This is interesting. The jailbreak community is a weird place on the edge of free software- normally, "just open source it" is an easy answer to security concerns, but there are understandable reasons not to open-source exploits. However, the whole competition thing between evad3rs and saurik seems kind of strange. Honestly, I wish Apple would just get with the times and allow an appropriate degree of freedom on their devices; even if evad3rs are as innocent as they claim in this instance, forcing users to install potentially sketchy obfuscated third-party system-level code in order to do basic things like set default apps seems like a recipe for eventual disaster.
> Honestly, I wish Apple would just get with the times and allow an appropriate degree of freedom on their devices
An appropriate degree of freedom is different for you and eight year old children or grandparents. The majority of iOS users have no use for the freedom jailbreakers desire and Apple is creating software for the majority of its customers.
> The majority of iOS users have no use for the freedom jailbreakers desire and Apple is creating software for the majority of its customers.
That's not quite true.
There's a bunch of minor tweaks that many people would really like that they can only get if they jail break. Since most people are scared of jailbreaking they don't do it.
It's hard to understand how different keyboards[1] is inappropriate degree of software freedom.
[1] to pick one example of a simple, minor, tweak that many people want.
"It's hard to understand how different keyboards[1] is inappropriate..."
"[1] to pick one example of a simple, minor, tweak that many people want."
Agree with your point except calling it a "minor tweak". From personal experience, the difference between the stock iOS keyboard and something like Swype on Android is huge. This third party keyboard on Android was so popular and influential that Google finally added swype like functionality in the base OS (I think starting with JB). This is one of the biggest frustrations I have with the iOS experience (whenever I do use iOS, e.g. on my iPad).
I like the developer options in android. Just go to about phone and click the build number a large number of times. You basically have to know this exists to seek out the how online and then do it. Almost no one is going to enable this by accident.
The non-technical iOS users I know would never change a setting in Settings they do not understand (unless someone they trust, namely me, tells them to do it).
If that is not enough, the unlocking process can be as complicated as needed to discourage careless unlocking. Most people, when asked, e.g., to convert a decimal to a hexadecimal or to engage their frontal lobes in some other way, stop being careless.
Remember that the only point I'm trying to make is that it is not strictly necessary for Apple to do their best to keep motivated technical users from escaping their "jail" to prevent kids and grandmothers from harming themselves.
And does anyone actually believe that protecting naive users is the only reason Apple makes it as hard as possible to jailbreak iOS?
> The non-technical iOS users I know would never change a setting in Settings they do not understand
I wish I had your circle of non-technical folks. I've been called (from other people's phones, no less) numerous times asking why data doesn't work (they deleted all the APNs from an Android phone), why their picture messages don't go through (they changed the MMSC URL to their homepage), why voicemails stopped (they set the voicemail service number to their own number), and several more. Changeable settings are like mountains; they're messed with because they are there.
I understand this, but there should at least be a way to access that freedom. I'm a developer; I'm going to hack and tweak my phone. That's not going to change. What can change is whether Apple makes me install a 3rd-party exploit or lets me flip a switch somewhere deep in my settings.
Yeah, what voltagex said. Same reason you shouldn't open-source a zero day exploit on any website without responsibly disclosing it to the company and giving them a reasonable amount of time to patch it.
They've basically made it open to the world, Apple has worked out closed sourced jailbreaks before with no help. Jailbreaks like Star (jailbreak.me) were just a PDF binary with absolutely no clue as to the contents or method of exploitation.
This is true, but making an exploit open source, as opposed to merely available, makes it significantly easier to weaponize for people who might not already be experts in exploiting iOS.
