Last month, Apple released version 8.4 of their popular mobile operating system iOS, and even though they tried to address some issues with the system’s vulnerability to “jailbreaking” – the process of unlocking the device’s full capabilities – it still didn’t take long for the iOS community to come up with a workaround that defeated Apple’s new security measures, and as of now, a jailbreak tool is available for iOS 8.4 as well.
However, it looks like the cat and mouse game will go on with the release of iOS 8.4.1, as the beta of the new version of the operating system hints at something potentially bad for its fans – it’s going to patch the vulnerability that allowed for the 8.4 jailbreak. Of course, we expect that this situation won’t last for long and developers will probably still find a way to get around the system’s restrictions, they’ll just need to look in a different place.
What does the new version of the operating system bring, and is it even worth installing for now? According to initial previews and rumors, it’s going to come with various additional improvements over the original iOS 8.4 experience, mostly in the way of bug fixes and performance optimizations. It’s also going to be one of the last steps in the transition towards iOS 9, as the new version of the operating system is right around the corner.
There have been some hopes in the community that iOS 8.4.1 is actually not going to include the fix for the 8.4 jailbreak, but this probably won’t be the case. Apple have been specifically putting a lot of effort into resolving jailbreak-related issues with their devices with each OS update, and we can only imagine that they have been hard at work trying to get their current problems with iOS 8.4 fixed.
Some members of the community have been critical towards Apple because of this. The general consensus among those who jailbreak their devices is that Apple are unnecessarily preventing them from doing that. People end up doing it anyway, as long as the tools are available, and since it voids the warranty of the device, it doesn’t make that much sense to prevent people from doing it voluntarily in the first place.
Android, on the other hand, is much more open as an operating system, and allows its users to perform various modifications to their base installation in order to get a much better experience and adapt it to their own needs as best as possible. With iOS, users are practically forced to use whatever Apple have determined is best for them, and that’s the reason why jailbreaking is such a popular procedure among iOS users.
Apple’s argument in all of this has generally been that jailbreaking devices is a security risk for their users, and they are just trying to protect them. Still, most of the people who jailbreak their devices tend to be quite tech savvy in the first place, and usually know what they’re doing. And for those who don’t, there are plenty of warnings that they have to go through before they can start the jailbreak process.
Another rumor in the community has been that it’s going to be an important detail to observe whether or not Apple end up fixing the jailbreak vulnerability of iOS 8.4 with the release of 8.4.1. According to some, if they don’t address the issue, this could be a good indication that iOS 9 is coming soon and it could even be right around the corner.
Only way there will be a jailbreak for 8.4.1 is if the vulnerability found in 8.4.1 wouldn’t affect a future jailbreak in iOS 9. iOS 9 is too close to release to burn an exploit that could be used for iOS 9.