The iPhone 4S has been jailbroken

Owners of the new iPhone 4S may not have long to wait for a jailbreak. Though it’s still far from a public release, developer MuscleNerd has shown off the first images of a jailbroken 4S.

MuscleNerd tweeted the following early this morning, assuring followers that the jailbreak is making progress:

If you’re new to all of this, jailbreaking is a method of unlocking Apple’s “walled garden” approach to iOS. The company doesn’t allow unauthorized third-party software to be installed on the device. Everything that a typical iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch can install will come from iOS updates or the App Store, both controlled by Apple. This helps them to create a seamless user-friendly experience, but it also leaves some users wishing for more individual control.

Jailbreakers find unintentional exploits in Apple’s code, and use that to install Cydia, which is a third-party app store for jailbreak apps. While jailbreaking can open the door to app piracy (which isn’t possible on a non-jailbroken device), the prominent devs in the jailbreak community are adamantly against this practice.

The A5 chip that powers both the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S has proven to be quite the challenge for the jailbreak community to crack. The iPad 2 was briefly jailbroken by developer Comex this summer, but it was quickly patched by Apple and there has yet to be another jailbreak for the second-gen tablet.

Comex, however, was recently hired by Apple. The creator of the Mobilenotifier jailbreak app, Peter Hajas, also reportedly joined the company earlier this year. It appears to be a new strategy by Apple, to weaken the jailbreak community by hiring their top talent and duplicating Cydia’s best apps in iOS features. That puts the spotlight squarely on the remaining members of the iPhone Dev Team, like MuscleNerd, to keep jailbreaking relevant.

MuscleNerd also posted the video below of an iPad 2 that is jailbroken with the new method. It is no farther along than the iPhone 4S jailbreak. As they both share the A5 chip, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the jailbreak released for the two devices simultaneously.

While these images and videos show Cydia installed on the iPhone, that hardly means that the jailbreak is ready. System-wide bugs can still exist once it’s jailbroken, and these guys like to eliminate as many bugs as possible before releasing anything to the public.

via @MuscleNerd

Source: http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/the-iphone-4s-has-been-jailbroken-20111028/

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