It’s pretty obvious that Apple doesn’t want people jailbreaking its devices. While the company isn’t going out and suing hackers like ahem, Sony did, it’s not exactly making it any easier for them to open up its mobile OS either.
And the company’s disdain for the process is especially evident in its Knowledge Base article on jailbreaking, which points out that unauthorized modification of iOS can cause instability and other major device issues…
The page (via MuscleNerd) has been there for years. But in anticipation of the long-awaited release of the evasi0n jailbreak this week, Apple updated it on Sunday in an attempt to thwart at least some users from participating.
Here’s the full text:
As designed by Apple, iOS and iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch are designed to work together reliably. Unauthorized modifications to iOS (“jailbreaking”) can cause numerous issues to the hacked iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Examples of issues caused by these unauthorized modifications to iOS have included the following:
Instability: Frequent and unexpected crashes of the device, crashes and freezes of built-in apps and third-party apps, and loss of data.
Security vulnerabilities: Security compromises have been introduced by these modifications that could allow hackers to steal personal information, damage the device, attack the wireless network, or introduce malware or viruses.
Shortened battery life: The hacked software has caused an accelerated battery drain that shortens the operation of an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch on a single battery charge.
Unreliable voice and data: Dropped calls, slow or unreliable data connections, and delayed or inaccurate location data.
Disruption of services: Services such as Visual Voicemail, Weather, and Stocks have been disrupted or no longer work on the device. Additionally, third-party apps that use the Apple Push Notification Service have had difficulty receiving notifications or received notifications that were intended for a different hacked device. Other push-based services such as iCloud and Exchange have experienced problems synchronizing data with their respective servers.
Inability to apply future software updates: Some unauthorized modifications have caused damage to iOS that is not repairable. This can result in the hacked iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iOS update is installed.
Apple strongly cautions against installing any software that hacks iOS. It is also important to note that unauthorized modification of iOS is a violation of iOS end-user license agreement and because of this, Apple may deny service for an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch that has installed any unauthorized software.
To be fair, Apple makes several valid points here. And given the amount of time and resources it devotes to technical support and warranty-related customer escalations, you can see why it wouldn’t want to advocate jailbreaking.
That being said, jailbreaking was deemed legal under a DMCA exemption by the Library of Congress last October, and it will remain that way until 2015. So there’s really not much Apple can do about it outside of these scare tactics.
Hey, at least it’s no longer arguing that ‘jailbreaking enables drug dealers.’
Earlier today, Jay Freeman (aka Saurik) announced that evasi0n was downloaded nearly 2 million times during its first 24 hours.