Jailbreaking iPhones now banned by Apple
April 2, 2009 by Jayvee Fernandez
Filed under iPhone
It seems that the latest developer agreement for the iPhone bans jailbreaking, or any support for jailbreaking. This means that developers won’t be able to even think about jailbreaking iPhones to install apps on. The problem with this is that a lot of the great innovations happen within the circle of “piracy” that truth be told, more can be gained from allowing devs to jailbreak iPhones.
Though jailbreaking allows access to apps that Apple doesn’t approve of and enables unlocking the phone from approved carriers, it also allows users and developers access to the UNIX underpinnings of iPhone OS, which both groups could have perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting. These provisions aren’t likely to stop the iPhone Dev Team from working on a jailbreak for iPhone OS 3.0, but there are certainly developers who will think twice about helping in those efforts or distributing a rejected app for jailbroken phones, lest they lose access to the iPhone developer program altogether.
I guess it’s the same with the porn industry — maybe why BluRay survived over HD DVD. A lot of innovations took place in what seems to be the most frivolous of industries and yet we take them for granted.
