Posted by Greg Mills

Jail breaking the iOS before the system is even released, is a sign of the times. There is a certain arrogance in the soul of those who “JailBreak” Apple devices. Allowing a device to do things they weren’t designed to do has an appeal when there is a valuable feature that is locked out by Apple strictly to protect Apple’s income. But often what is jail broken is really the security that is part of what makes the device so attractive in the first place.

Years ago it was a cottage industry to hack PC into running various flavors of the Mac OS. Obviously, Steve Jobs threw a tantrum and code and chips were added to stop that nonsense in every way they could think of. I guess there are people who have nothing more to do with their time than to try to get a junk PC to run Mac operating systems. At a dollar an hour, they could have purchased a Mac. Go figure....

Jail breaking iPhone to run on other cellular networks or to run apps that were not approved by Apple present both a way to get around the marketing plan Apple devised and the cellular networks they are doing business with. At the same time running unapproved apps on iPhone is hazardous, as some jail breakers have found.

Apple has been known to brick phones and hacking unprotected devices is fun for some talented but misguided people. The world is a dangerous place and malicious code is out there. I prefer trusting Apple to protect me from the all that chaos than taking my device and opening it up to who knows what malware.

I have likened running Windows on a Mac as buying a BMW and keeping pigs in the back seat. A Mac running Windows is largely subject to all the malware; worms, viruses, trojans and more that a PC is vulnerable to.

While I am one of those guys who delights in killing the sacred cow, there is something about the full Apple hardware/software experience I don’t want to break. Security is a giant issue right now, personally, I love the elegance and thoughtfulness Apple builds in to everything they sell.