To Jailbreak or Not to Jailbreak

Since the beginning, people have been trying to jailbreak the iPhone. Ever since the first iPhone was jailbroken, there has been a debate on whether or not jailbreaking is legal. The Supreme Court ruled last summer that jailbreaking is legal, so there is no longer any need to worry that you are breaking the law if you jailbreak.

Definition

What exactly is jailbreaking? Jailbreaking is the process of breaking the security that Apple has put into iOS. Apple's security requires all applications to be signed by Apple before they can be executed. This is so that only Apple-approved applications can run on iOS devices. Once a device has been jailbroken, any application, Apple-approved or not, can run on it.

Pros

The obvious pro to jailbreaking is the ability to run unapproved applications. Also, you can customize the appearance of iOS by installing themes. Themes range from Mac-like themes to TV show themes. Developers get the biggest advantage because they can write command line tools for the iPhone in virtually any programming language that is still maintained.

Cons

Jailbreaking voids the warranty, so you should wait until your warranty expires. Also, if your iPhone is an older one, it may crash more frequently. Another problem is that it is significantly more complicated to manage a jailbroken iPhone than it is to manage a standard iPhone. Another problem worth noting is that breaking Apple's security also breaks your iPhone's defense against viruses.

The Verdict

After weighing the pros and cons, I decided that jailbreaking is worth it once you are out of your warranty period. The frequent crashing actually depends on what theme you have installed, so I found a theme that increased the crash frequency by only one or two times a month. To solve the problem of complexity, you should decide which applications you want all at one time and go through the complex process only once.

A Company Divided

We recently took a survey at Tarada and it turns out that half of the employees are for jailbreaking and the other half are against jailbreaking. The employees that are against jailbreaking will put together an article from their point of view and post it here soon.

Your View

If you have a view on jailbreaking, we would love to hear from you! Just write a comment.

PlainText for iPhone Reviewed

PlainText is a plain text editor for iPhone and iPad. It has a simple, clean interface. It's most notable features are Dropbox syncing and TextExpander support.

Interface

When you start PlainText, a list of notes comes up. There are two notes from the developer. The settings section has some options for when you are editing, a section for linking to your Dropbox account, and an option to enable TextExpander.

There is a button to create folders and to create text documents. The ability to create folders is great. My previous plain text editor uses tags, which can't be organized hierarchically.

Dropbox Syncing

Dropbox syncing is just as I expected, flawless. You can make a chroot-like environment so you can't access your entire Dropbox folder. This is especially useful when you always want to keep your synced documents in the same subdirectory of your Dropbox account.

TextExpander

I have never used TextExpander, mainly because my previous editor didn't support it. PlainText has convinced me to buy it. Expect a review of it in the coming weeks.

The Verdict

If you are a blogger like me, I recommend downloading PlainText. It's on the App Store for free!

PlainText
Price: Free
Platforms: All iOS devices (universal app)