The act of jail-breaking does...?

[Steve Doherty]

Hey kids,

When you jailbreak your iPhone, what actually are you doing to the phone in the process? I.e. What does (for example) Spirit actually do to your iPhone OS apart from copying Cydia onto your iPhone? It obviously does something to the file system that lets you SSH into it, so what exactly is going on?

Regards,
Steve

 

[Alli]

All the process of jailbreaking does is open up that ability to access the root of the operating system. Remember Apple keeps a closed environment - this opens it up. Kinda like when you go to the fair and they sell those sealed ecologies with a single plant and a brine shrimp...it will last forever, but it gets boring. That's Apple. Jailbreak puts in a port so that you can add a goldfish, without losing your plant or brine shrimp - or any water.

 

[Steve Doherty]

Thanks Alli! I actually answered my own question after posting this by hitting google, but sometimes it's nice to get an answer the old school way, by asking a relevant question.

(Besides, none of my google hits mentioned Goldfish )

 

[Alli]

I teach 9th graders...I like to oversimplify.

 

[jackie treehorn]

All the process of jailbreaking does is open up that ability to access the root of the operating system. Remember Apple keeps a closed environment - this opens it up. Kinda like when you go to the fair and they sell those sealed ecologies with a single plant and a brine shrimp...it will last forever, but it gets boring. That's Apple. Jailbreak puts in a port so that you can add a goldfish, without losing your plant or brine shrimp - or any water.

thats great. you reminded me of my chemistry teacher back in high school! She was quite possibly my favorite teacher ever. o and on topic I didn't know what exactly it did, but now it all makes sense