New MacBooks make iPhone ‘hacking’ tougher
Apple may have found a new tactic in its war against ‘jailbreakers’, people intent on taking full control of their iPhones. It’s now either difficult or impossible to run the necessary jailbreaking software on the new MacBooks range.
There is a long-running battle between Apple and the iPhone dev team about control of the iPhones. The latter is a group of computer enthusiasts (including one with the intriguing pseudonym ‘penisbird’) who argue that iPhone users should be allowed full access to the device’s operating system so that they can run any applications they want.
The dispute quietened a little when Apple began to allow third party applications to run on the system for the first time earlier this year. However, the jailbreakers believe Apple still retains too much control about what applications can run and in what ways they operate.
Normally when Apple releases an update to the iTunes operating system (which runs on the device itself), it will include something to block jailbreaking; the jailbreakers then usually figure out a way around the new block within a few days.
However, some jailbreakers with the new range of MacBooks have discovered the notebooks won’t recognize an iPhone that is set to DFU (download firmware update mode), a setting that is officially designed for such purposes as recovering from a software crash. That’s a big problem for would-be jailbreakers as the device has to be in this mode to run Pwnage, the software used to get control of the system itself.
The jailbreaking community is still investigating the issue, but it’s starting to appear it isn’t down to the hardware itself. Instead, Apple looks to have put a new edition of the iTunes software on the new MacBooks which is causing the block.
It’s too early to tell if this is a deliberate move by Apple or just a bug which has the side-effect of making jailbreaking difficult. While the conspiracy theory sounds good, it’s hard to imagine Apple would risk the danger of people with unmodified iPhones being unable to restore their devices.
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