[sullichin]

This is amazing news; I feel like Apple's lifting of restrictions has something to do with modifying your phone's software now being legal in the US. It's probably only beneficial to them to have all of this content available through their App Store outlet if people can easily get it anyway.

[city41]

I think you greatly overestimate the percentage of iOS users that even know what jailbreaking is.

[patrickk]

A friend doesn't know what a browser is, yet he has a jailbroken iPhone so he can use winterboard. He paid someone to do it for him.

[CamperBob]

I don't know about that. I know a lot of people with jailbroken iPhones, whom we'd all think of as "computer-illiterate" at best. Jailbreaking is very much a mainstream activity these days.

Edit: I'll go so far as to speculate that the large proportion of jailbroken iOS devices is what is driving the glasnost at Apple lately. They are faced with keeping some control over their customers's devices, or losing the control they still have. With widespread jailbreaking, the market has decisively rejected Apple's attempt at total control, while simultaneously embracing the products themselves.

[ryanpetrich]

I would estimate the majority of users on jailbreak aren't very technically savvy--the most of the emails I receive regarding the software I have hosted on Cydia are about on par with YouTube comments.

[loewenskind]

>the market has decisively rejected Apple's attempt at total control

If it's so decisive you must be able to cite it pretty easily, eh? I'm plenty "tech savvy" but I've never jailbroken my phone. I like the safety the App Store gives me. I don't have time to vet every damn application and I'm happy that some else does, even if they fail to let few a few things I might have liked.

[CamperBob]

If it's so decisive you must be able to cite it pretty easily, eh?

Google returns "about 1,150,000 results" for the term jailbreakme. I think that'll do.

[loewenskind]

You're pretty easy to convince. Even if every single one of those results represented a person who jail broke their phone then there are still several times more people who haven't then have. I don't think the phrase "decisively rejected by the market" means what you think it means.

[CamperBob]

Translation: "I don't like the data."