A while back, we ran a story that entitled: iOS 5 to Kill the Jailbreak Community? That was of course, before Apple unveiled iOS 5 at the 2011 WWDC at Moscone West.
The purpose of that article, was to call out Apple's not so subtle means of usurping the jailbreak throne by making jailbreaking less glamorous, less desirable. Essentially, Apple was planning on taking some of the best features of jailbreaking, and bake it right into their new OS.
Since then, I've tested multiple betas of iOS 5 on everything including the iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. While it does make quite a few of the jailbreak community's apps — at best redundant, at worst, totally obsolete or unecesarry — it's far from the end of the world for the jailbreak community.
In fact, I strongly feel that jailbreaking can and will be reinvigorated with iOS 5; inside, I'll explain why...