Last week’s iPhone scandal came in the form of the U.S. Library of Congress’ decision that jailbreaking your iPhone is legal and doesn’t infringe upon Apple’s copyright. What this means to all of us, the end-users of Apple’s products, is that we can use them as we see fit, outside of the context of the App Store.
While this is clearly not what Apple wants to hear—and rightly so, because many of the apps available to your jailbroken iPhone use its resources in ways Apple doesn’t condone, mostly for performance reasons—the decision stands, and Apple must live with the fact that their App Store must exist in a competitive marketplace.
Now, only about a week after that decision, there’s a new way to jailbreak your iPhone using a browser. This is the first time jailbreaking has been accessible via the web. It’s safe to do, although you’ll need to remember that Apple condones exactly none of the apps you can install afterwards. The process can be undone by re-installing your phone’s system software from within iTunes.