Earlier this week we reported on Absinthe, the latest Jailbreak for the majority of iOS devices including that of the never before jailbroken device the new iPad. Well in a recent tweet from the Chronic Dev Team it’s been revealed that Absinthe 2.0, the tool used to jailbreak iPhones, iPods and iPads has been used to jailbreak almost 1 million iOS devices.

It’s not just owners of the new iPad that will benefit from the new Jailbreak known as Absinthe 2.0, anyone who has an iPhone, iPod touch or an iPad on iOS 5.1.1. can also Jailbreak for the first time.

The significant number is the almost quarter of a million new iPad that prior to the release of Absinthe 2.0 was unable to be jailbroken. It will be interesting to see what the developers that build apps, tweaks and themes for Jailbroken devices can produce specifically of the new iPad. It’s interesting to note that in the past we’ve seen Apple getting inspired by some of the jailbreak tweaks and even hiring Cydia app developer to build iOS features.

Have you Jailbroken your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad? What was your experience of Absinthe 2.0 and what are your reasons for jailbreaking? Tell us in the comments below or tweet @4forkssake.

Why Jailbreak? Tweaks and Apps that make jailbreaking your iPhone / iPad worth it.

The jailbreak community has grown extensively over the past couple of weeks thanks to the release of Absinthe which provided an untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. It has been a long wait, especially for those of us that have had a jailbreak before on their previous iPhone’s and have been without one ever since.

So for those people who are new to the jailbreaking scene I’ll be covering the what’s new in jailbreaking each week including new apps, tweaks and jailbreaking news.

As this is the first in the series I’m going to cover some of the reasons why I jailbreak, some of these will be tweaks that have been around for a long time while others are new since Absinthe was released.

On Janaury 20th the Chronic Dev Team released GreenPois0n Absinthe and those iPhone 4S and iPad 2 owners could jailbreak their devices and the process, for most people, was relatively painless.

The jailbreak was as simple as connecting your device to your Windows PC or Mac and running the GreenPois0n Absinthe tool. From than on the tool did all the work and unlike previous jailbreaks there isn’t even a need to put your device into DFU mode, a kind of special sleep mode that allows the device OS to be updated.

After just 15 minutes the Jailbreak was complete and I was ready to add the tweaks and apps that turn my iPhone into the device I know and love.

First up was SBSettings and Activator, two tools that allow you to access iPhone settings and actions via gestures on the home screen or by using the physical buttons on the device. If you frequently have to turn on/off wifi or Bluetooth these two tools are awesome and now SBSettings can now be added to your iOS5 Notification Center for even easier access.

Next up is iFile which gives you access to browse the iPhone file directory and IncarcerApp which for those of you with young children is great as it prevents the home button from being used when your children are in certain applications, this means that they can play their favorite games with the risk of them making phone calls, sending text messages or anything else on your iPhone.

The final of the apps that are jailbreak staples for me is BiteSMS which replaces the standard message apps and adds feature upon feature to the default text messaging application. The two that ensures that BiteSMS is one of the first apps installed is the ability to quickly start an SMS via the volume buttons and the ability to reply to an incoming text or iMessage without having to go to the messaging app.

In addition to these established tweaks there have been a number of new tweaks on the block that have added great new functionality to the already great iPhone.

Call Bar – The default action of an incoming call on an iPhone is to take over the whole screen until you’ve decided how you want to handle the call. With Call Bar installed the incoming call now appears at the top of the screen just like notifications do.

From there you can answer or reject the call either via buttons or by swiping it. This give you full access to use the phone as you please while the call sits at the top of the screen. This is one of those tweaks which makes you wonder how it wasn’t included in the iPhone by default.

Zephyr – This is another tweak that makes you wonder why it’s not part of the standard OS as it’s such a simple, yet great tweak. Zephyr adds multitasking gestures to the iPhone 4S which enables you to do 3 things.

• Swipe left and right to switch between apps.
• Swipe up to close open applications
• Smoothly swipe up to access the multitask icons

Not only are these features great if your iPhone is fully functional but if you happen to be one of the unlucky ones who has a broken home buttons then they become life savers!

SiriToggles – 3 out of 3 for tweaks that have no reason not to be in the iOS by default as SiriToggles adds the ability to open apps and activate/deactivate iOS settings via Siri. “Set brightness to 50%”, “Turn off Bluetooth”, “Open Safari” will all now work and makes Siri a little less Beta than it previously was!

These are just a few of the great reasons to jailbreak. If you have questions or comments about anything jailbreak related post in the comments below or tweet me @4forkssake.

Just a few hours ago @pod2g updated his blog with the news that the untethered Jailbreak had been released for iDevices running the A4 chip, notably the iPhone 4 and the original iPad. Work on a Jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2 which run on the A5 chip is now being worked on.

A few days ago, @pod2g gave the untether to both the iPhone devteam and the chronic devteam. We’ve put it into redsn0w 0.9.10 and PwnageTool, and the chronic devteam put it into a Cydia package (the same set of exploits is in all three).

After @pod2g had completed the Jailbreak it was handed over to the Chronic Dev Team who finalized the release and made it available to the general public. As always you can check out http://jailbrea.kr/ to check the Jailbreak status of your device and click here for the details of this new jailbreak.

A tweet from the aforementioned MuscleNerd claims that the jailbreak kings may have discovered a way to make the current jailbreak hacks work, untethered, with all future iOS releases running on Apple’s A4 architecture. For those not familiar with their CPUs, that means the current iPad, iPhone 4 and fourth generation iPod. I’m also assuming the new Apple TV is also included, but that’s not been confirmed as yet.

The significance here is that if this works as intended, the only way Apple will be able to stop jailbreaking will be to change their devices at the hardware level – no firmware update alone will stop the hack. No more avoiding new iOS updates and no more waiting for new jailbreak tools. That’s the idea, anyway!

Would that be Hackers 1, Apple 0 perhaps?

Well that’s great many of you will say, competition is good. Everyone complains of Apple’s walled garden so having choice in the jail breaking community is good right? Wrong. Without getting too technical, mainly because I can’t, the jailbreaking community is always attempting to be one step ahead of Apple. As soon as a new jailbreak comes out Apple will see the exploit, the hole being used to install the jailbreak, and close it.

Because LimeRa1n and GreenPois0n were using different exploits Apple would be able to close two exploits in a single update, therefore possible stopping any future updates.

Because of Geohot’s release of LimeRa1n a day before GreenPois0n forced the Chronic Dev Team to delay their release so that they could integrate the exploit used by LimeRa1n and not show Apple the original exploit they were going to use and keep it for a future jailbreak.

All this played out in public via Twitter with accusations and blame being thrown in all directions from those involved and those just wanting a jailbreak.

For the non-technical it was difficult to know who and what to believe, for me though the driving factor was that I had been without my jailbreak for much longer than I had wanted and so despite the warning of the beta status of the LimeRa1n jailbreak I decided to investigate further.

Looking through some of the major iPhone forums there was mixed reaction to the success rate of LimeRa1n. Delving in deeper though it appeared that the users with iPhone 4’s on iOS 4.1 were having relatively no issues.

The deciding factor for me was though was finding out that I had previously used one of Geohot’s jailbreaks in the form of BlackRa1n and found it to deliver everything I required.

Most people’s experience of jailbreaking their iPhone’s has been through jailbreakme.com, a simple untethered jailbreak that was initiated directly from the iPhones web browser.

LimeRa1n’s jailbreak wasn’t quite so easy but with the step by step guide integrated into it I was jailbroken within a couple of minutes.

After hooking up my iPhone to my PC, LimeRa1n is currently PC only, I downloaded the LimeRa1n executable and double-clicked it. From that point on LimeRa1n took me through all the steps, which buttons to press on the iPhone, when to release them and so on.

After the initial reboot the only change was the addition of a blank LimeRa1n icon. This was an initial worry for me but after reading up on the internet it appeared that a simple reboot would resolve this issue.

This was not the case for me but clicking on the blank icon enabled me to install Cydia, the app that allows all the jailbreak magic to happen. After installing Cydia and installing all the required updates a final reboot of my iPhone was all it took to get everything working flawlessly. This entire process took no longer than 5 minutes and I was able to start re-installing my Cydia apps right away.

They were a couple of apps that were incompatible with iOS 4.1, namely Action Menu and Display Recorder, but not only did the majority of the apps install successfully but all the settings from my previous install remained intact too.

When all the dust settles history should show that everyone got scrubbing they wanted. A jailbreak now and a future jailbreak for the next Apple release. It may not have happened in the best way but we should move on and thank all the jailbreakers out there for the great work that they do.