Jailbreaking your iPhone 5 – The Good, The Bad, and the Downright Ugly

Aug 20
08:38

2015

Weng Joon

Weng Joon

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Every day we hear people’s opinions on jailbreaking. Should folks be allowed to do it? Isn’t’ jailbreaking illegal now? Or, the most popular one, it will mess up your iPhone 5 and you will never be able to use it again.

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Jailbreaking isn’t as straightforward as people think it is.  For the developer,Jailbreaking your iPhone 5 – The Good, The Bad, and the Downright Ugly Articles it requires months of hard work, sometimes with slow progress, before anything resembling a useable tool can be produced. After that they have develop the tool for the computer and then comes weeks of testing before the consumers can even think about getting their hands on it.

The developer team members generally work for nothing but they do it gladly, to produce that tethered or untethered jailbreak that allows us to slip past Apple’s security. So here, for your information, is a round-up of the truth about jailbreaking:

The Good

The good news is jailbreaking is perfectly legal on an iPhone and an iPod Touch. Under an exemption to the DMCA – Digital Millenium Copyright Act – it will remain legal through 2015 until a review takes place.

Jailbreaking is safe and you will not destroy your device. A little tip here though; follow the developers’ guidelines thoroughly and, if you have any questions, ask them.

Jailbreaking is a wonderful way of giving your iPhone 5 a reason to live. With the number of jailbreak tools available and the sheer number of apps in Cydia, there isn’t a great deal you can’t do to your Apple device.

The Bad

The bad news is, although it is legal to jailbreak the iPhone 5, it isn’t legal to jailbreak an iPad, at least not yet. We can only hope that, in 2015, that decision is changed.

Another piece of bad news – if you do jailbreak your iPhone, although it isn’t illegal, you will find that Apple voids your warrant. That is, if they know about it. If you need to take your iPhone 5 back to an Apple repair center, simply restore it to factory settings and remove the jailbreak.

The Downright Ugly

Unfortunately, there is always a downside to everything and jailbreaking is no exception. The actual act of jailbreaking is fine, it’s what happens afterwards.

Cydia is the jailbreak app store and, although it doesn’t contain as many apps as the Apple app store, it does have a fair few. Unlike the Apple store, these apps are not put through any checking or testing procedures first.

Most of the software and apps available on Cydia are perfectly safe – the developers are honest people who just want to help out other folks. However, there will always be unscrupulous people who take great pleasure in pushing out malware and viruses. Or, they will advertise an app as being compatible with every device when in fact it is compatible with very few.

There is no way of checking these apps before you download them. All you can do is make sure you back your device up regularly in case you do get a problem and have to restore. IF you do you will lose your jailbreak but it will only take a couple of minutes to reinstall it.

As you can see, contrary to what some people say, there really isn’t a great deal wrong with the process of jailbreaking. All you can do is be vigilant, follow developers’ instructions properly and all should be well.

One tip we can give you is this: before you jailbreak, read users reviews of the tool you are going to use. Do the same with any app from Cydia – the internet is full of user reviews and comments so make use of them.

If you do come across suspect apps or packages in Cydia report them and do leave your own user reviews for other folks to read.

Jailbreaking is meant to be a fun, safe and easy experience. Let’s keep it that way.