this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Explain Like I'm Five

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I remember back in the day when people would "Jailbreak" iPhones, but never really picked up on what they were doing other than that it let them do stuff that those of us with "non-jailbroken" iPhones couldn't do.

Are they just booting another OS, e.g. android? Also: why haven't I heard of it in a while? Is it not possible on newer iPhones?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The argument is that, for most people, letting them do what they want with something they don’t really understand is not a good idea. In this case it also creates a support headache for Apple. At first, they kind of tacitly accepted that jailbreaking was just going to happen and didn’t really actively fight it other than to close exploits used to root devices. As more and more people did it, for the reasons outlined above, more people wound up with bricked, or otherwise malfunctioning iPhones. When they went to Apple to fix it, at first there was an effort to help (you know, to retain customers), but they had voided their warranty. Because of that, Apple wasn’t really interested in spending lots of time troubleshooting something when they didn’t really know the full status of the OS (b/c there were multiple ways to jailbreak, and most of the fools taking their rooted phones to support didn’t understand enough to tell them what all was done beyond, “my kid’s friend said this would be cool”). Eventually Apple washed their hands of the whole thing and started refusing any support for rooted phones. That part, I have no problem with. They also started actively working to stop folks jailbreaking. That part, I thought, was too much. Just tell them they void the warranty by jailbreaking and refuse support. They dug their hole.

FWIW, I use an iPhone for personal use and android (Pixels) for work.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Adding that I’m not saying anyone is a fool for jailbreaking. I think people should have that right. I was saying the fools are the ones who still expected Apple to support the jailbroken OS. To me, if you don’t like Apple’s walled garden on iOS and iPadOS devices, don’t use them.

A laptop is different. People use them from considerably more diverse reasons. Because of that they need to be more flexible.

Also, while all that may seem like BS from a consumer perspective, it’s not as much from a business perspective. If you disagree, take a look at how Apple’s doing these days. Whatever reason you think they’re doing well, they ARE doing quite well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I agree that it's reasonable to refuse support to someone who breaks certain terms (i.e. rm -rf /* ... "pls help me apple support!")

I also agree that actively working hard to prevent me from having root access to a device I buy is going too far.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is all such bullshit and just justifies apple's locking down of their phones for their own profit. You have root access on your macbook, a phone is no different except that companies felt like they could force people to buy through their app stores. There is 0 difference between allowing people root on their phone versus on their computer.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, @d00phy did say that

They also started actively working to stop folks jailbreaking. That part, I thought, was too much. Just tell them they void the warranty by jailbreaking and refuse support.

I think it's fair to void support for someone that goes ham in the terminal and breaks a bunch of shit, at least if you explicitly state that doing so will void support. You have root access on your macbook, but I assume the average person using it knows more about what they're doing than the average person jailbreaking their phone (which was pretty much anyone as far as I can remember). Also: If you tell support that you opened the terminal and typed a bunch of stuff and now your macbook is broken, I assume support is likely to tell you "tough luck..."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think voiding support is only reasonable if it's directly related to the jailbreak. Not fixing a hardware issue because you rooted is total bullshit

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I am super scared that they eventually start locking down macOS too. I agree that it makes little sense that they do it for one platform and not the other, and I don’t see them ever backing down on it for the iPhone, so.. hopefully they never feel like making that consistent across OSes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I can definitely see them leaving macOS alone though. I can't imagine anyone would buy a macbook to use for development if they don't have root access, while, as far as I know, nobody buys iPhones or iPads to develop anything. If they do it would only be for testing purposes, which I assume should be fine without root access, as you're developing for an end-user that doesn't have root access.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I guess it's about the difference audiences. Developers are a decent part of Apple's MacBook customer base and without root access they're not even gonna look in your product's general direction.