled Apple Store.

I think those who are so entrenched in their phones that they feel they have to rebel against their overlord by jailbreaking the phone's OS should occasionally put their phones down and enjoy other things in the world. Stop and smell the roses.

 

[ThunderMasterMind]

Eh, Apple added most of the most popular Jailbreaking tweaks over the years. There is far less reason to do it today compared to 5 years ago.

Let’s see, the lock screen in iOS 11 is broken half of the time. The control center is still quirky, the gigantic headers make no sense and need to disappear, the music app is trash, folders are glitchy, the widget center is laggy... shall I continue?

 

[skinned66]

With all of the bugs being traded for bounties these days it's not really too surprising. Unfortunate however.

 

[turbineseaplane]

It's a shame some don't realize how many useful things are possible with JB.

One that still comes to mind daily for me is getting around ridiculous artificial barriers on tethering and FaceTime over cellular depending upon device/plan.

I will not be moving off iOS 10 for as long as possible it looks like.

 

[keysofanxiety]

No, "declining interest in jailbreaking" is just a consequence of missing JB, not the reason, and appl explanation is just their typical bs response

I think you may be oversimplifying. The reasons for jailbreaking are far less than they were. On an early iPhone you couldn't do video recording, copy/paste, tethering... these were fundamental features that Apple didn't implement. Current iOS features that are still lacking and therefore warrants a jailbreak caters more to niche users than it did before.

The need for most people to jailbreak has definitely lessened as a large majority of things they need to do already exists.

 

[nebo1ss]

Not really surprised. More and more of the reasons for it were disappearing because Apple made many of the features available in the standard IOS version. I first started jailbreaking on the iPhone 3GS and that was to enable an unlock on an ATT phone. At one time it also allowed you to go back to a previous version of IOS. I gave up jailbreaking quite a while ago and really lost touch with the community.

 

[turbineseaplane]

tethering

This is still a problem for many depending upon device/plan situation

 

[sinsin07]

When I hug my children, enjoy a nice steak dinner, or hop on the Auto Train for an overnight journey to Washington, D.C., I'm not in the walled Apple Store.

I think those who are so entrenched in their phones that they feel they have to rebel against their overlord by jailbreaking the phone's OS should occasionally put their phones down and enjoy other things in the world. Stop and smell the roses.

Thank those rebels.
Some of the jailbreaks are now in iOS.
Who knows if those tweaks/customization would have ever made it into iOS without JB Community.
Coincidentally, wasn't Apple once know as a rebel?

 

[joueboy]

I have a feeling that jailbreak community prominent hackers are been bribed to stop doing this. Enjoying those money while being quiet and not being bothered by demanding members of the community.

 

[Westside guy]

For me, Jailbreaking has always been about additional customization. FlipControlCenter, for instance, lets you add different toggles to the pre-iOS 11 Control Center (so you could, for instance, have a Personal Hotspot toggle), have multiple scrollable groups of toggles, select which toggles could and could not be used from the lock screen, etc. It is far superior to the iOS 11 “solution” that Apple came up with.

FlipControlCenter, 3G Unrestrictor, Protect My Privacy, etc... These customizations are so far beyond what Apple allows... and are not available via side loading. As another poster said, it’s not really about apps.

However given the seriousness of some recent iOS security flaws, combined with the amount of sensitive info now accessible from my phone... it just doesn’t make sense to stay on an older, jailbreakable version of iOS. I have an original iPad mini which is still jailbroken - there are one or two non-approved apps I occasionally use. But that device is basically isolated from the rest of my Apple gear, and does not have any personal account apps (e.g. banking) on it.

 

[FelixDerKater]

When I hug my children, enjoy a nice steak dinner, or hop on the Auto Train for an overnight journey to Washington, D.C., I'm not in the walled Apple Store.

I think those who are so entrenched in their phones that they feel they have to rebel against their overlord by jailbreaking the phone's OS should occasionally put their phones down and enjoy other things in the world. Stop and smell the roses.

More power to you. I’ve never jailbroken my phone, but support the liberty of others to do as they choose.

 

[Johnny907]

I'm not surprised at this point that jailbreaking is on the decline. I hardly hear anyone talk about it these days.

I've never understood the fascination with it anyway.

Back in the day it was the only way to add functionality Apple itself refused to impliment in iOS. App switching, control center, fast toggling of airplane mode and wireless radios. Heck even app folders on the home screen and notifications on the lock screen were originally introduced via Jailbreaking years before Apple finally adopted them. I started Jailbreaking around iOS 5, back when AT&T refused to allow hotspot functionality to those of us on grandfathered unlimited plans. Right up until iOS 9, my phones always had custom font, layouts, carrier text and sounds. I even had blinking Christmas lights wrapped around my lock screen during the holidays. The freedom and flexibility Jailbreaking allowed made the best hardware on the market that much more powerful. Eventually, Apple pulled its head out of its butt, realized users were resorting to Jailbreaking for a valid reason, and started to adopt the best parts of Jailbreaking such as F.Lux which they renamed Night Shift, instead of ostracizing users for wanting to Jailbreak.
Because of that, nowadays there just really isn’t a reason to Jailbreak anymore, which is why it’s fallen out of favor.

 

[ctyrider]

No, "declining interest in jailbreaking" is just a consequence of missing JB, not the reason, and appl explanation is just their typical bs response

No, it's not. Jailbreaking has been mostly pointless for quite some time now. The upsides of it are minuscule, and downsides are huge - major one being a massive security hole of keeping your personal data on what's basically is an insecure hacked device.

I used to jailbreak religiously since the original iPhone 2G.. But would not even consider jailbreaking now, even if JB was readily available.

 

[kuwxman]

I wouldn't say the interest is so much in decline, but Apple is doing a better job patching the security exploits that allow jailbreaking in the first place. I for one would still jailbreak my phone if there was one available. However, we're forced to live with Apple's limitations when one isn't available.

 

[turbineseaplane]

keeping your personal data on what's basically is an insecure hacked device

Who brought up Android?