jailbreak

An unidentified hacker behind a hack called Dream Jailbreak pulled a fast one on countless iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch owners today with the announcement and heavy teasing of an untethered iOS 6 jailbreak, or software that lets users gain deep access to their device without fear of losing it all after rebooting.

In a proof-of-concept video posted earlier, the unidentified hacker connects his iPhone 5 to a computer via USB; accesses a Web site through Safari (the identity of the site is blurred in the vid); and then runs an application called Dream (coming to Windows and Mac) on his computer. After a few flashes of code, the iPhone 5 reboots with popular third-party app and code installer Cydia in place and a world of third-party software just a tap away.… Read more

Jailbreak has all the makings of a fun game: fun graphics and simple gameplay. However, a major glitch and lack of a help feature didn't leave us coming back for more.

Jailbreak opens with the Main Menu. There, you can turn the sound off and on, select the game's difficulty, and check the high score. We would have like to see some kind of a help feature to tell us how the game works, but it didn't include one. After selecting the Normal difficultly level, we tapped New Game to get started. Our little inmate appeared on … Read more

JailbreakMe is an app that jailbreaks (unlocks from a specific carrier) your iPhone. It allows full access to all functions built into the iPhone, as well as some apps that are not available through the App Store. JailbreakMe is itself not available through the App Store but is on many download sites including the authors' sites.

Before running JailbreakMe you should make a backup through iTunes so you can restore the iPhone to its original state should you have problems with JailbreakMe or any app installed once broken. Installing the app is as simple as running the download and then … Read more

I'll catch some flak for this, but I still like Siri.

In fact, I find it extremely useful for things like setting reminders and sending text messages hands-free. It's not perfect, but neither is it as useless as many people seem to think.

That said, Google's newly updated Voice Search is all kinds of awesome. It's blazing-fast, amazingly accurate, and in many ways just plain smarter than Siri. Use it a few times and you'll immediately start wishing you could ditch Siri for it -- or, at the very least, make it as push-button accessible.… Read more

iOS 6.0.1 users can now jailbreak their devices, but there are some bumps in the road.

The latest version of the iPhone Dev Team's Redsn0w can jailbreak iOS 6.0.1 devices, Redmond Pie confirmed today after testing the update.

However, not everyone can take advantage of the effort at this point.

The jailbreak works only on iOS devices powered by an A4 chip or lower. People who own the iPhone 5, the newest iPads, or the latest iPod Touch are out of luck. The jailbreak takes advantage of the Limera1n exploit, which can't handle the … Read more

The U.S. Copyright Office published its new set of rules on whether people can jailbreak smartphones, tablets, and gaming consoles today; it also outlined the guidelines on DVD copying.

Overwhelmingly, its conclusions were that besides smartphones, all of the above remain illegal.

Every three years the Copyright Office takes requests from digital rights proponents and opponents to re-examine the laws under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that dictate whether people can unlock or jailbreak their varied devices. Today, in a lengthy document (PDF), the government listed all of the changes it made.

The key developments are that people cannot … Read more

Remember when you could hide the Newsstand icon in a folder on your iOS device as long as you were fast enough? Good times. When Apple fixed the bug that allowed us to hide the folder, it was only a matter of time before a non-jailbreak method made its way to the Internet.

As iDownloadBlog pointed out this morning, the solution is StifleStand, a Mac app (a Windows version is in the works) that creates a magical folder on your iOS device with Newsstand conveniently placed inside it. The best part is you don't have to worry about jailbreaking … Read more

Jailbreaking isn't for everyone. Cydia is quick to overwhelm even the tech-savvy user, and upgrading iOS software on a jailbroken device can be a headache-inducing process.

Whether you've discovered that jailbreaking isn't for you, or you need to take your iDevice to the Genius Bar for repair, you'll need to unjailbreak your device.

There are plenty of forums, blog posts, and YouTube videos that attempt to guide you through this process. Many are outdated, and, in some cases, incorrect.

So, to find the proper way to unjailbreak an iDevice, I went to the source. Nikias Bassen, … Read more

Absinthe 2.0 has been released, bringing with it an untethered jailbreak for iOS devices running iOS 5.1.1. The jailbreak is compatible with almost every iOS device, with the lone exception being the revised $399 iPad 2 with 32nm A5 chip. A solution for the "new" iPad 2 will be released at a later date.

Before you begin, it's my job to remind you that jailbreaking your device is something you do at your own risk. Things are bound to go wrong when you're messing with settings Apple never intended for users to mess … Read more