Good News

It has been a few months since iOS 7 was released to the public by Apple, and it was finally received its first untether jailbreak yesterday. You can thank all the usual suspects (evaders, Pod2g, etc…) for the much-needed jailbreak.

You can jailbreak any iPod, iPhone or iPad running iOS 7 (up to 7.0.4), so it’s important to make sure you don’t update to 7.0.5 or 7.1 that’s due to be released in the next few days. As always you need a computer (Mac, Windows or Linux) and the evasi0n software you can grab from here.

1- Backup your device

2- Make sure you don’t have a passcode

3 – Plug the device in and run the Jailbreak application

4- Grab a cup of coffee and wait for a few minutes

5- Done and done

Bad News

Unlike the previous jailbreaks for iOS 4, 5 and 6, the developers have published a half baked solution that leaves your phone extremely buggy. While that may not be an issue if you are a developer and used to testing out the beta releases, you should know that some of these bugs can potentially damage your device forever.

Questionable Part

The Chinese users were in a shock of a life time today, when they released they no longer had access to Cydia on their device. Instead, they saw a new app called Taig – (Pronounced Taiji). The app is automatically installed when the setup process detects your default language as Chinese.

This could be due to the fact that majority of Chinese users aren’t confident is their english language skills and that can make their life harder when it comes to installing apps from repos inside Cydia. The evad3rs are thought to have received a large sum of money (unconfirmed $10,00,000) from the Taig developers to ship their app on jailbroken devices.

But It’s OK!

There is no question that coming up with a jailbreak takes up a lot of time and effort. I don’t blame evad3rs wanting to make some extra money on the side by deploying third party apps that will make the users’ lives easier. It’s a win-win situation.

Although my concerns is the lack of transparency from evad3rs and their failure to make a comment on the topic. I hope they have ensured the integrity of Taig before installing it on millions of devices.

Final Thoughts

I’ve been running the jailbreak on my 4s and 5s for the past 24 hours and it’s not all that bad, given that I’m used to the buggy betas that are released by Apple. I don’t hold any personal information on these phones as they are test devices, so stolen information is not my worry. However it should be a worry for a user that uses the phone to manage their entire life.

I would hold off until further comments are made by the evad3rs regarding the new changes. Waiting a few weeks also makes sure you get your hands on a more stable release of the jailbreak.

I’ll be watching this space closely in the next few days. Reach out to me on twitter(@samatrouh) if you have any questions