How to Jailbreak an iPhone

It’s been almost 30 years since Apple’s legendary sci-fi Super Bowl commercial introducing the Mac, in which a lone renegade (read: Apple) stands up to a totalitarian state (read: IBM). Today, though, Apple is the tech monolith, with a business model built on ingenious hardware and software design, but also on keeping tight control over the software ecosystem that determines what users can do with their Apple devices. Nowhere is that more in evidence than the App Store for iPhones and iPads. The company has been known to reject third-party apps that raise privacy issues, or that are politically controversial. The implicit deal in buying an iPad or iPhone is that you’ll get the Apple ingenuity and ease and beauty in exchange for the fetters.

Unless, that is, you jailbreak. On Tuesday, a team of hackers calling themselves the Evad3rs released a jailbreak for Apple’s newest iPhone and iPad operating system, iOS 6.1. Jailbreaking installs a custom version of iOS—its firmware—that allows users to download and install apps that aren’t available through the App Store. Jailbreaking is simply a matter of downloading a program that guides you in customizing your firmware. With each new generation of iPhones and iPads, it gets harder to write new jailbreaks, because with each new version of the firmware Apple keeps patching the holes in the code that hackers use, creating a unending game of cat and mouse between the company and the jailbreakers.