Pete Hindle

As the following post shows, I’ve been messing around with my iPhone a bit. I left a huge comment on a Guardian article on Jailbreaking, relating my experiences, and I thought I’d republish a tweeked version of it here.

I don’t do anything that weird with my phone normally, but in the past few days I got so fed up with iOS4 on my old 3G iPhone that I decided to roll back the operating system to 3.1.3 using the howto on Lifehacker. This took two pieces of software (one program and one download) and it made my iPhone much quicker.

And I mean really frustrated. I used the new operating system for at least two weeks, and I thought I was going to have to buy a new phone. The damn thing was useless – slow, laggy, bad at doing the things it used to do par excellence. I don’t think it was some sort of high-level Apple plan by evil men in turtleneck sweaters to force me into buying new phones, I just don’t think they properly tested it on the older generation of iPhones.

Above: Youtube user Adam Burtle‘s parody of the new operating system. As several people have noted, including Daring Fireball, it’s pretty accurate.

Several times, I reached such a point of frustration and anger that I had a mental image of ripping the phone apart with my bare hands, shattering glass and bending metal. Prior to the iOS4 update (the new operating system that goes hand-in-hand with the new iPhone 4) my iPhone had been a gadget that I never failed to be impressed by. To go from loving a gadget like that to picturing it’s demise is really weird, and perhaps a sign of some internal imbalance in me… but what can I say? I followed all of Apple’s rules, and ended up with something worse when they promised something better.

This breaks an implicit contract that Apple make with iPhone users. “Let us control your computing,” Apple says seductively, “and you’ll have a fantastic experience.” With the new update, I feel like they broke that covenant, and in fixing their mistake I had to go and download software that is semi-legal.

Having done this, it occurred to me that I should now Jailbreak the phone. The new method  (released this week) seemed easy, and I had little to lose because I’d just wiped my phone in the process of downgrading the operating system. So I did it, it worked first time (over 3G) and I logged into the Cydia store with mounting excitement…

… to find a load of useless applications. Change the font of my iPhone? Have five icons on the bottom instead of four? Have a different background? Install an SSH application? Hungarian spellchecker? NES Emulator? No wonder these applications can’t be got via Apple, as they are either useless or worthless (depending on how much Hungarian you speak).

There do seem to be three useful applications, only two of which are legal: a tethering app (to use the 3G connection when out and about – of which I think O2 might have something to say), a wireless syncing app, and a bluetooth keyboard app. None of these applications are free, and seeing as they aren’t mission critical for me I don’t think I’ll chance paying for dodgy software.

Am I glad I jailbroke my phone? Not really, it was pointless. But I am glad I rolled back the OS to the last generation – that really made a difference. Of course, by making it so hard for me to do that, Apple pushed me into a state of mind where I no longer want their “curated computing”; I just want something that works. Maybe Jailbreak will grow up and be something useful in the future, but right now it’s just for the nerds.

And frustrated Hungarians.