Breaking free, is now legal

With 'jail-breaking' now being made officially legal, there's no reason why you shouldn't amp up your Apple devices with the apps, display and juice of your choice

Love your iPhone, but tired of Apple's hegemony over your apps, service provider, and limited customisation options? A new software called Jailbreak Me (very apt, we think) is here to rescue your phone, your iPad and iTouch from the clutches of Apple's iron-clad rules.

Available on JailbreakMe (.com), the software was made available for download a couple of weeks ago, following a ruling by the US Library of Congress that termed jail-breaking 'fair use'. JailbreakMe 2.0 will free your Apple devices from restrictions imposed by the manufacturer when you visit it from your device.

Jailbreak jargon
So what does this mean in non-geeky terms? You will be able to use your phone on a network of your choice, download and run applications that have not been approved by Apple. That's big news, because as anyone who has used Apple's products will tell you, Steve Jobs does not like giving you a lot of freedom to customise a product that you paid for. Ironic.u00a0

Although technically illegal, jail-breaking has been going on for years. But with this announcement, taking control of your iPhone (or any other phone, for that matter) moves out of the preserve of geeks and into your hands. All you have to do is point your Safari browser to the site, and take it from there. Easy peasy.

Not a rosy Apple
But don't expect Apple to go down easy. After hotly contesting the legalisation, they've now come out with a series of statements about how jail-breaking can leave your iPhone vulnerable to attack by those who can exploit a potential loophole in Safari, and also how it voids the warranty of the product. Big surprise.
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That shouldn't worry you too much though, because jail-breaking does not make it impossible to restore your phone to its original factory settings --and there's no way your warranty can be voided if your phone is in the condition it came in, right? Plus, it's estimated that over a million Apple users have already jail-broken their devices, and the Internet would have sighed under the burden of their collective complaints by now, if there were any big issues.

Why Jailbreak at all?
It's your device and you paid for it, so why can't you decide how to use it? Plus, if you want to switch from the 'authorised' network service providers, you are going to need to unlock your phone, which means you'll have to jailbreak it anyway.

Now that you can't go to jail for choosing to customise your phone, jail-breaking will also give you the freedom to install third party apps that Apple rejected, install video recording on an iPhone model preceding the 3GS, access cracked App Store apps for free, change keyboard layouts and the placement of icons, and lots more.

Of course, none of this applies if you are happy with the look and feel of your device, the App Store, and your network service provider.