Jailbreak/Unlock: huh?

As iPhones become exponentially more popular, these terms pop up with more and more frequency.  Jailbreaking.  Unlocking.  It sounds so illicit!  To the layman, these terms mean nothing and cause a lot of confusion if you don't really understand tech lingo.  I'll admit, I don't understand all the tech lingo either; which makes me just the guy to put it in terms we can all understand.

Jailbreaking.

First things first: there's nothing illegal about it.  Whew!  You can breathe easily now.  With that out of the way, what is it and why would you want to do it?  Well, in the spirit of not bogging you down with tech jargon you wouldn't understand anyway, I'll explain it in terms you can understand: houses.

You live in a city.  Carriers are like neighborhoods.  You have At&T Heights over here.  Verizon Park over there.  Virgin Island off the coast a bit (see what I did there?).  Sprint.  T-Mobile.  They're all places for you to live in Cellphonesville.

You decide on the neighborhood in which you want to live and then you have to decide on a house.  Like anything else, you want a house that fits you and your needs and you can afford.  A bigger house is going to be more costly to upkeep and the same can be said for cellphones as smartphones have costly data plans that they pretty much can't function without.  So you review all the houses you can buy in the neighborhood you've picked out.  They all look nice, don't they? 

And here comes the affable cool-geek Apple guy. 

He tells you that the house they provide you with will be beautiful, flawlessly designed, state-of-the-art with all the amenities and more.  On top of that, you can go to them to get all of the things you want to put in your house.  Apple will assure you that everything they sell for the house they made for you will fit in pleasantly with your Feng Shui.  And won't that be lovely?  The bedroom set will go well with the shape of the windows and the TV will be perfect in the den and the surround sound will be flawlessly set.  The Nokia phones don't make those kinds of promises.  You go with Apple.

It is all you ever dreamed it could be and more, your Apple home.  You and your sweetheart walk around your neighborhood, looking at the other Apple homes: they're bigger and more beautiful than the rest.  You laugh as you walk down Crackberry lane at their clunky houses that don't fit the neighborhood's rustic aesthetic.  Not like your Apple home.

Every now and then, though, you come across an home that you're certain is an Apple house but… but it doesn't look like yours or the others on your block.  You hear music blasting and realize they're having a fucking party.  This homeowner has a three-car garage instead of a two like you and everyone else on your block!  WTF?!  AND they have a fucking pool!  A pool?!  You didn't even know you could put a pool in your home; Apple didn't mention that!  You go inside and realize that they also have a handy skylight installed as well as a deck that connects to the balconies.  None of which you have in your home.  They've even knocked down a wall upstairs to the master bedroom is bigger and the master bath is nicer than yours.  To top it off, these assholes even furnished their basement and turned it into a home theatre!  You didn't know you could do all that in your Apple home!

Never once did you hate your Apple home, but surely you're wondering why nobody told you you could have all that in yours.  Why didn't the Apple rep tell you that?  You walk along paying more attention and you notice lots of things about some of these Apple homes -most of which are just like yours: beautiful and the envy of everyone- which just make them… cooler.  They're painted different colors or the roof has a different sort of shingle on them.  All sorts of things.  Every now and then you come across a lot that has a collapsed or falling apart or burned down Apple home.  Not many, but over now and then.

As you come to the edge of your neighborhood, you see some Apple homes over in Verizon Park but you also see one or two on the Virgin Island.  Not only do they have a pool but they have more land and they have a POOL HOUSE!  And a guest house!  And waterslides and ever everyone is having a party there too!  Four-car garage and it connects to the house in a better way!  Why didn't you think of that configuration??  And there's another Apple Mansion off by itself.  It's got freaking solar panels and is off the grid!!  WTF?!


Well, let's come back to reality, assuming you're still with me.  Your iPhone is that house.  It's wonderful and does all you want and more.  But every now and then you come across a Jailbroken iPhone.  Jailbreaking allows you to customize like that house with the pool and 3-car garage and bigger master suite and home theatre in the basement.  Your phone can do a ton of different things.  Only the people who Jailbreak, they're not going through Apple.  All of those additions to your Apple home/phone aren't approved and just like home-improvement, you could fuck something up -possibly permanently in a small percentage of cases- if you're not careful.  That's like those lovely Apple homes that are falling apart. 

Jailbreaking opens access to the phone's root coding and allows for it's capabilities to be expanded.  The downside to that is that there's no Apple filter to insure that everything plays nice together.  For the most part, a jailbroken iPhone will work as flawlessly as a regular one, but add too much and you may find some of those unofficial apps don't play nice together.

So what about unlocking?

Unlocking is like those Apple homes in other neighborhoods.  Unlocking is like… instead of selling your home and moving to another neighborhood, you actually take your home with you and put it down somewhere else.  Other neighborhoods might have more land for you but they don't sell Apple homes.  Other phones/homes are operating off the grid, as it were.  You get some of those too after you've unlocked it.  There is a risk with that, depending on the generation of iPhone that you have and how you jailbreak and unlock it.  An unlocked iPhone need not be jailbroken but it seems it often is.  Additionally, unlocking is not required to jailbreak.  Some people like AT&T just fine but they want their phone to do more.  It should be noted that unlocking is a violation of your Terms of Service with AT&T.

In short:  jailbreaking allows you to customize your iPhone in ways that Apple does not allow.  For good and for ill; there are plenty of sites that review the unauthorized applications.  Unlocking allows you to use your phone on a carrier of your choice.

Just FYI.  And, by the way, that affable Apple-geek?  His phone's probably jailbroken…

What to write about in the other half of my time.

Since I used to be 1 man with 2 Jeeps, that was double to write about.  Now that I'm down to 1, it poses quite the conundrum:  what should I write about for the rest of the time?


Everything else in the world.

Tech.  Women.  Fashion.  Food.  Places.  All the things that interest a renaissance man.  Beginning with tech.

1 Man... 1 Jeep...

Well, it appears that it is now done:  my XJ/Cherokee has been sold.  I am going to miss that Jeep.  Legions upon legions of XJ owners will attest to the fact that they're are awesome fucking vehicles.  Yes, Wranglers have come to be the visual association when people hear the word "Jeep" and I don't discount that.  They are truly awesome in their own right.  But when you say "Go anywhere.  Do anything." that was the XJ.  Nowhere it couldn't go and there was nothing it couldn't do.  Better power, more comfortable ride, better gas mileage, more room in the interior… and it could follow a CJ/YJ/TJ/JK anywhere.

Eventually, I'll get around to posting step-by-step pictures of some of the upgrades and repairs I did to it.  I kept it completely stock.  I've decided that I'll probably get another one somewhere down the line sooner or later and this time I'll get a 4x4 and upgrade it in a manner that could take more aggressive trails.

But for now, I'm just a man with one Jeep.  And while you can never have too many Jeeps, one is enough for the time being for a myriad of reasons.  That doesn't, however, mean that I'm not keeping my eyes open in case a great deal comes along on a Willys Truck or a 5-quarter or a Scrambler.

I'll keep you posted…