Two Major Cydia Repositories Shut Down as Jailbreaking Fades in Popularity

[dontwalkhand]

The reason why people jailbroke before was to use the iPhone on T-Mobile. Now that T-Mobile has iPhones this community died fast. Yeah there were some mods here and there but let’s be real here. This was a large thing when AT&T was the only provider you could use.

 

[ackmondual]

More recently, they "adapted" the nightshift feature into iOS, but I forgot that stuff like Copy & Paste, tethering, creating custom wallpapers for the lock screen and home screen, installing other apps, some form of Control Center, and using the hardware buttons for other things like for music (one person told me firsthand with his IpT5), had to get added in in due time! They copied a good deal of Cydia and jailbreak innovations.

 

[H3LL5P4WN]

I can't say I'm surprised. Saddened, but not surprised. I personally haven't really had a need to jailbreak since iOS7 or so and even now, the only reasons I would now are for a scrolling wallpaper and being able to put my icons wherever I please.

I will say though, that being able to pull out my iPhone 5S with "Windows Phone 7" on it and scaring the bejesus out of people never got old.

 

[sinsin07]

I always used sling box on my att iPhones, from the first day the app became available. I was a sling box beta tester, in fact. Maybe something special about my (Bright orange free beta) sling box.

Didn't say you couldn't use Slingbox.
You couldn't Slingbox on 3G on iPhone 3G on ATT.
It was Wifi only. So if your out of the house and not connected to WiFi, it was useless.
The link posted in comment you responded to has numerous references to this.
Maybe you were late to the game.
If you were using the offical Slingbox app from iOS App store, then it had nothing to do with being a Slingbox beta tester.
ATT prevented you from using their 3G network for fear of traffic congestion.
2009: iPhone slows down ATT network

 

[Matthmaroo]

Obey. Comply. Remain in the walled App Store.

Wasn’t aware that anybody was ever forced to buy any Apple product

 

[sinsin07]

snip... I'm not exactly sure how you think Apple Maps is going to magically manifest traffic that wouldn't have otherwise been there if you used another maps app, but that's not how reality works. Apple Maps won't get you stuck in traffic. Traffic will get you stuck in traffic.

To clarify a bit, Waze has people sourced realtime traffic info.
Secondly, and you may find this a bit unsavory, Waze has red light camera speed camera locations.
People also post pot hole info and police activity on Waze.
Not sure if Apple maps has all this.
This is not an Apple map bashing, just highlighting some of the reasons people prefer Waze.

 

[UL2RA]

To clarify a bit, Waze has people sourced realtime traffic info.
Secondly, and you may find this a bit unsavory, Waze has red light camera speed camera locations.
People also post pot hole info and police activity on Waze.
Not sure if Apple maps has all this.
This is not an Apple map bashing, just highlighting some of the reasons people prefer Waze.

Yes, Waze is awesome. Apple Maps doesn't have crowd-sourced data like Waze does.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I jailbroke my iPhone 4. There were a lot of cool features you could add. Then Apple began implementing those features and it got to the point where tethering was the only thing left I really cared about, but I switched to a plan that includes personal hotspot a long time ago so I don't need that either. I don't think whatever minor tweaks are left like modifying the font is worth the security risk. So I haven't jailbroke any iPhone since my 4. It's awesome the impact Cydia and the jailbreak community had on the development of iOS.

 

[sinsin07]

The jailbreak features were obvious, and Apple didn't take any inspiration from them. As usual, they added features slowly either
- to make sure everything's vetted
- or to "keep their powder dry" so they can entice people with new features continuously
- or both.
The addition of custom wallpapers was probably the second one.

Yep. It always obvious after the fact.

 

[deckard666]

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.

I never understand this "walled garden" - surely the Xbox, switch and PS4 have "walled gardens" too but never hear a great deal mumbled about their strangle hold ?

 

[Abazigal]

Obey. Comply. Remain in the walled App Store.

My garden is not walled, it’s well protected, nourished, watered & kept in blossom by the best gardeners in the world. If there’s a weed, they wack it. If there’s a bad bug, they squash it. Everytime I walk in my garden I’m in awe of its palette & synchronicity. I’ve seen the neighbors garden, and I am far less impressed. Sure there are way more flowers in the garden, but its formation is a mess & the lack of a fence just allows any dog to piss in it, weed to penetrate it & makes it harder to maintain.

 

[Blackstick]

Ignorance like that annoys me.

It’s fine, I did the Genius Bar thing for 7 years. Ignorant teens who jailbroke their parent’s Apple stuff indirectly annoyed me when their Mom or Dad would bring in their bricked devices looking for Apple to rescue them from their jail breaking happy offspring. Glad it’s gone. Apple quietly recruited all their dev talent that was worth a damn.

 

[fairuz]

Well I guess that you were never aware of the patches that devs released for iOS to fix bugs and glitches in older versions in the Cydia store. Being able to fix bugs without updating is wonderful. Ignorance like that annoys me.

Big deal, you occasionally get to fix something at most a week early. Meanwhile, you add way more ways to get attacked. It's like having a PC or Android. You can install whatever you want, including security patches, but they still get compromised way more frequently.

I used to jailbreak my device. For some reason the jailbreak process always used to install a MySQL server. By the time you install your tweaks, you're running enough random crap that something is going to have a vulnerability.

And the SSH server you could install left a default password set automatically (luckily I knew to change it). Some packages, like IAP cracks, install new root CAs. Do you even know if your security patches are legit, or are you actually looking at the source code yourself? It's ridiculous.

 

[ctyrider]

Apple has nowhere near applied all of Cydia's useful tweaks into their iOS.

Thanks god for this, as based on my JB days memories - some of those tweaks were godawful.

 

[mi7chy]

Simple economics. Jailbreakers used to do it for recognition and community monetary contributions but it's not nearly as lucrative as what companies now pay for vulnerabilities. Loss is the modifications to iOS that brings it in parity to what Android enjoys out of the box like true background multitasking, running emulators, etc.

 

[mistertomlinson]

Anybody else just want a jailbreak for a system wide notch hider? I Google for it every couple of days.

 

[Feenician]

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?

I used to jailbreak in the early days of iOS, when I had more time on my hands. It added all sorts of functionality, not otherwise available but what it didn’t do was make things less “quirky”, “glitchy” or “laggy”. Quite the opposite.

 

[ThunderMasterMind]

Lock screen is not broken for me. Can you be more specific?

Control center is quirky... can you be more specific? Seems to work as intended every time I pull it down.

Gigantic headers, can you be more specific? If you're on an iPhone X, you need room for gestures at the top and bottom of the screen to pull down lock center, control center, swipe up to home or swipe between apps. To me, they make a lot of sense. Can you explain yourself a bit more?

Music App - I use it on a daily basis, with a few qualms over how search is handled, specifically. Can you be more specific with why you think the music app is trash?

Folders being glitchy... again, mine work they way they're supposed to. Can you be more specific?

Widget center is laggy... yeah, I do wish that they widgets would be loaded by the time I swiped over. Thanks for bring specific on that one.

Gladly. You will notice that some of these are from the betas, but they still occur even in the latest stable versions. It's honestly pretty sad that they still exist when 4 years ago, nearly all glitches and bugs would be gone at this point.

Lockscreen and widget center (sometimes the music player appears and doesn't even display the correct information):
*Note: These screenshots are from both my 6S and SE.







Folders:





The Music app? Well that's something that's easier to explain in a video, or by picking up an iOS 6 device and comparing it to the current app. The current Music app is a nightmare compared to the intuitive, simple and easy to use app on iOS 6. + (Cover Flow)

Big headers? It's a huge waste of space for no good reason. Gestures? That makes no sense, because they will work the same way regardless of size and placement. For a good explanation, I recommend this pretty long video. Skim through it and it will all come together:

A complex machine works, but not efficiently. A simple machine works and always will work.

 

[blackcrayon]

These days I'm more interested in jailbreaking for older iOS devices no longer in primary use. Like having an older iPad that is just loaded with emulators (ones that require jB) or used for other purposes that are easier or require jailbreaking.

It's another way to give fun life to an older device.

 

[alphaod]

I did quite enjoy jailbreaking earlier in the years and I would wait patiently for the jailbreaks to update so I could upgrade iOS and even that was a hassle since I had to backup and restore. Not worth it anymore.

 

[tooloud10]

To clarify a bit, Waze has people sourced realtime traffic info.
Secondly, and you may find this a bit unsavory, Waze has red light camera speed camera locations.
People also post pot hole info and police activity on Waze.
Not sure if Apple maps has all this.
This is not an Apple map bashing, just highlighting some of the reasons people prefer Waze.

Apple has crowdsourced traffic info. Red light cameras and potholes are very niche features that I wouldn’t expect in a stock OS app. Same with the police activity feature, which turned into a joke once the police figured out how to exploit it.
[doublepost=1511629460][/doublepost]

Understand it or not the argument is a philosophical one. Should you have the right to do as you choose with a device you've paid for?

And yes that right includes the ability to screw the device-up beyond repair.

You always have that right. Nobody is stopping you from spending all of your time looking for a JB exploit.

 

[posguy99]

Understand it or not the argument is a philosophical one. Should you have the right to do as you choose with a device you've paid for?

Of course you do. But you do not have the right to require that Apple, or anyone else, assist you in doing so. That's what's so comical about the JB community.

 

[imlovinit]

It’s a very sad day indeed. I was aware that a new jb would be still be hard to come by but this added on top feels like a final goodbye..

Such a shame as jb always gave Apple ideas to incorporate IMO.

I still miss the use of VideoPane when I updated to 7 last year...now that’s something I wish would come to the iPhone officially.

 

[deckard666]

Of course you do. But you do not have the right to require that Apple, or anyone else, assist you in doing so. That's what's so comical about the JB community.

its like chipping a car - look at what that does for after market values ... if you don't like a feature or the hardware don't buy it , that's your choice. It's a pretty simple one really.

 

[sinsin07]

Red light cameras and potholes are very niche features that I wouldn’t expect in a stock OS app.

What you consider niche is a personal opinion and irrelevant.
What you would expect is a personal opinion and irrelevant.
Your rationalization of what should be in a stock app is also irrelevant.
The intent of the post you quoted was not to appease or cater to your expectations; rather it was to highlight some reasons why people may prefer waze.
As stated it was not an Apple maps bashing exercise.

Same with the police activity feature, which turned into a joke once the police figured out how to exploit it.

How do you exploit a passenger using Waze marking the location of police car or police activity on the side of the road?