“The first version was released yesterday and was quickly followed by a minor update,” according to bloggers at wired.com. “Right now, this is Mac only, but we are sure the open source project will end up ported to Windows soon enough. The tool will jailbreak your iPhone (
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Alert) but will not unlock it from your mobile carrier.”
Experts say that the reason for jailbreaking a phone is so that users can customize its look, install third-party applications and customize ringtones.
Yet there are dangers in the modification, too, experts say.
“Once you do it, you’re on your own,”
they say. “You may have voided your warranty, so you can’t rely on AT&T (
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Alert) or Apple to fix any problems you encounter. All of the applications that jailbreak your phone are unauthorized and could damage or completely disable your iPhone. Your slick smartphone could end up as nothing more than a very expensive paperweight.”
The wired.com bloggers say their “Pwnage” method is more useful for owners of the original iPhone and that buyers of the recent third-generation device may have already signed up for carrier service in-store, so that changing carriers is “pointless.”
“A future unlock should, though, allow you to pop in a local SIM card when traveling,” they say.
Here’s how their method works. First, a user downloads the application and starts it, then chooses what kind of iPhone or iPod he or she has.
“The Pwnage application talks to your iPhone and then builds a custom IPSW file,” the bloggers say. “An IPSW file is what iTunes uses to install the operating system onto the iPhone – think of it as the Mac OS X DVD you used to install Leopard, only a lot smaller. . . The Pwnage tool then kicks your iPhone into recovery mode, all the while giving instructions on the screen and ticking countdowns, which makes the whole thing very hectic.”
Yet experts say the jailbreaking could pay dividends for users.
“There’s a ton of third-party apps available once you jailbreak your phone,”
experts say. “Some of them are really fun, some of them are really useful, and plenty of them are really cool.”
What isn’t clear is whether an iPhone is fixable if something goes wrong following a jailbreak.
“Some users have reported that they were able to connect a malfunctioning iPhone to iTunes and restore it to its original settings, which resolved the problem,” they say. “Not all users have had this experience, though, and you certainly can’t count on AT&T or Apple to provide you with tech support once you’ve taken this unauthorized step.”
Michael Dinan is a TMCNet Editor. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.