The iPhone Dev Team has released its Pwnage tool to jailbreak both iPhones and iPod Touches running the 2.0 software, and we fearlessly used a sacrificial iPod to test it out. The first version was released yesterday and was quickly followed by a minor update. Right now, this is Mac only, but we are sure the open source project will end up ported to Windows soon enough. The tool will jailbreak your iPhone but will not unlock it from your mobile carrier.
This is likely more useful for owners of the original iPhone — 3-G buyers will have already signed up for a contract so changing carriers is a little pointless. A future unlock should, though, allow you to pop in a local SIM card when traveling. Read on to follow our attempt to Jailbreak an iPod Touch, already loaded with the official 2.0 software.
So, how does it work? First you download the application and fire it up. You then choose what kind of iPhone or iPod you have (1-G, 3-G or Touch). The Pwnage application talks to your iPhone and then builds a custom IPSW file. An IPSW file is what iTunes uses to install the operating system onto the iPhone — think of it as the Mac OS X DVD you used to install Leopard, only a lot smaller (in my case, around 250 MB). The Pwnage tool then kicks your iPhone into recovery mode, all the while giving instructions on the screen and ticking countdowns, which makes the whole thing very hectic.
The custom IPSW is then used by iTunes to restore your iPod, just like a real install. You’ll need to click the “restore” button in your iPhone’s settings whilst holding down the option (or alt) key. You then navigate to the new IPSW file, which has magically appeared on your desktop, and go make coffee.
Soon, your iPhone will restart, showing the Pwnage Pineapple logo instead of the familiar Apple, and iTunes will ask you if you want to restore from the previous backup of your legit, still-locked iPhone. I told it to restore from this backup and then panicked and yanked the cable. Everything appeared fine, and as you can see in the photograph, the App Store coexists with the new Cydia application, a replacement for the Installer App found on older jailbroken iPhones.
Cydia asked me to update it over the air, and when I clicked OK, I found the first problem. With the new, virgin custom firmware, I had lost all my settings, including WiFi passwords. After entering the password, an update was downloaded, and then I was asked if I wanted to update more packages, including SSH.
This is where things really went wrong. The display shows the toolbar, with the time frozen, and a perpetual spinning gear wheel. I plugged the iPod back in to the USB port, just to keep the power coming, and curiously it synched my applications from iTunes, even whilst apparently locked. The synch actually went as normal, but the iPod was still stuck in spinning-wheel mode.
Next, a hard reboot. I held the power and home buttons down for ten seconds and the iPod rebooted and synched once again. My App Store Apps are now happily coexisting alongside the unofficial ones.
Cydia isn't yet as full of applications as the precious Installer.app, and it will be interesting to see whether anybody will actually bother to port older applications when they can just submit them to the App Store. But everything seems to work just fine. In fact, the whole iPod feels a little less sluggish than with the regular 2.0 software.
The home screen.
The scary result of launching Cydia for the first time.
Cydia updates over the air, just the the App Store will do one day.
Yes. Yes we do.
Product page [iPhone Dev Team]
