Jailbreak 101: Basic Information Everyone Should Know

Apple is one of the most successful organization to hit the techno world. Using their most popular products, people produces including the iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch, iPad and Apple TV and always look out for their latest improvements. And each time a new product comes out, it never fails to be a major strike in the industry. Using its release in year 2007, iPhone mark its name on the market, but right after its release, a Jailbreaking process was found and introduced. Therefore, Apple locked thei iPhones to US provider AT&T a month after, giving hackers concern to repair and exploit security holes.

What is Jailbreak?

Jailbreak or iOS Jailbreak is a procedure that enables Apple's products operating on iOS such as iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone and Apple TELEVISION to gain full use of most of its functions thus removing limits imposed by Apple. With Jailbroken Apple product, user can down load, use and install programs, styles, and extensions which are not recognized by Apple and are not on the iTunes store and/or what we called "cracked" applications.

Nearly a year following the original Jailbreak, an italian hacker named Zibri el Fontu found an important key to brought him to be the first to Jailbreak the iPhone using his plan called ZiPhone. Zibri freely distributed his exploits and rules leading the hacker team named iPhone Dev Team to build the Jailbreaking application PwnageTool to Jailbreak iPhone 2G and 3G and the 1ST generation iPod contact. As early as 2009, Apple release the iOS 3.0 which remained unbroken until the release of iPhone Dev Team's PwnageTool 3.0 and redsnow 0.7.2 after 3 weeks. The iOS 3.0 was quickly followed up by iOS 3.1 which was then Jailbroken by iPhone Dev Team releasing a new version of PwnageTool, all Apple devices were Jailbroken except iPod Touch. Nevertheless the Jailbreaking genius George Hotz (a.k.a. Geohot) release his first device Blackra1n to "tether" Jailbreak all Apple devices. In March 2010 Wii Homebrew builder Comex released a test of an "untethered" Jailbreak using his device called Spirit. Following the discharge of iPad 3G, Comex's Spirit was launched Jailbreaking all Apple products working on 3.1-3.2, untethered. Not until early 2010, Jailbreaking becomes legitimate beneath the DMCA in Usa and several other countries like Europe even though Apple claim it to void the warranty. So far Jailbreaking is still developing as new Apple units or firwares are released.

What is Tethered and Untethered Jailbreak?

Many people, specially the beginners in Jailbreaking don't know the big difference between a tether Jailbreak and untethered Jailbreak. Well to allow it to be short and distinct, Tethered Jailbreaking is a kind of Jailbreak that still depends on the software used to Jailbreak a system every time it needs to reboot, meaning, everytime the connected product is hard booted, switch off or ran out of battery it can not start on a jailbroken state unless you connect it to the computer and run the application you applied to Jailbrake it, saying some of the process of Jailbreaking. While on the other hand, Untethered Jailbreak, all products under this Jailbreak can independently restart itself anytime, preserving its Jailbroken state without requiring the application used to Jailbreak it.

Learn more about best ways to jailbreak iPod Touch