JailBreaking - What, Why, and When?

Jailbreaking is a topic that maintains a sore thumb for a lot of people who are unfamiliar with the current concepts. Well, before we delve into the "what's going on right now" sort of questions, let's go ahead a clear up a bit of things about Jailbreaking. 

Jailbreaking, in its purest form, is a currently legal operation in the United States that involves turning OFF some of the security features in your phone or tablet (tablet Jailbreaking is still currently illegal, at least in the mean time.) 

So why would you want to do this? The nice guys at Apple are limiting us for our best interests, right? I mean they are security features. Well, yes, but jailbreakers have other things in mind. 

More specifically, could you program your phone to start playing a siren ringtone when it receives a certain text message (IE message being "IMSTOLEN")? The answer is, no, it can't do this on normal terms. The phone would have to be jailbroken in order to do this.

In addition to thousands of other tweaks available for jailbroken phones, why then would Apple want us to not jailbreak?? Why would they fight us tooth and nail in the courtrooms at DMCA meetings in order to try and keep us from doing these things? The answer to this question is that jailbreaking also opens up worlds to all kinds of piracy that isn't normally accessible. Apple is just trying to protect their developers, programmers, and investments from losing money. In addition to this, the phone is also opened up a slight amount to malicious users and viruses.

So, let's say the average user says "ok, I'm convinced my world with this phone is too confined, and I want to open up to a whole new world of high tech stuff. It's my phone isn't it? I want to do what I want with it. But how do I do that?" Currently, phones updated UP TO 7.0.6 are eligible to be jailbroken. Phones updated past this (7.1 and on) currently can not be jailbroken. There is one exception. The iPhone 4 is currently eligible for the jailbreak on 7.1.1, but no other phone model has this available.

The current status on the 7.1.1 jailbreak is pretty cut and dry. iPhone jailbreak developers have pretty much all released a statement saying that unless an exploit (or a bug that let's software developers able to hack the IOS' software in order to be able to jailbreak) gets patched by IOS 8.0, then the jailbreak won't be coming until IOS 8.0 comes out. If in the present betas of 8.0, the exploits they have DO get patched, then the IOS 7.1.1 jailbreak will be released. Anyone who claims to have a jailbreak available to download contrary to this more than likely has you downloading a virus. 

If you have any questions, be sure to drop me a comment below, and I'll be sure to try and answer it!

Thanks!

~ Bloodless