Why You Should Jailbreak

[spoonforknife]

I've gone around the forums, and I've seen many people asking "Why should I jailbreak?". This is understandable. You're seeing the word jailbreak everywhere, but you don't see any real motivation to do it, and you have no idea whether or not this could harm your coveted iPod touch. I'm here to tell you why you should jailbreak.

RISKS

As with everything, there are risks. If you buy a Wii, your remote could go flying through the air and destroy your television set. If you buy coffee, the coffee could spill on your computer, and your computer dies. With jailbreaking, your warranty is voided. This is a pretty big turnoff to some people, as your home button could break, or something could happen to your device.

Fortunately, there is something called Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU). DFU allows you to completely erase your device of most traces of jailbreak. I say most because Apple Geniuses have a special software that allows them to check if your device has been jailbroken. This can only happen if the Apple Genius you are with is really anal and you are physically giving the iPod to the Apple Genius. Otherwise, you are 100% safe. You can find a guide on how to execute DFU mode on your iPod somewhere in this forum. I just can't be bothered to put it in this guide.

Apple cannot check whether your device has been jailbroken and restored (DFU) by looking at it. In short, your warranty is technically intact if you put your iPod into DFU mode and restore.

WHY YOU SHOULD JAILBREAK

1. THEMES

Themes are cool. They allow you to modify the look and feel of your iPod touch. You can change what your icons look like, and even change the background of your home screen.



This one, called Picnic, is really inventive. You can download all sorts of things off of Cydia. With Cydia, you can download almost anything right from the comfort of your iPod, without even using a computer.



2. EMULATORS

Want to play Quake, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, NES, Playstation, SNES, DOOM, Genesis, and a bunch of other vintage game systems? Well, you're in luck. A developer named Zodttd has made emulators that allow you to play these games on your iPod for no charge. Keep in mind this is not necessarily legal, but it is truly awesome to go and show your friend that you're playing GTA Advance on your iPod.


Zodttd's gpSPhone Game Boy Advance Emulator playing Pokémon.

Emulators are not just limited to games though. There is even an early Mac OS emulator, called Mini vMac. It can emulate the early PowerPC versions of the Mac OS, up to OS 7. Basically, you can carry around a Mac in your pocket. There's nothing like walking up to somebody showing off their iPod touch and playing Cube Runner and pulling out your iPod with a Mac on it. I've done this before. It is awesome.

You can download emulators from Cydia too. Want to find out more about Zodttd's Emulators? Check out his website.

3. SPRINGBOARD ADD-ONS

SpringBoard add ons allow you to do some crazy things with your iPod. One, called Stacks, allows you to use Mac OS X Leopard Stacks on your iPod! You can find this in Cydia as well.



Another, called SBSettings, allows you to swipe the status bar (bar at the top of your screen), and adjust Brightness, Volume, Toggle Wi-Fi on and off, and much more. This is also in Cydia.

My personal favorite is something called Quickgold. If you've ever used Quicksilver on a Mac, Quickgold is your iPod touch's equivalent. It allows you to press the home button and search for any application on your device and launch it. The complete and total awesomeness does not stop there, as Quickgold allows you to search Google, IMDB, and Powerset (Wikipedia).

This guide doesn't even touch the tip of the iceberg of jailbreaking. You can do so much more fun things with your iPod. Have fun!

[rileyman]

What about springboard widgets?
and quickgold..
categories??
a big one is that it lets you have more than 148 apps

[spoonforknife]

Originally Posted by rileyman

What about springboard widgets?
and quickgold..
categories??
a big one is that it lets you have more than 148 apps

Why would anybody need more than 148 applications?

[buckycat]

Nice thread, dpoony.

[bimple]

Originally Posted by spoonforknife

Why would anybody need more than 148 applications?

I have over 300

[pjbarnoy]

Originally Posted by bimple

I have over 300

I have... OVER 9000!

[skpx]

because chicks dig guys who jailbreak

[BaseballMVP755]

when u sed:
"Emulators are not just limited to games though. There is even an early Mac OS emulator, called Mini vMac. It can emulate the early PowerPC versions of the Mac OS, up to OS 7. Basically, you can carry around a Mac in your pocket. There's nothing like walking up to somebody showing off their iPod touch and playing Cube Runner and pulling out your iPod with a Mac on it. I've done this before. It is awesome."

i never heard about that before, sounds pretty cool.. was this in the 1.x.x days?

[Kiks52]

Great thread - can anyone tell that spoony is back?

[spoonforknife]

Originally Posted by BaseballMVP755

when u sed:
"Emulators are not just limited to games though. There is even an early Mac OS emulator, called Mini vMac. It can emulate the early PowerPC versions of the Mac OS, up to OS 7. Basically, you can carry around a Mac in your pocket. There's nothing like walking up to somebody showing off their iPod touch and playing Cube Runner and pulling out your iPod with a Mac on it. I've done this before. It is awesome."

i never heard about that before, sounds pretty cool.. was this in the 1.x.x days?

No, it's out now. Check your Cydia. It's on a repository called Namedfork.net. You'll have to find the files for it, as I cannot legally supply them to you... but.. yeah.