As an Iphone 4 user, I like my phone to be unique and distinguishable from the other Iphone 4s out there, since it is one of the most populated phones in this generation. With over 200 000 apps on the iTunes store, it’s not a surprise why people would want the iPhone. However, not all of the apps are available to everyone. A fair amount of apps require the purchase of the product via the store, and prices of these apps range from $0.99-9.99, and the extremes of almost $100 for the GPS apps. “Just get the free-version apps then” one might say, instead of buying the pricey apps. But there is a value you get from a bought app which you can’t get from a free app.
With such high costs for apps, why would people still want the iPhone? The answer is very simple: jailbreak. Jailbreaking your apple product allows your device to download most apps for free, but it can also tweak the internal details of your phone, changing the interface to further customization. But the downfall of jailbreaking your device means you can’t upgrade to the most updated operating system that apple supports until a newer jailbreaking program comes out.
The newest iOS is at 4.1, while the newest jailbreak program is at 4.0.1. But according to a technology blog, everything is going to change, again. Click here to view the post. Another jailbreaking program, limera1n, will be available within the new day and claims to be able to jailbreak Apple’s newest iOS 4.1.
This raises an issue involving the ethics of this practice. While jailbreaking benefits the consumers on having to spend less for apps on the product that they already bought for a few hundred dollars, Apple and the creator of the apps (EA for sports games, Popcap for games, Tomtom for GPS etc) are losing money due to jailbreak programs. Despite Apple’s attempts of preventing the jailbreaking by constantly coming up with new operating systems, it will just keep being solved by programs to be jailbroken. Now is it ethical to jailbreak your phone to download apps that you were suppose to buy to get them? Can it be seen as equivalent to stealing from the iTunes store?