Why not Jailbreak??

Slow down.. then one more time please?

 

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People mean it's so simple to jailbreak that if you can't figure it out you don't deserve to have it jailbroken.
This answers your question but I can't tell of there's another in the rest of your post

 

I found when I ran jailbroken iPhones and iPads I had crashes and battery drains that I did not have without jailbreak. There are 6 iOS device in my house and only 1 is jailbroken. Jaibreaking was a must for me to run backgrounder but since iOS 4 "multi-tasking" (as limited as it is) does enough for me and if it really is saving battery life then great.

 

In the case of doing this for your kids, you're basically the device administrator, and you're able to fix any problems that could occur from installing a bad package in Cydia. So in that case I don't see a problem with it. In the case of your friends, well that depends on whether you want to be their tech support when something goes wrong or not.

Generally speaking, I think the view held by many on these forums (myself included) is that if you can't figure out how to run the jailbreak, how on earth are you supposed to be capable of managing packages installed outside of Apple's sandbox? This tends to be directed at those that want to have their phones jailbroken by a company or a friend instead of doing it themselves.

 

You use slashes wayyyy too much. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what your question was so I'll just reply to the question that another poster answered.

We say that if there's a chance you can muff up a jailbreak, then you shouldn't be doing it because jailbreaking is so simple now. It's all point and click pretty much. Not only that but there are tons and I mean tons of tutorials on the internet as well as stickies on this very site but no one bothers to read them before getting themselves SOL when they manage to screw something up.

While I agree that you have to start somewhere, researching first is an excellent place to start. If you don't know what you're doing then don't try something.

And now onto your title question. Why not jailbreak? The only negative experiences I've had from jailbreaking are significantly reduced battery life on a 3Gs/4.2.1 and even slower performance than we're accustomed to on a 3G/4.x. But on the other hand, jailbreaking opens us up to a world of tweaks, themes and apps that make a lot of peoples' lives easier.

 

The only downside to jailbreaking is that some apps will not work in a JB-ed environment. I only know three as of now (FileGuardian, Good, and Blizzard's authenticator which will warn about JBing is insecure), but there may be others.

 

^ This.

Friend: My phone is broken, fix it.
Phill50: What did you do?
Friend: I installed some apps
Phill50: What did you install?
Friend: I can't remember
Phill50: You can't remember what apps you installed?
Friend: No?
Phill50: Nothing?
Friend: No?
Phill50: I'll take a look.
Friend: Jailbreaking sucks man. Hurry up and fix it.

You really wanna put up with that crap daily? If they don't know what to do with a JB'd phone, chances are, they're going to mess something up. The above doesn't even include all the dumb questions you'll get every 30 minutes about how to install icons, widgets, signal bars, or those cool lockscreen page thingy's.

Google-ing it, apparently, is beyond some people's comprehension.

 

Whether or not Good works on a jb device is solely determined by your Good administrator.

 

JB is neither difficult nor dangerous; however it does require a commitment in time in order to stay up to date with the process. For many people the benefits don't justify this commitment.

(do your self a favor and don't push JB on someone who is not willing to learn the process on their own)

 

I have jailbroken my iPod Touch. I have not jailbroken my iPad. The reason for the difference is that I *need* it to use my iPod Touch as I want (with a Bluetooth GPS attached, and also to prevent my car kit from disabling the iPod app when connected). While there are a few minor tweaks I might use if I had it on my iPad, the additional faff isn't worth it.

The problem isn't the JB process as such (though does obviously take several extra steps than the iTunes update), but rather it's the need to re-install apps after each update. Luckily the two JB apps I use don't really have any data, so i'm happy with reinstalling each time. But i'd be very wary about trusting a JB app to store any data within it. It's not backed up to iTunes, and i know that there are other apps which can facilitate the restoration each time, there appear to be regular problems with it.

David