Why I Am Thinking About Jailbreaking My iPhone

I never thought I would see the day, but I am seriously considering jailbreaking my iPhone 3G.

"Why?"  Because as Apple seems to further limit which applications are allowed on the iPhone (or perhaps they are just enforcing what was already on the books) there are numerous apps and features that are out of bounds.

For example–

I would love to be able to use my iPhone as a camcorder. Sure, because of the camera itself the quality won’t be great, but the opportunity to have a camcorder with me all the time would more than compensate for the lousy quality. After all, SOMETHING is better than NOTHING. Sadly, that can’t happen because Apple won’t allow it. Unless… I jailbreak my iPhone. If I do that, there IS a camcorder program available.

I would love to have select information immediately available to me when I turn on my iPhone. Palm does it. Symbian does it. Even Windows Mobile does it. The iPhone CAN do it but doesn’t, thanks to Apple. Yes, a patent for an iPhone Home Screen was recently uncovered but that could be months or years away (if it ever does come).  Unless… I jailbreak my iPhone and I can have it right now (thanks to Intelliscreen).

I would love to use TuneWiki, an application that downloads songs lyrics from the web and displays them karaoke-style. It is a cool app that is available for the iPhone but NOT through the App Store. If I jailbreak, though, it is there for the taking.

And the final reason? 

I now have seven screens of apps and no way to organize them. SEVEN SCREEN!!!  On my Mac I have numerous 3rd Party options for organizing my applications. These include the ones shipped with the Mac, as well as LaunchBar, Butler, DragThing and many more. On the iPhone… not so much. Unless… I jailbreak the iPhone. If I do, I will suddenly have numerous options available including Nate True’s Dock.

But, you might be wondering, do apps like Intelliscreen and Dock work? Isn’t it difficult to jailbreak? Can’t it hurt your device?

The answer is, while I would never encourage anyone to jailbreak, I can tell you that Jailbreaking is a piece of cake and the apps work just fine.

How do I know? Because I took a trial run and jailbroke my first generation iPod Touch the other night.

The process was simple and Intelliscreen and Dock are amazing enough that I just might do the same to my iPhone 3G. So far it appears to add tons of functionality to the device without any negative effect.  I’ll keep you posted.