Apple dislikes jailbreaking for a number of reasons...let us count the ways

Chauncey Dupree
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July 28, 2009
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Apple doesn't want people jailbreaking.  Not even a little bit it.  If you don't mind reading through 45 pages of legalese, you'll see why.  It really boils down to these 13 reasons:

  1. Crashes & instability
  2. Malfunctioning & safety
  3. Invasion of privacy
  4. Exposing children to age-inappropriate content
  5. Viruses & malware 
  6. Inability to update software
  7. Cellular network impact 
  8. Piracy of developers’ applications 
  9. Instability of developers’ applications 
  10. Increased support burden 
  11. Developer relationships
  12. The Apple/iPhone brand 
  13. Limitation on ability to innovate

All of these seem like legitimate reasons for keeping out jailbreakers until you consider that iPhones are computers.  If Apple wins this arguement, why wouldn't computer makers be able to dictate what is put on a 3G enabled notebook?  Could you modify the EFI/BIOS on a laptop?  What's the difference?

Wired took a particularly hard look at the cell tower's danger:

The EFF has asked the regulators for the DMCA exemption, (.pdf) which would allow consumers to run any app on the phone, including those not authorized by Apple.

Fred von Lohmann, the EFF attorney who made the request, said Apple’s latest claims are preposterous. During a May public hearing on the issue in Palo Alto, California, he told regulators there were as many as a million unauthorized, jailbroken phones.

In an interview Tuesday, he said he suspected those phones have not been used to destroy mobile phone towers. “As far as I know, nothing like that has ever happened,” he said.

He added that, if Apple’s argument was correct, the open-source Android phone from Google on T-Mobile networks would also be a menace to society. ”This kind of theoretical threat,” von Lohmann said, “is more FUD than truth.”

Apple also claimed that jailbreaking would pave the way for hackers to alter the Exclusive Chip Identification number that identified the phone to the cell tower, which could enable calls to be made anonymously. Apple said “this would be desirable to drug dealers.”

Comments (27)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | July 28, 2009 - 9:09pm

crashes and instability? maybe but jailbreakers have mobile substrate or whats it called to help relieve some of that. (always have a good backup people) malfunction and safety? same as crashes and instability?? invasion of privacy? (please enlighten me someone) 4: maybe, but what child has an iPhone and jailbroke it? virus and malware? to an extent? (enlighten me again someone) 6: ok i agree 7: agree 8:? a little. 9: possibly but don't developers update anymore? support is mainly on the internet anyway (go to forums) limitation on ability to innovate?? wtf (enlighten me someone)

in all some of these points i agree with but still, somethings should be given to us without jailbreak. i mean come on give me a way to change my springboard backgrounds!! seriously. other applications like GV Mobile and Dock and stuff are just more benefits.

Gazoobee (not verified) | July 28, 2009 - 9:40pm

I'm so sick of this jailbreaking crap and the articles defending it. It's so juvenile. No one is stopping you from doing anything, they just don't want you legally doing it and having everyone do it. If you want to jailbreak your stupid phone just do it and STFU.

noobie (not verified) | July 28, 2009 - 9:49pm

take it easy dude... it's bad for your overall health when you get angry!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 4:09am

Sounds like your still in the flip phone era buddy!!!!! time to upgrade. try it you'll be relieved of all your stress of pressing the number 5 eight times before you can get the capital letter that you want.

rsbell (not verified) | July 28, 2009 - 9:51pm

Gazoobee,

You miss the point completely!

If Apple/AT&T would be reasonable about this, there would be no reason to jailbreak.

Instead, they limit the uses for the phone I paid good money for, as well as limit the types of apps I choose to buy and use. THEY are limiting innovation by arbitrarily removing apps and limiting the kinds of apps available.

I mean, no Slingbox over 3g when it's available over 3g on every other smartphone AT&T sells?! WTF?

And what can't we change the themes? Ridiculous!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 6:21am

The only problem is "what is reasonable"? What is reasonable often conflicts with business sense.

If Apple allowed theming, people with poor taste would make the phones look ugly? So what? You ask - well, when your friend sees your ugly phone, they don't want to buy one.
If Apple allowed background processes, you'd complain about poor battery life and the phone would get a bad reputation.
If Apple allowed port, conservative people wouldn't buy them, especially for their kids
If Apple allowed VOIP apps, AT&T would jack up iPhone plans preventing people from buying them. Until carriers get the idea that they're only there to provide the service and not dictate how its used, we'll be stuck with this behaviour.

All of the things jailbreakers want conflict with good business sense. So, if you want to jailbreak, go do it, but don't complain that Apple doesn't do it for you - they're trying to keep the platform successful.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 8:26am

Using this same logic, we shouldn't let people load windows onto a Bootcamp partition as someone may think that the hardware it is running on is crap.

Listen, at some point, everyone needs to realize that we, the consumers, have paid quite a bit of money for the devices we're talking about here. And, we should ultimately be the ones that decide what we can do with them. The hardware should not and cannot continue to belong to the manufacturer. That's preposterous.

If I bought a car and spray-painted spots all over it, who cares if it makes the manufacturer look bad?

noobie (not verified) | July 28, 2009 - 11:16pm

"Apple dislikes jailbreaking..."

NO WAY MAN! SHUT UP! 9to5mac articles are becoming more and more a waste of bandwidth!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 12:03am

The only point I agree is app piracy. Nothing else.

Daniel (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 12:05am

If I designed piece of art device, I also wouldn't allow anyone to do anything they want with it for a simple reason... Someone out there is going to jailbreak it, stuff it with applications that he doesn't even need, half of them will run in a background, the other half will cause system to hang every hour...

Then the same person will spread over the internet and all friends how bad iPhone is, with battery dying after 4 hours, and phone crashing constantly... and there we go, another VIsta....

noobie (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 9:58am

I'd say go smoke another one... nothing in life is worth the stress!

crsfc (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 12:06am

I've jailbreaked my phone twice and both times I quickly got fed up with the frequent crashes/resetting of my phone and just the overall sluggishness of everything.

plex (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 1:20am

I have also jailbreaked my iphone, actually only once, but I too got fed up with the same things as unstability, slowness, crashes and just the general missing Quality assurance filter there is on the app store.

besides that, it is not even worth jailbreaking, when you take the above into consideration, after firmware 3.x was released..

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 12:10am

same here... reverted back to normal firmware.

jailbreaking is not worth it, at least not with firmware 3.x

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 5:50am

you just have to wait till everything is 3.0 compatible. you can't go to 3.x and then expect everything to work like magic. right now most of the things that i need are running on 3.x.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 12:31am

Nobody these days expects a computer to be free of bugs.
Windows users expect odd behaviours any time, Mac users hope they are not hit too much, Linux users hope theis systems work some time ;-)

From a mobile phone I expect to do it's core job any time, without crashing.

Joe (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 1:10am

I used to admired Mr Steve Jobs for his pursuit of perfection. I'll admire him again when he lifts the restrictions on iPhone.

If you ask me, the restrictions is practically an antitrust practice. Isn't Apple under-estimating itself by adopting such a sales tactic?

iPhone is a good computer with phone calling capability. Until it can be used freely as a computer, though I have become slightly disappointed by Nokia lately, I'll still stay with Nokia and avoid iPhone.

Warwick Brown (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 1:10am

I have a first gen iPhone running in Australia. So jailbreaking is a must.

Planning to buy a 3GS soon though, so no need for unlock etc.

Thus I wouldn't jailbreak the 3GS except for one little thing..... Jailbroken Flashlight apps turn the screen white and pump the brightness to 100%. App Store ones just turn the screen white, which is useless considering the iPhone dims itself when it's dark. This is one thing I simply refuse to live without. Other jailbreak features like being able to SSH in and modify files are cool, no doubt, but not essential.

I can't see why developers can't be allowed to directly sell apps via their websites (with a giant warning popping up about how it might not be safe and you should use the App Store) if they get rejected. I understand Apple only wants its store to be associated with good apps, but that doesn't mean bad ones can't be sold elsewhere. For example - Amazon won't sell porn, because it'd tarnish their image, but other stores will.

TechyRenzo (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 1:46am

This is stupid. And to think I was beginning to like apple. They are worried about using iphone for anonymous calls, they wont even track down stolen iphones… If they are so worried about crime why dont they try to help people that lost their iphones. But they wont because they want you to buy a new one. Its all about money they dont care about the consumer. They just want you to spend all your money on their apps, so they dont want you to have extra features that jailbreaking offers, that will open up your iphone, they want to add the new features when the next iphone generation comes out for you to spend your hard earned case on...

crsfc (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 3:22am

With 3.0 they added the ability to find your lost phone if you have a mobile me account. so, umm yeah, you're wrong and stuff

Co-ords (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 3:28am

The main reason I jail-broke my iPhone yesterday was to be able to re-skin the phone. I'm not interested in any appz, or any of that stuff. Bring out an official skinning app and I'm sure many will stay away from jail-breaking.

rsbell (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 7:20am

This is the only reason I jailbroke my iPhone as well.

I haven't installed any non-"official" apps.

I just want to skin my phone to look like I want it to look.

I haven't experienced any slowdowns or crashes.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 5:53am

people are saying that they are worried about anonymous calling? can't you call anonymously with *67 or some number like that??

PeterZ (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 6:24am

Desirable for drug dealers!?!??!

God forbid we want to make a phone call without Apple and AT&T (Not to mention N.S.A.) knowing and recording the contents of that call.

How long before you get into a heated discussion with someone on the phone and cops show up to restrain you? You know, just making sure you're not going through with those "threats" you made on the phone.

9to5Mac Noobish (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 10:43am

Huh... so Apple does have a sense of humor.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | July 29, 2009 - 4:47pm

Gee, I guess apple has got it all wrong and the iphone will be a terrible failure...

If you buy a car and want it to go faster, you can bolt on lots of aftermarket goodies and go crazy...

but there is a butterfly effect to every action and you can't expect the car maker (or apple) to take any responsibility for your what happens to you or your customised jobby...

so if you want to add NOS or jailbreak your phone, go for it... your choice...

but like the man said... just do it and stfu!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | July 31, 2009 - 12:59pm

And the lawyer says “As far as I know, nothing like that has ever happened,”.

Yeah, right ... as if he has any clue. Of course, if it does happen (and this guy is so unbelievably naive and uninformed about actual technology and hidden dangers), I'd guess he'll be the first to file a lawsuit for damages against the perpetrators.

He fails to understand the most basic of principles: we do not yet know what we don't know.