Hiring a new sheriff: Apple clamping down on jailbreaking to soothe corporate angst?

With regard to analytical skills, John Cox is only one step above Rob Enderle.

If you're not sure what that means... let's just say that it's not a compliment.

I own 3 iPhones, 2 that are no longer on contract. How do I hand them on to friends and family? Wait for Apple to pull a thumb out? Or actually use an application that works and donate to the hacker that supplied the fix?
Well which one do you think is more reliable?
My money is always on the hacker! Also if I go abroad, am I supposed to pay a fortune to use my mobile? or hack it and buy a pay as you go SIM?
This is not only Apple's fault but also the mobile companies...

I (sort of) understand why Apple would want to try to eliminate security holes in the iphone os so unlocking and jailbreaking is not feasible, but the ipod touch? That can't be legal - what argument would they have for preventing us from jailbreaking to use custom themes, backgrounder, etc? Sounds pretty illegal of them, to me. We bought it, we should be able to do anything we want with it, considering there is no "contract" like you would have with the iphone.

I was thinking a lot about this today. It now makes sense why Apple initially tried to partner with Verizon for the iPhone in the U.S.. Their CDMA phones would have made unlocking that much more difficult. The lack of a SIM card would have sandboxed it in pretty tight. The other carriers would have to knowingly activate a phone not intended for their network and would have been able to control data usage costs much more easily.

The network quality would have been much more solid too. Verizon with an iPhone would have been fabulous. And may be a negotiating point in future partnerships.

"To us, it appears that Apple is just trying to maintain and improve security for the iPhone platform, something that will benefit all iPhone owners."

C'mon, you just threw that out there to boost the comment rate on this non-news, right? Saying something that is patently untrue ("all") not just of your readership, but even of that editorial "us", as we all well know. Please correct your error -- or wade into the deep politics of telling us how something we don't want is nevertheless better for us.

Blacksnow is not a jailbreak tool it is an unlocking tool
a user must run a jailbreak process in order to access the root of the phone apple has protected in order to run the scripts which enable the unlock.

I am sure a good 75% of users here understand this but:

jailbreak: the act of opening your phone to be able to run non apple approved apps -the phone can still stay on the original carrier.

Unlock: the act of modifying the baseband (software used to instruct the phone to look for either a specific network like AT&T or any network as determined by the sim card inserted into the phone

Not everyone who jailbreaks will unlock and blacksn0w is for unlocking. Blackta1n is a jailbreak

i am pointing this out because it seems very irresponsible for this site to confuse them.

Of the two processes, a jailbroken phone is the less problematic if you require service as a jailbreak can be 100% undone via a fresh restore.
An unlock on the other hand often modifes files that stay modified.

Long and short - a jailbreak will almost never "brick" your phone. An unlock is a little more likely to run into permanent problems.

As much as people would love to have Apple open up the iPhone and eliminate the need for jailbreaking, I think the community has already shown its trustworthiness with such power through the RickRoll worm. Leaving a root password set default and without instruction to users who wouldn't know better is plain stupid. I've been waiting for alpine to rear its ugly head since the first time I tried a jailbreak. The bottom line is that jailbreaking is giving power to users who don't understand what's going on, and can't wield it correctly. I think an enterprise user fits squarely in this category as I've seen plenty of them in my own organization who are more than happy to blindly install firmware hacks and unofficial/unapproved software without any second thought.

There are of course downsides to an unjailbreakable iPhone that may make iPhone less desirable for some users, but I really doubt those few users leaving the platform would put much of a dent in the iPhone user base. I like the idea of "if you can't open it, you don't own it," but realistically, I'm not sold on opening the iPhone being as easy as jailbreaking is today.

Umm, what now? Improving security will benefit all iPhone users? Maybe the ones that don't jailbreak or need/use jailbreak features.

Maybe if they were less insane with their restrictions, we wouldn't need our phones to have terrible security in order to use them to their fullest.

If Apple were to offer similar functionality JB/UL, which enterprise (phone owners) could securely DISABLE, then the JB/UL community would all but vanish overnight. Enterprises (phone owners) could then disable the functionality in their "secure" environments and those that wanted to could install and switch carriers to their hearts content. There wouldn't be an active JB/UL community to attack the included lock down mechanism and everyone would be happy even Apple...

Maybe Apple should work on keeping MobileMe up and running instead of wasting their resources on stopping jailbreaking.