Over the weekend, Pangu released their iOS jailbreak for the Mac, which is the capstone on a weeks-long journey of incremental releases that brought the wonders of non-Apple-approved software to iDevice users bit by bit according to their level of tinkering devotion. Last week, after an aborted attempt, I managed to jailbreak my iPhone 5S, and though I’m still dealing with some of my favorite tweaks not having been updated to work with the new OS, I’m pretty happy with the update, and I can recommend it for most users. Read more, for the rest.The Pangu jailbreak for iOS 8 was initially released in October, on Windows, in Chinese, and like many jailbreaks, it was a little finicky, so even those brave enough to attempt it were confronted with error messages they couldn’t understand. Initially, it didn’t install Cydia, so it was basically useless for the casual jailbreaker. By the end of October, Cydia was available as a separate install. It was at this time that I made my first attempt.
If there’s a jailbreak killer app, for me, it’s f.lux. I suffer from a circadian rhythm disorder called Delayed Sleep Phase, commonly known as “being a night owl, and though I can force myself to sleep on a “normal” schedule, I have to be diligent about not falling back into my natural 2:30am to 11:30am schedule, and looking at a lot of blue light in the evening is a sure-fire way to mess up your circadian rhythm. F.lux changes the backlight of your device (it’s available on iOS and Mac) from its natural blue hue to an orange-ish color, so when you lie in bed, staring at your phone (we all do it), you’re not ruining your sleep cycle. Now Apple, in its maddeningly paternalistic fashion, has decided that it’s inappropriate for an app to affect the color profile of all other apps and the OS itself, so it won’t let f.lux into the app store. You know what? F*ck what Apple wants. Enter jailbreaking. And because I consider this one app so crucial, I won’t upgrade my OS or buy a new phone without a jailbreak available. Get the message, Cupertino.
So I read through the various tutorials online and tried jailbreaking on Windows with the Chinese version of Pangu, but after getting stopped with an error, I gave up. Pangu 1.1 was released on October 31, and it included Cydia, an English UI, and bug fixes. I was ready to give it another try. I had to go into my settings and turn off Find my iPhone and enable airplane mode, but after that, the install went smoothly.
Opening Cydia, as I had feared, f.lux was not updated, and users were reporting problems on iOS. But I manually added the f.lux repository into my sources and was able to install a beta that worked ok. Over the next few days, the f.lux team released several updates, and it seems to be working reliably now. I had to go through a similar process for TetherMe. Nitrous seemed to work okay. iCleaner wasn’t updated at first, but they released an update a few days ago. I still haven’t updated LinkOpener or MapsOpener, because I’m not sure if they’ll need iOS updates and they’re handy but not crucial (In particular, I prefer Google Maps to Apple Maps). The last of my standard repertoire of jailbreak apps is BiteSMS, a supercharged replacement for the stock messaging app, has not been updated yet, and there’s no indication on their official website or other channels that one is forthcoming, but a guy on Reddit says that in fact they’re working on one. So I’ll take that as gospel truth, as is the case with everything you read on Reddit.
So if you’re a jailbreaker, there’s a pretty good chance that your chosen apps have been or soon will be updated to iOS 8, and with the latest version of Pangu, there’s no reason to hesitate any further. Late last week, the king and prophet of iOS jailbreaking, Saurik, said, “If you are waiting to jailbreak your iOS 8.0-8.1 device until things are “stable enough”: we now seem to be ready!”
Is there a jailbreak app that lets you wireless tether on iOS 8.1 when you’re normally blocked by carriers in the US? I have another phone, carrier-locked Moto X 2013 running 4.4.4, which apparently cannot be rooted, and I’d hate to have to buy another phone just to avoid paying the carrier extortion fees.
Yes. The app I mention in the article, TetherMe, does exactly that.
Tried it once and didn’t find anything compelling, but did get a lot of stability issues so I went back to stock. Now with iOS 8 there are even fewer reasons to jailbreak. What kind of jailbreak tweaks do people use?
I don’t think that the “Read Me” link was very visible, but in the article I lay out my essential tweaks. But I’d also like to learn what other people jailbreak for.
Found the same, unfortunately. I jailbroke my iPad 4th gen to get a few applications Apple still doesn’t allow, only to find that said applications hadn’t been updated and were unstable as a result. The stability issues weren’t worth it on top of the apps I wanted not working. Note: if I used an iPhone, tethering alone would be a reason to jailbreak as the MVNO i’m on permits it but iOS has AT&T policies hard-baked into the os and won’t allow me to tether because of that.
Congratulations to the author on performing a successful jailbreak on your iPhone 5S. By defeating nearly every security, malware, and antivirus prevention feature Apple built into your device, you have opened yourself up to the wonderful world of WireLurker that is going on in China should you ever visit there, and every other iOS threat that lurks in the dark corners of the internet. But you did this of your own free will, with the knowledge that anything can happen to your device now with or without your knowledge. By the same token, I do NOT want to read an article next week on OSNews as to how horrible Apple’s security is in their devices, how horrible the latest malware threat is for Apple devices *(if they are jailbroken in teensy little print), or anything else regarding threats, operation problems or glitches that occur ONLY in iPhones that are behaving badly because they are not being used as intended by the manufacturer. You’re on your own from now on. If that sounds harsh, so be it. When you use a device as it was intended to be used and there is a problem, fine, give Apple or anyone else hell, but if you tinker with it and change everything about it, I don’t care and the company should not care what happens.
Edited 2014-11-12 11:02 UTC
This website is for people who are interested in operating systems and other technology. Maybe something like http://www.cnet.com would be more suitable for you where you can simply use that technological stuff without further thought!
iOS devices can get infected with Wirelurker whether they’re jailbroken or not (and not easily). And ironically, if you are jailbroken, it’s easy to see whether you’ve been infected (you just SSH in and look for a particular file). If you’re not jailbroken, the instruction is to “Check whether there are any suspicious apps you did not install.” Real helpful. I have so many random apps that they’re all suspicious.
The thing preventing me from installing Malware while jailbroken is the same thing preventing me from getting Malware at all. I install apps using an app store (Cydia) that’s run by a trustworthy person, and before I add a 3rd repository, I make sure it’s legit. It’s a lot harder to install sketchy software on jailbroken iOS than it is on Windows or Mac, so why aren’t you scolding me for using Windows?
Don’t worry, I won’t be posting anything about “how horrible Apple’s security is in their devices” unless Apple’s security really is horrible. And it is sometimes, though not often. But I agree with you. If people disable security protections then install malware by accident, they deserve what they get.
I disagree with your statement that it is a lot harder to install sketchy software via a 3rd party software site for jailbroken iPhones than via Apple’s official app store. Maybe I’m way off base, but I trust the vetting of software that Apple does more than some site run by someone I’ve never heard of. Or Cydia.
I jailbroke my origial iPhone 1 and a couple of models after that one, so I am not unfamiliar with how the process works and with the risks, as well as what can happen, which includes software that was extremely buggy and which in some cases required fresh installs and jailbreaking the phone once again. I have never had to restore an iPhone from scratch because of something I downloaded from the iTunes App Store.
The jailbreaking experience was not all hearts and flowers by any means. The Springboard replacements for example did not always operate properly, some crashed incessantly, some of the theming software didn’t work right, there were all sorts of problems, with all sorts of apps, on through successive versions of iOS and further generations of iPhones. I finally got to the point that I didn’t want to bother trying to deal with the bugs and other problems related to jailbreaking my phones and running software that I knew nothing about. My iPhone/iOS experience since then has been pretty much stress-free. Others may have different experiences.
I don’t care what Windows users do, like Mac users, they are free to install software from whatever sources they wish. Because of that freedom, which is completely unrelated to the walled/vetted garden that iOS has, those users are free to trash their computers any time they wish, as long as they understand the risks and take responsibility for the consequences instead of trashing Microsoft or Apple or Dell or Lenovo, etc, for making devices they claim were responsible for something they did to themselves.
That’s the crux of my statement.
You know, when I got to the end of the article and clicked the “comments” link, I honestly did consider posting a snarky comment along the lines of “Gee, I wonder how long it will take before one of the usual suspects comes along and goes on an ‘OMG you terrible person, how DARE you work around the mechanisms that Apple has put in place FOR YOUR OWN GOOD?’ fanboi rant.” Then I thought to myself “no, that’s a little too cynical, even iFanbois aren’t THAT lame.”…
I am still a bit disappointed, though – you completely forgot to accuse him of only jailbreaking in order to pirate paid applications.
Can somebody point me to a good and comprehensive guide on how to create and deploy an app for iDevice? I have an app in Xcode6 written in Swift that I can run in the simulator. I don’t have a paid developer license. Now I want to deploy this app on my iPad.
I thought it would be easy to find a howto on that subject. But I didnt find anything useful so far.