Verizon iPhone Is Now Jailbreakable 165
An anonymous reader writes "The Chronic Dev Team have rolled out Greenpoison RC5_4 aka Greenpois0n RC5 b4 for both the Mac and Windows platform, which brings untethered jailbreak for the Verizon iPhone." Since
500k iPhones were sold on the first day it'll be interesting to see how Verizon throttles users.
Re:Remember, not illegal! (Score:4, Informative)
Emulators. Apple strictly prohibits any app from running or emulating, or executing in any way, code that hasn't been Apple approved. A lot of people like their retro gaming. Jailbreak a mobile and you can run emulators on it. A NES or SNES in your pocket. Or a gameboy - it's smaller than the original. Aside from that... pirate apps, various wireless network utilities Apple prohibits due to their potential hacking uses, and the big one: Tethering.
Re:Sales figures (Score:4, Informative)
Verizon stopped taking pre-orders [usatoday.com] in less than a day because they couldn't handle the volume. How can you claim this is a peak day of sales when it's just pre-orders? The phone isn't even available in retail stores yet, it won't be until Thursday. Just wait and see what the sales figures are after then, and in the days/weeks to follow.
Oh yeah, and the 1.4 billion number you mentioned is world-wide. Last I checked, Verizon isn't a global phone provider. If there had been 1.4 billion phones sold just in the USA then every man, woman, and child in the country would have 4.5 mobile phones. Try comparing the sales figures to just US sales and it's just a little bit more impressive.
Re:Remember, not illegal! (Score:5, Informative)
There are plenty of reasons to jailbreak. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of apps available through Cydia that Apple doesn't allow on their App Store for one reason or another. Many of those apps are simply not in line with the way Steve Jobs and his employees think your phone should be allowed to operate.
Case in point - an app called iBlacklist that lets you set up filters for incoming phone calls and test messages. If you block an incoming phone call you can choose to have it go straight to voicemail, get a busy signal, simply pick up & hang up, etc. Very handy if you ever get harassing phone calls from people you don't want to hear from (like sales & marketing people, etc)
Then there's RemindYou, which is an app that displays your upcoming calendar events on the screen every time you pick up your phone. Very handy for people who live by their Outlook or iCal schedules.
Nettalk adds Apple's network file sharing protocol to your iPhone, making it much easier to transfer files to/from the phone instead of having to rely on iTunes. It effectively turns your iPhone into a large thumb drive.
Those are just a couple examples of apps that many people want and find extremely useful, but Steve Jobs and Apple say you can't have. So by jailbreaking your phone you can tell Apple to bugger off and install these apps anyway.
Re:How does one stop supporting this model? (Score:2, Informative)
Stop Lying.
Nintendo Wii has NEVER been sold that way. it always has made a profit without game sales. Please educate yourself on the facts before you spout them in a public forum.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2006/09/7752.ars [arstechnica.com] for only ONE article pointing to it. There are many more out there.
Re:is there any value in JB'ing your iphone? (Score:4, Informative)
There is value but if you don't use the items that have value, then for you, no.
I just use a few things in jailbreak... If these sound interesting, then there is value for you.
1) Replacement SMS app - Let's you do things like reply from the SMS notification instead of having to unlock your phone, open the messaging app, and then send on.
2) Tethering and Hot Spotting - Let me and others use my phone as a mobile access point.
3) Auto3g - Disables 3g when the phone is locked so it uses far less battery power. Doubles battery life for me.
4) Lockscreen replacement - Makes my lock screen have calendar information. It also does stuff like remind me if I haven't acknowledged an event and sets quiet hours for SMS and stuff like that.
5) Application Backups - If you have to restore your phone, all your saved games and information on the phone is gone.
6) SMS export - Let's me archive and delete my SMS messages.
7) Unlock - Useful when traveling abroad.
8) Notification Replacement - Gives me Growl (the program) like notifications.
9) SBSettings - Which is free, is just nice to be able to turn certain things off and on with a quick swipe. Also, fixes the status bar to have things like the date.
If there is no value in these things for you, then no, don't jailbreak your phone.