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paxy | on: Today, we hacked what we'd set out to hack: the iPhone
Man, sucks to see these "hacked" iPhones doing so many cooler things than my Apple-approved one.
vessenes | parent | next
It’s a mix - for years I wanted root on my iPhones, just like you got on android. In practice, once I had it…? I never did much beyond installing Cydia.

With today’s hardware I might have a different take - the 18 has more than enough hardware to be a laptop so maybe I’d use it for a docking mode. But my gut is I’d probably still want a laptop even then.

To me the upshot is : billions of development, software and hardware, have gone into the platforms - it’s hard to quickly make them significantly better.

wavemode | root | parent | next
When I owned an iPod touch, the advantage of jailbreaking was to give your device certain features that the OS just didn't support. (Hell, I remember early days when iOS didn't even have a concept of wallpaper, the background was just black.)

iOS has come a long way since those days so a lot of the most common use cases of the past are no longer necessary. But the principle is the same - the hardware is a general-purpose computer but the software is locked down unnecessarily in many ways. Jailbreaking lets you do things that are outside of Apple's box.

ryandrake | root | parent | next
A much-needed advantage is also keeping old devices useful. Every Apple phone slowly outlives its supported software to the point where the official AppStore has almost nothing in it. Today, it's extremely difficult to find 3P apps that work with my current iPhone 7, which is not that old, because the ecosystem cuts off old phones very quickly.
vessenes | root | parent
I agree, and, if you have a developer certificate from Apple, the list of wants I have is ... not that long? zero? I'd love to be pitched on it. In practice, I wanted freedom, but didn't really want to do anything with it.
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joshstrange | root | parent | next
I jailbroke every iPhone I had for many, many years. Most of the time it was silly skins/tweaks but there were a number of things that were huge QoL improvements. I remember BiteSMS and using it as a way to reply to a text directly in the notification instead of having to leave the app. This was before iOS had that feature and before multitasking, back when if you left the game you were playing the app would quit. Also had folders before stock iOS, things like Control Center, and a whole slew of little tweaks for other apps I used.

The downside to jailbreaking was often the instability but that was also back when the phones were way less powerful. Today, armed with LLMs, I would love to have root on my iPhone again. I'd love to rip out Siri and replace it with Claude Code or something like that.

psygn89 | root | parent | next
There's just less reason today for someone like me that liked the utilitarian benefits of a jailbroken iPhone. I used it for gestures, caller mini preview, grouped notifications, etc. All things that are now baked in.
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deadbabe | root | parent
The only reason to do this today is to turn your iPhone into a tool for other nefarious purposes or clickbot type farms.
Zak | parent | next
I'm for being able to hack your own device to do whatever you like with it, preferably without active resistance from its manufacturer. I'm against anybody who can convince you to open a PDF being able to hack your device to do whatever they like with it.
wavemode | root | parent | next
The point the parent commenter is making is that they want Apple to allow people the freedom to intentionally mod the functionality of their device. Not that they literally want single-click PDF exploits to be a thing.
paxy | root | parent | next
Who is saying this?
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bigyabai | root | parent | next
iOS has enough zero-click exploits that you don't exactly get a choice between the two.
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chrisbrandow | parent | next
What in these videos is so much cooler than what you can do on an Apple approved one? Other than, "As a programmer, I can do anything", I just personally don't see any capabilities unlocked that I can't have with an app or whatever. But I might be missing something.
NetMageSCW | root | parent | next
The only thing I really miss from my jailbreak days is an app that could talk to the cellular baseband and display all cell towers nearby on a map and showed which you were using.

I used to have my home screens fully customized but that’s a lot of work creating icons for hundreds of apps. Or even dozens.

lstb1t | root | parent
1. install apps without the app store so we dont ahve to pay 100 bucks yearly for it to apple

2. run linux

3. run emulators

4. run VMs

5. install steam

6. make it a media server

etc

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al_borland | parent
I watched the “Can your iPhone do this?” video, assuming that was the coolest one. The others seemed like they’d just be showing the exploit.

It seemed like a silly party trick with no practical purpose, and required the terminal to reset things back to normal so the phone was useful again. Why does anyone want this? Surely there are better uses than what was demoed?

I used to jailbreak during the first few years of iPhone. I remember being able to drag out from the bottom right corner of the screen to have a launcher, similar to the Dock, but with more stuff. But over time, the iOS got more features and the argument for jailbreaking became less compelling. This is especially true now that so much sensitive information is in our phones… so I trust all this stuff that effectively has root?

bredren | root | parent
I took this as a demonstration of ownage on the latest release, versus an attempt to show some jailbreak-only feature.

The evidence of hack is the feature.