Jailbreaking pros and cons Is it safe to jailbreak an i. Phone or i. Pad For millions of happy users all over the world, the i. Phone is fantastic just as it is. Its beautiful, elegant and easy to use, and there are thousands upon thousands of apps and oodles of content for them to choose on the App Store. And then there are the people who arent so happy. People who want to break free of the restrictions they believe Apple has forced upon us all from the default apps that come with i. IE3_dhc57EY/VGm517UWScI/AAAAAAAAE9g/KliCwvqdKUk/s1600/IntelliScreenX-7-tweak-2.jpg' alt='How To Install Intelliscreenx For Free' title='How To Install Intelliscreenx For Free' />OS to the fact that its underlying structure cannot be customised by individual programmers, third party developers or even users themselves. Activation Adobe Acrobat Pro Dc Windows more. These unhappy people are the jailbreakers. And Apple has been playing a cat and mouse game with them ever since the i. Phone launched in January 2. File also allows you to install packages without having to know terminal commands. You can alter plist files, and transfer files via a web server or via. Max Kueller 1849 06082015. Well Jailbreaking itself does not slow your device down or reduce battery life. After you install 50 or so tweaks your device will. P9F0UnfodM/VHa7DZ2defI/AAAAAAAAAjY/sUMIwJYrgZA/s1600/IntelliScreenX71.png' alt='How To Install Intelliscreenx For Free' title='How To Install Intelliscreenx For Free' />Its easy to understand the jailbreakers frustration. On the Mac you can pretty much do whatever you want to customise your day to day experience with the hardware. If you dont want to use Mail for email or Safari for surfing, you can download alternatives such as Sparrow or Firefox instead. Heck, you can even set them to be the default apps if you want, enabling you to ignore Mail, Safari and Apples other apps altogether. This isnt the case on the i. Phone. While many great alternatives to i. OSs default apps do exist, youll find that i. OS always reverts to the defaults for certain things. Try clicking on an email address or a URL in an app, a document or web page and Mail and Safari will almost always boot up first, no matter which other alternatives you use. Some third party apps do offer the ability to open addresses in Google Maps rather than Apple Maps, but support has to be manually added and its not system wide. Jailbreakers are frustrated by other things too the fact that you cant do simple things like change the i. Phones default look and feel or install apps other than those available from the i. OS App Store. If youre brave enough or wise enough or foolish enough, you can easily tinker with the underpinnings of mac. OS using things like Terminal or rummaging around in the Library folder. No legitimate equivalent for users exist in i. OS. You can only do what Apple lets you do. Unless you jailbreak your i. Phone, that is. In this article were going to examine jailbreaking and the reasons for and against jailbreaking an i. Phone or i. Pad, to help you decide whether this is the right course of action for you and your Apple device. Read next i. Phone 7 review i. Phone 7 Plus reviewAll i. Phone reviews. What is jailbreakingJailbreaking is the act of changing the i. Phone or i. Pad software to remove the restrictions and limitations imposed by Apple. The principal limitation is that software can only be installed from the App Store. With a jailbroken phone you can install software from a rival to the App Store, and also manually using files downloaded from the internet. Jailbreaking is different to i. Phone unlocking. i. Phones like all mobile phones that are sold as part of a contract are often locked to a particular network. This means that if you buy an i. Phone from O2, for example, you have to use an O2 SIM card in it. The i. Phone is locked to that network. Unlocking the i. Phone turns it from an i. Phone that can only work on the O2 network to one that can work on any network. But you will still be running officially sanctioned i. OS software, and still have the software limitations. Unlocking is considered a breach of your mobile phone contract, incidentally. Read next How to jailbreak an i. Phone or i. Pad  How to unjailbreak an i. Phone. 5 reasons to jailbreak your i. Phone. Its your phone You should be able to do what the heck you like with it. You can download your apps from anywhere, not just from the App Store. You can use alternatives to the default apps in i. OS, many of which have more functionality. You can customise your phones look and feel to suit your personality, rather than being stuck with the far more limited options in i. OSYou can tether your Mac to your i. Phone and bypass your networks Mobile Hotspot feature, which is often severely restricted andor expensive. Jailbreaking your i. Phone is relatively easy to do and legal in most countries although the subject of Apples official disapproval, and likely to invalidate your warranties. You may get round this by unjailbreaking your device before taking it to an Apple Store for servicing. The way you jailbreak your i. Phone depends on which version of i. OS youre running. Brand new versions of i. OS generally cannot be jailbroken for some time after they come out. Jailbreakers will work hard to find a way to get round the new safeguards and restrictions that have been placed on the new software. There are plenty of instructions and resources online that can help you. Whatever you do, make sure you back up your i. Phones data before you start just in case something goes wrong. Another reason to back up your i. Phone is that you will need to be able to restore to its non jailbroken state if you ever need to take your i. Phone into an Apple Store to have it repaired. Apple Store employees will turn you away if you try to present such an i. Phone to them as 1 jailbroken devices are in breach of the End User Licence Agreement EULA that comes with i. OS 2 and you will have effectively voided your i. Phones warranty by breaking the EULA. Read next How to save SHSH blobs for an i. Phone, i. Pad or i. Pod touch. 5 reasons not to jailbreak your i. Phone. Youll invalidate your i. Phones warranty. Apple Store employees are unlikely to be sympathetic if something goes wrong. Jailbreaking your i. Phone will take you away from the safety of Apples walled garden and dump you into an exciting, but occasionally dangerous, hinterland filled good apps and bad apps, crashy apps and malware. A bit like being an Android user. Your i. Phone just works right out of the box. And brilliantly so. Thats enough for the overwhelming majority of i. Phone users. Jailbreaking your i. Phone is a cat and mouse game. Every update to i. OS will break your jailbroken phone if you decide to update it. Or you may have to sit out and wait for an updated jailbreak to become available. That may take days, weeks or even months. While being able to mod your i. Phone to its very core sounds appealing, doing so can have unforeseen consequences. You may find that your i. Phone crashes more often, that certain features and apps no longer work as they should and that your battery life becomes much shorter. What else should you consider One of the biggest things to think about is who actually owns the i. Phone youre thinking of jailbreaking. If its yours, fire away. But what if its a work perk or has been given to you by your mum and dad or a friend In either of those two scenarios its probably wise to explain what youre planning to do with the i. Phone and why you think its a good idea. Your boss is highly unlikely to be sympathetic to your cause, especially if the jailbroken phone stops work related apps from running properly. Or theres any doubt about the i. Phones security on which subject more in a moment, especially if its being used on works networks, or to store, send or use business critical data. Its a slightly different scenario with friends and family. While you may be able to persuade them, things could get complicated if theyre the ones who have to do the jailbreaking andor fix any problems that may arise if something goes wrong.