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.

The wait for a new Jailbreak has been a long one and for those of you with the new iPad this is the first opportunity you will have had to discover the benefits of Jailbreaking as its not been possible Jailbreak it before.

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.

For those of you who are thinking of Jailbreaking for the first time Absinthe 2.0 is possibly one of the easiest to do. I’m not going to go through the steps you need to take as these are available via the official website at http://greenpois0n.com/ but take it from me it’s as easy as running the software and pressing a few buttons.

For me Jailbreaking is all about making an already awesome device even better. Most of the tweaks I use make my phone easier to use, from the quick access options of SBSettings to the quick dialing options if CallBar they make the iPhone more intuitive to use.

This is just the beginning though, I also personalize my iPhone and iPad with themes using Winterboard, tweak Safari and the Notification Center with customizations only available on Jailbroken devices as well as many other add-ons, tweaks and apps not available on the stock iPhone and iPad.

There are too many reasons to jailbreak for me to list here, instead you can watch this video instead which shows the top 100 reasons to Jailbreak.

To find out more head over to greenpois0n.com and make you iPhone, iPod touch or iPad the way you want it to be.

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.

This may not be the case for much longer, as Dev-Team member MuscleNerd announced on Twitter today that the team are hard at work creating an untethered jailbreak for all devices. He explained that Dev-Team pal Comex is working on a more “extensible” untethered jailbreak, but that he has a “backup plan” if all else fails.

“Got “backup plan” for untethered 4.2.1 JB working (video coming up). Uses mysterious 4.2b3 hashes Cydia kept for you,” read MuscleNerd’s first tweet, which was followed up by, “(It’s a “backup plan” because comex is working on a more extensible one, but this method is also generalizable).”

The video below was released by MuscleNerd today and shows the an iPod Touch 4th-generation device taking advantage of his untethered jailbreak.

I have to admit that the reason I’m yet to jailbreak my iPhone 4 running iOS 4.2.1 is simply due to the fact that there is currently no untethered jailbreak. I hate the though of my battery dying or my device crashing while I’m away from a computer that means I cannot boot it back up again.

It seems that this is another point to the Dev-Team that leaves Apple trailing far behind. If you haven’t done so already, will you jailbreak your iPhone 4, 3rd/4th-generation iPod Touch, or iPad if an untethered jailbreak is available? Let us know in the comments.

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?

Spirit jailbreaks any device running iPhone OS 3.1.2, 3.1.3, and 3.2. In addition to breaking the protections Apple has placed on their devices to guard against unauthorized applications, Spirit also installs the Cydia application. Cydia is an alternative to Apple’s App Store application. It lists programs for purchase and download on the jailbroken device. Cydia is mostly a directory of programs rejected by Apple’s app approval process but also includes original content. For example, the Cydia store contains an app called Backgrounder that implements multitasking on version 3 of the iPhone OS. Official support for multitasking will not be available for the iPhone OS until the release of version 4 later this summer.

As we reported in our earlier article, some main points of the Spirit jailbreak include:

• Spirit is an untethered jailbreak. This means you won’t have to jailbreak your device whenever it needs to reboot or runs out of battery power.
• Spirit works on all devices.
• Spirit does not include a carrier unlock.
• Spirit requires your device to be activated or hacktivated.

While jailbreaking your device is a personal decision I won’t offer an opinion on, the Spirit jailbreak does seem to be the easiest means possible to accomplish the task. I’m sure Apple will analyse this latest offering from the iPhone hacking community and try to provide some sort of countermeasures against. I expect iPhone OS 4 will contain some of those countermeasures but by then the hackers may have already circumvented them. I look forward to watching this ongoing battle with interest.

Do you plan on jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad? Would you consider it to gain more access to your device and the applications provided by Cydia? Leave us your thoughts in the comments section.