iPhone Secrets

Chapter 18

Jailbreaking and Troubleshooting

In This Chapter

• Jailbreaking and its consequences
• Working in recovery mode
• Tapping into DFU mode
• Weighing your repair options

Ask twenty people, and you’re bound to find one who swears up and down that Apple products simply never have issues. “That’s a Windows thing,” they’ll say. Candidly, Windows has garnered that reputation for a reason, but Apple has most certainly not earned a gold star in Never Failing 101. In my experience, Apple products have failed (and even faltered) less frequently than their Windows-based counterparts, although I suspect much of that is due to the overwhelming amount of malware that targets the operating system with the lion’s share of users. It’s rare for serious problems to arise on the iPhone, but to say problems are nonexistent would be fibbing. In this chapter, I walk through some of the most common issues, as well as how to get around them, through them, or over them. I also discuss recovery and DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) modes (useful for getting yourself out of binds). But first, I look at the murky, innovative world of jailbreaking—an action not smiled upon by Apple, but one that can be remarkably enlightening if done with precaution and care.

Jailbreaking Your iPhone

The mere mention of the word sends shudders down the spines of those who’ve been burnt by hacks gone wrong before, and to many others, it just sounds illegal. Perhaps it’s the unadulterated use of the word “jail,” or maybe it’s ...