Jailbreak 1.1.3 -- Just Don't Do It

Over the last several days, I have used the "Nate True" soft upgrade to 1.1.3 and have attempted to upgrade using the "official dev team" upgrade. My experiences are as follows:

First, the Nate True soft upgrade worked as described. However, since I had a number of jailbreaked applications on my phone when I executed the upgrade, they all vanished from the summerboard. When I used installer, I could see the package logged as installed. Most of the packages could be uninstalled and then reinstalled and they appeared in the summerboard and worked as before the upgrade.

Unfortunately, there were several that would take a "script error" and would not delete (from memory, two were the Guitar and he HP21 Calculator). Since the installer thought they were installed, I would not reinstall them. It was for this reason that I decided to use the dev team's "official" upgrade.

Unfortunately, after a day of attempting to use the directions found on http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/01/27/guide-jailbreak-any-iphone-with-113-macwindows/, I did not succeed. On top of that, I have had to restore the phone and lost all contacts, calendar, stock, weather, and notes entries. While I can recover much of this information, I cannot recover all of it.

As a result, unless you simply want to hack the phone for the "fun" of it, I HIGHLY recommend that you leave the phone as Apple intended it. With each subsequent upgrade that Apple releases, the corresponding steps to jailbreak that phone become increasingly complicated and subject to numerous errors. My net out is that the effort is simply not worth it. If and until such time as a jailbreak method becomes MUCH simplified and provides the capability to recover previous data, I am sticking with what Apple has provided.

Why Hack the iPhone?

I resisted the urge to hack the iPhone for a few months, but after hearing about all the bricked phones after update 1.1.1, I became very interested in what it was that so many people wanted that they would be willing to brick their phone. My worry was that I did not want to dip into the innards of Mac OS X (even though I am quite at home with UNIX and Linux) and I sure didn't want to brick my phone.

Then I read about the site www.jailbreakme.com. The people at jailbreakme are to be congratulated on their ability to jailbreak the phone. But more importantly, they are to be congratulated on designing a jailbreak approach that is truly user-friendly. First, you don't need to know anything under the hood of Mac OS X. Second, you don't need to remember or follow any complicated directions. Third, you don't need anything but your iPhone and access to the Internet. The result is a jailbreak process that is as simple to perform as the iPhone is simple to use. But it doesn't stop there. The access to applications, the process of installing selected applications, the process of upgrading those applications, and the process of deleting applications are all ... simple. The result is an outstanding process for adding and managing applications on the iPhone that I highly recommend. With such a simple process, why not hack just to see what's available?

I have included a picture of page 1 of my "Springboard" (iPhone home screen). There are two more pages of applications that are not shown. No more complaints about lack of a "Todo" list. There's an application for that. No more complaints about lack of a search facility--there's an application for that. The screenshot is from an installed application. I have games galore. You get the idea, these applications truly extend the capability of the iPhone.

What's missing? I would still like to see a hack that will allow me to copy-and-paste. I figure it is only a matter of time before someone ports a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation package to the device: OpenOffice would do just fine. Finally, file uploading and saving capabilities would bring the device to a true portable computer level.

With that said, I am waiting for a "simple" upgrade that will enable the hack to work on 1.1.2. To date they have provided a package that can be installed on a 1.1.1 phone that will then allow upgrading to 1.1.2, but since it does not have the simplicity of the original 1.1.1 hack, I have not upgraded. I would dare say that until Apple provides something truly valuable, there is no reason to upgrade.

Try out www.jailbreakme.com and let me know what you think.