I'm certainly not going to condone illicit behavior or suggest you do something that may void a warranty or cause the Mac police to storm your house like Israeli Special Forces at the airport, but I will tell you that (in my opinion) the benefits outweigh the risks if you're considering jailbreaking your iPhone.
There are a ton of apps that are not Apple approved out there. Why? Who knows? I'm actually sure someone knows. Plenty of people probably know and have probably written about it too, just not me. I try not to concern myself with why big corporations make the decissions they do, simply because they do it for all the reasons and my assumptions about those reasons are usually more fun than the truth.
So, in short, there are a lot of apps available to a jailbroken phone and quite a few hacks to allow you to do things an out-of-the-box iPhone doesn't do, like tether your wireless, VNC to your phone, and block incoming calls.
I'm not going to post how to jailbreak the iPhone. You're on your own there and Google can help turn up links like this one or even this one. All pretty easy and painless to do.
First and foremost, after jailbreaking, make sure you change the root password using these steps:
All iPhones have the same root password which is a security risk!The default user-name is (root) and password is (alpine)
You will need a JB iPhone, Open SSH and Mobile Terminal. I also recommend getting Boss preffs so you can turn OpenSSH off if your not using it.
Start Mobile Terminal and type the following (without the brackets):
- [login root]
- [alpine] this will log you in as root.
- [passwd] requests password change
- Type your new password
- Retype your password
Voila!
You can delete Mobile Terminal. I don't use it, and it can be a security risk. Besides, I can always install when I do need it.
