The cat and mouse game between Apple and jailbreak developers continues. After most of the prominent teams decided to skip iOS 9.2 in favor of 9.3, users were expecting to hear about results soon enough – and it looks like the good news might be right around the corner. Reports indicate that TaiG and Pangu in particular have been making a lot of progress in their efforts, and might be ready to release a public version of their own tools in the near future.
An exact date hasn’t been specified, but we expect to see the new release in a couple of months if things keep going at the current pace. There are also rumors that jailbreak teams have actually found 9.3 slightly better with regards to its jailbreaking potential, as opposed to the tightly locked-down 9.2. It’s not clear if Apple intentionally dropped some layers of protection between the two versions or if that was an oversight, but in any case this is good news for those who want to unlock the full potential of their iOS device.
In addition, some reports claim that Paigu may have actually been successful in producing a jailbreak tool for iOS 9.2, but it might not make much sense to focus on it at this point. The team has been somewhat secretive about their work – as most jailbreak developers tend to be – so we don’t expect them to share any details about their current situation anyway.
Currently, the only verified solution available to users is for iOS 9.1, so those who want to keep their devices jailbroken should avoid upgrading to higher versions of the operating system. It probably won’t be a good idea to get the tool immediately after it’s released either though, as users should wait a few days to see if any major issues pop up.
After all, jailbreaking has always been a tricky situation and users are generally advised to keep their eyes and ears open when applying these tools to their devices. There have been incidents with malicious software disguised as jailbreak programs, which have added a lot of fuel to the controversy around the situation. Apple themselves tend to maintain the stance that users should stay away from jailbreaking for their own good, and while people initially saw that as false threats, recent events have started to paint things in a different light.
On the other hand, the fact that Apple keep their OS so strictly secured has proved useful in some cases, like the recently popular in the media incident with the San Bernardino shooter. However, some experts claim that the situation wasn’t presented very accurately by the media, since the FBI were eventually able to gain access to the shooter’s phone on their own. Because of this, some were convinced that it was more about setting a legal precedent rather than an overly secure operating system.
Not that the final outcome was a bad one anyway – even if that was the intention of the FBI, they were still not able to actually set the precedent they were after, so they will have to face a similar legal battle anytime they want to unlock a device in the future. With that in mind, we also don’t see Apple taking down the security measures of the operating system anytime soon, despite this being a regular request by their community as well as some experts.