State of the Jailbreak Union

Last week, we were introduced to Apple’s latest operating system for their iDevice lineup: iOS5. With this new major update to the operating system, we are seeing vast improvements that have since the advent of the iPhone OS and the rise in other popular smartphone OSs been deemed scars to an otherwise great platform. As been said by other tech enthusiast, what the iPhone clearly lacked compared to its industry brothers is a sense of connectivity and adaptability. The phone just did not feel “alive”.

This scorn in the OS has been the pioneering genesis of jailbreak development: we have this stable OS, now let’s make this better. The question has been pegged again and again and again: Why do you jailbreak? A year ago, this question would’ve been immensely easy to answer. A blogger, a forum member, even a troll could have easily answered it with bullet points that have been acceptable by the hundreds of thousand, if not millions, of jailbreak user. One would simply slap SBSettings into that list with a mix of MyWi with 3G Unrestrictor and a dash of LockInfo. One would then sprinkle some LiveClock and Weather icons, with a new healthy helping of MobileNotifier. Then to complete, one would plate this delectable goodie with a WinterBoard finish and you would’ve had an unbeatable argument.

However, it isn’t that simple anymore. Apple has taken bits and pieces of the jailbreak argument and implemented it into their own official firmware updates. We were, in essence, their guinea pigs, testing all these new ideas – coming up with new concoctions on how to interact with our iDevice the way we want to simply be left behind in a lab, forgotten. A year later, can we ask the same question and expect the same reaction: Why do you jailbreak?

With iOS5 on the horizon, I felt it is necessary for us to reassess what it means to be a “jailbreaker”. It means we own our devices, in and out. It means we can continue to innovate and improve without the worry of being rejected or removed from some centralized store. It means we can take great ideas and make them greater. In the end, it means this is our device and we want our device to reflect our needs, our desires, our moods, our schedules, our own select purpose for it.

Apple may now have a lot of the reasons we used to jailbreak. But the biggest reason to jailbreak is the reason I cannot tell you yet. The jailbreak community continues to innovate and thrive on the idea that we can make things better, do functions and operations better than previously conceived. If you think every great idea has been done, then you need to look again. The next big thing in the smartphone industry is out there, software and hardware – and it’s going to take someone (and something) with the chains off, walls down, and the presence of fresh free air to make it happen.