Why I jailbroke my iPhone

I was one of those iPhone purists for quite awhile. Why jailbreak I thought, the risk of screwing it up isn't worth it. Then I learned how easy it is to recover your iPhone to factory settings. If all else fails, you can force restore via iTunes.

In time jailbreaking became more popular and apps that Apple would never approve for their store started showing up. The thing is, some of these apps are ingenious. Some are not really apps at all, but tweaks. Want five icons in your dock instead of four? Their is a tweak for it. Want to create folders to put all like apps in one spot thus saving you tons of room on the springboard? Their is an app for that. Want tethering now? Want to customize anything? Want to make your own theme? Want different sounds? You get the idea, their is an app for it. Just not with apple. I'm surprised that they don't offer many of these standard on the iPhone actually.

Can Apples recent success have gone to their heads? Perhaps they have become so involved in admiring their greatness they can't see the forest for the trees. Innovation can come from everywhere and they should not be shutting out these new innovators unlocking the hidden capabilities of this great phone.

When you jailbreak your phone, which is a matter of downloading a program like redsn0w and running it while your iPhone is hooked up via usb cable you get a new app called cydia. This app gives you access to all the goodies and more above. Cydia has also created its own app store. No pirated apps allowed! Apple has turned its lawyers loose and they want to shut it down. The thing is, I don't feel they can after reading some law case studies about the topic. A company can not lock its system down to prevent third parties from developing programs to run on it. That stifles innovation.

Apple is being a bit pigheaded about this and I can understand why. The app store is generating huge profits for them and they want to protect that. However, when you don't approve apps for things like a typo somewhere, or don't even give a reason is ridiculous. To not approve an app because it mirrors something one of your apps does is something Microsoft would do. Dear Apple, you are not like Microsoft but you are starting to act like them in regards to your app store policies.

Anyway, back to why I jailbroke my iPhone. Basically, I was curious. It seemed hard to do and apps hard to find just reading about the process online. However, it is one of those things that if you are half way smart about things once you do it everything you were reading that didn't make sense suddenly does. So I took the plunge and jailbroke my precious iPhone. I then downloaded themes, tweaks, apps, and sounds. I changed at&t to my first name and the clock on the main screen now says my design company name. My background and icons look like glass and when I lock and unlock my iPhone it makes the lightsaber on and off sounds respectively. When my phone is charging it has a cool looking sphere that has blue fluid in it to show how much my iPhone is charged. I have folders for games, tools, shopping, and misc. I can link it to my macbook pro via wifi and transfer files back and forth, or I can connect with a usb and do the same thing. I can play Zelda on NES or SNES thanks to some sweet emulators. Your non jailbroke iPhone can only dream of the things my jailbroke iPhone can do...

A Petition to Apple about App approvals

This is an open letter to Apple.

Dear Apple,

You have a great product with the iPhone, and your app store is great. However, with the advent of 3.0 you introduced a rating system yet do not take advantage of it. I can name several apps that were fine before 3.0, as in they were approved. When said apps were forced to do an update to work correctly they were not approved! This type of business practice is unfair to the developers and the users that love those apps.

It is time to loosen the standards a little bit. If an app is rated 17+ then it should be expected to contain a bit of nudity. Not porn of course, but nudity. That is the reason for ratings is it not?

Further, the approval process needs to be examined as it takes way to long for something to get approved in your store. What will it take to open your eyes that the end user is getting tired of the tyrannical way in which you are running the app store? Perhaps if the iPhone community started jailbreaking their phones on a grand scale and using apps not from the app store would your eyes open up.

Do not make the mistake of trying to rule with an iron fist. It is not your job to play nanny state with the populace on what we have on our phone and what is or isn't allowed. Open up your standards and use the ratings as they are intended or deal with the fact us users will be jailbreaking our phones to get what we want.

Petitioners, sign in the comment section. When this reaches several thousand it will be sent on to Apple to show them we are serious.