Up until six days ago, it had been an amazing 517 days since legendary hacker, PlanetBeing, had last treated his fans to a Tweet. He broke that silence on the 11th January with the revelation that, with the help of Cydia founder Jay Freeman, he had managed to escape the Apple Sandbox. For those who haven't been following the long running A5 jailbreak saga, PlanetBeing was drafted in by developer Pod2g to be an integral member of the jailbreaking 'Dream Team'.
I can remember getting the original iPhone in 2007, powering it up for the first time and being blown away by the native YouTube application which came bundled into the iPhone OS, as it was known at the time. I had never been a big user of the video sharing service, but the convenience provided by having it on a device which I carried around with me all the time made me start using it a lot more.
Ever since June 2009, Apple have included the Spotlight search feature on the iPhone, iPod touch and the iPad. The inclusion of the Spotlight search feature in iOS 3.0 and above allows users the ability to quickly search contacts, mail metadata, calendars, media and installed applications amongst other things.
After going through a relatively quiet patch during the latter months of 2011, the last three weeks have been a hive of jailbreaking activity. They say; you can have never have too much information, but there has been so many updates posted to blogs, and various Twitter accounts that in some circumstances it has been difficult to keep up. Let's try and bring some sanity to the situation and see where we are at.
The release of iOS 5 in October 2011 was one of the biggest iOS revisions and brought over two hundred new user features. A lot of these features have been well reported on and have been classified as substantial additions such as the new Notification Centre and the new iMessaging system.
The cat and mouse game between the engineers at Apple and the people that provide us with jailbreaks is turning into more of a war than a game. For as long as I can remember, the production of a jailbreak for new devices and firmwares has always had stumbling blocks, but rarely has it thrown as many obstacles in the way as the current pursuit of the A5 jailbreak. We are only eight weeks away from the the iPad 2’s first birthday, and in that time we have only seen an untethered jailbreak possible on iOS 4.3.3 using JailbreakMe 3.0.
iOS is undoubtedly a great mobile OS. Despite losing out to Android in terms of sheer activations, customer polls suggest iPhone users are not only happier with their devices, but more likely to stick with Apple’s smartphone range should they outlive their increasingly lengthy contract expiration dates.
A few days ago we brought you the news that iOS security researcher Pod2g had enlisted the help and support of some of the most influential and prominent developers and hackers in the jailbreaking community to try and make tangible progress in the pursuit of an iOS 5 untethered jailbreak on A5 devices.
With the App Store numbers fast approaching the million mark and 64GB of storage available across the board, it’s pretty easy to accumulate page upon page of SpringBoard icons as we continually binge on the many great titles available.
As much as I love iOS and the devices that it runs on, as a user I have always felt there has been certain aspects of the operating system and the native application experience which are fundamentally broken. In previous articles I have discussed my love of the Photos applications that comes preinstalled on iOS, and the problems that it comes with. Well now it is the turn of the native Messages application to get the same treatment.
