Will jailbreaking your iPhone void your warranty?

The tone of bitter sarcasm in this article is far less than what I enjoy from TUAW.

If it was against warranty - they'd have said so clearly to avoid the argument. It's not so they have to make it muddy. That should be obvious.

However, you mess with the phone beyond what Apple expects and you can forget them cutting you slack when you bring it in with problems. That should be common sense.

If a Genius was inclined to help you out and go the extra mile you can kiss that goodbye if you bring it in JB'ed or tell them you had.

Just bomb it back to the stone age with a restore and keep your mouth shut. Don't expect miracles when you've tweaked the heck out of it.

Um.

What just happened?

Here's a newsflash, it's not Apple that gets hurt by people who jailbreak iPhones, it's developers. Apple has already made its money by selling the phone in the first place.

What happens next is that people start to install applications that they haven't legally purchased from iTunes. It may start small with plenty of justification: "Oh, Apple doesn't allow try before you buy, so I'll just stick such-and-such an app on my phone for a couple of days to see if I like it", or "I'm going to review all the lawnmower apps, but such-and-such a developer won't gift me a free copy!", or "such-and-such an app is ridiculously expensive and I only want it for its print capabilities - it's not like I am going to use it every day", or "It's Apple's fault for having such oppressive app approval policies - frankly they deserve it".

But, however it starts, it always ends up in the same place - with the honest developer being ripped off. This is why I don't bother developing for the Windows marketplace anymore - because the piracy market is so sophisticated that you are lucky if only one in five of the people using your application have actually paid for it.

If the iPhone app market is going to descend into the same black hole then all I can say is heaven help the small developer. I don't agree with this new ruling. I support Apple and frankly hope that they do all they can to shut down jailbreaking and software piracy on their platforms, including if necessary using the kill switch.

And while I'm up here on my high horse, let me just say that TUAW and other sites that speak out in favour of jailbreaking, and even do it themselves, are just making the situation worse by tacitly encouraging software piracy.

Yeah. Chevy canceled my warranty because I installed a new radio, lowered my ride, and panted cool logos on the side.

The legality of jailbreaking has zero relevance to whether or not doing so voids your warranty. Companies have all sorts of Legal things you can not do with a product that will void its warranty... nice to see people making an issue out of a non-issue here again (sigh).

@Victor

Actually doing a complete restore doesn't wipe any and all evidence. If anything crashes on the jailbroken side of things, it creates a log of that crash. I've seen those crash logs persist through restorations of the devices.

Most of the time, the Genii won't say anything about it, but sometimes they can still *tell* that you've been jailbroken.

Other than wanting a different service provider, why jailbreak anymore?

Apple today announced a revolutionary new terms of service policy. You now get a magic response when you ask questions about jailbreaking your iPhone.

The policy includes a clarification on warranty voiding unlike any you've ever seen before. This policy will fundamentally change the way you think about using your iPhone.

Google is unavailable for comment.

Now THAT's a true professional way to mention "jailbreaking becoming legal". Thumbs up, guys!
I'm glad to see you guys didn't commit the same mistakes your friends at CoM did, by posting an entire Jailbreaking Guide and a special post on how to install pirated apps on your iPhone.
Keep up the always-good work!