Again I would start off by saying that I am not a fan of Apple products but my wife has an iPhone 4 and an iPad 1 which I bought it for her. I heard about Jailbreak but never done it because don’t think there is a need to do that since most of the apps sold in the Apps Store are very cheap costing $0.99 each for Angry Birds Seasons, Rio, Fruit Ninja, $4.99 for iSWiFTER and etc… In fact I didn’t know much about Jailbreak such as what do you get after jailbreaking, term of Tethered or Untethered jailbreak, tools and risks.

After doing a little bit of reading on Jailbreaking, I found out that Jailbreak is totally legal and it only add more features. It also doesn’t void your warranty because you can always restore in iTunes at anytime to get back to a factory state. Gone are the days when the non tech savvy users are afraid of jailbreaking their own iOS device because anyone can do it from JailbreakMe.com.

JailbreakMe.com offers untethered jailbreak. Below is the explanation of the difference between a Tethered and Untethered Jailbreak.

What is Tethered Jailbreak?
Tethered jailbreaks are frustrating because they require a computer connection to boot a jailbroken iOS device. The concept of a tethered jailbreak has been around a long time, but essentially it means this: every time your iPhone or iPod touch reboots or the battery dies, you have to connect (tether) your iOS device back to your computer so that the hardware can boot with the aid of the jailbreak application.

What is Untethered jailbreak?
Untethered jailbreak is the preferred jailbreak because it requires no connection to your computer except for the initial jailbreaking process. You can reboot your iPhone or iPod touch as much as you want without having to tether it to your computer to boot. If the battery dies on a device that has an untethered jailbreak, it’s no big deal you just charge it again and it will boot as usual.

Secondly, JailbreakMe.com only works on iOS 4.3.3. If you have 4.3.4 or 4.3.5, you can downgrade it to 4.3.3 then jailbreak it with Jailbreakme.com. Although the general rule is to always install the latest updates and patches but the version history (changelog) says that there are no new features except patching the exploit and closing the Jailbreak.

I was curious so I went ahead and Jailbreak my wife’s iPad 1. Before that, I made a backup on iTunes so that I can restore it back if I decide to reverse the changes. All I need to do is run Safari from iPad and visit the website http://www.JailbreakMe.com/. Clicking on the “FREE” button changes to “INSTALL” and clicking that button would start to install Cydia.

Jailbreakme

Once that is done, I notice that there is an icon called Cydia where you can install more apps that are not available in iTunes Apps Store. It is that easy and you don’t need to do connect your iOS device to your computer and use any risky third party tools. By default those pirated cracked Apps are not available in Cydia because you need to manually add Hackulo.us in Sources, install Installous 4 app from Hackulo.us, and then you can search for the cracked apps from Installous. You should also install PDF Patcher 2 from Cydia after Jailbreak to patch a very important exploit. Just run Cydia, go to Search and type PDF Patcher 2, then install and reboot your device.