6 Reasons Not to Jailbreak iOS 8.3

6 Reasons Not to Jailbreak iOS 8.3 is a post by Craig Lloyd from Gotta Be Mobile.

An iOS 8.3 jailbreak was officially released today, marking the end of the no-jailbreak drought we’ve been experiencing over the last several months, but while you may be excited to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad, here are six reasons not to jailbreak iOS 8.3.

Jailbreaking can open up a whole world of new settings and tweaks that you can change around on your iPhone and iPad, allowing you to do things that Apple wouldn’t normally allow inside of its walled garden of sorts, like change around the user interface and adjust some hidden settings.

That all sounds like fun, as well as a great way to improve the iOS experience, but jailbreaking isn’t for everyone. There are many benefits to jailbreaking, but there are also a lot of downsides that users should be aware of.

I’m an avid jailbreaker and have no problem getting my hands dirty with such work, but there are a lot of users whom I tell to stay away from jailbreaking, and here’s why.

Cydia Doesn’t Work Yet

Specifically for the iOS 8.3 jailbreak that just released today, Cydia doesn’t work fully yet.

This is mostly because Cydia needs updated in order to work with the latest jailbreak. The app installs just fine in iOS 8.3 and it opens as normal, but most (if not all) jailbreak tweaks rely on something called the “Cydia Substrate,” and that has yet to be updated to work with the iOS 8.3 jailbreak.

This means that jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad right now on iOS 8.3 is essentially worthless until Cydia can be updated, since you can’t use any of the tweaks anyway, which is one of the only reasons that jailbreaking is worth it.

No OS X Compatibility

While not necessarily a reason not to jailbreak, no OS X support for the iOS 8.3 jailbreak puts a hinderance on the ability to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad if you only have a Mac computer.

Currently, the TaiG jailbreak tool only works with Windows machines, so if you don’t have a Windows computer, you’re out of luck.

Of course, an OS X version of the jailbreak tool will most likely release at some point in the future, much it did with the iOS 8.1 jailbreak, but for now, Mac users are SOL.

iOS Instability

Another reason why users may not want to jailbreak their devices is because jailbreaking leaves the door wide open for all kinds of instabilities with iOS.

Jailbreaking can lead to random reboots, tweaks not working correctly, tweaks that mess up other iOS features, etc. It’s not something you really want to deal with if you don’t know much about iOS in the first place.

More experienced users can handle it and troubleshoot the problems themselves and not make it a big deal, but those who are new to smartphones should probably stay away from jailbreaking their iPhone or iPad.

You Can’t Update iOS

When you jailbreak your iOS device, you’re unable to update iOS if a new version releases. Technically you can, but you’ll lose your jailbreak if that new version isn’t jailbreakable.

Even then, when a new jailbreak releases for a newer version of iOS, you have re-jailbreak all over again. It’s kind of annoying to say the least, and it won’t make you want to update to the latest version of iOS if you can help it.

So if you’re someone who likes to update when a new version of iOS releases, jailbreaking may not be your cup of tea.

Voided Warranty

Unsurprisingly, jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad will void the warranty. This means that if something happens to your device, you can’t take it into an Apple Store to get it fixed.

Essentially, once an Apple employee sees that your iPhone or iPad is jailbroken, they won’t be able to fix anything for free if it’s under AppleCare.

While jailbreaking isn’t illegal or anything, it will still void the warranty with Apple, so if the home button stops working one day, you’ll want to make sure to unjailbreak and restore your iPhone to normal before taking it to Apple.

You Won’t Get Apple Music

Apple Music will release with iOS 8.4 hopefully next week, and if you didn’t know already, Apple Music won’t work with older versions of iOS, and this includes iOS 8.3.

This means that if you jailbreak your iPhone or iPad, you’ll have to stick with iOS 8.3, which means that you won’t have access to Apple Music.

This doesn’t have to be a huge deal, as Spotify is a very good alternative, but if you’ve been looking forward to trying out Apple Music and hopefully switching over from Spotify or other music streaming service, you’ll have to think long and hard if jailbreaking is something that you should do.

This is similar to when the Apple Watch released, which would only work iOS 8.2 or newer, which wasn’t jailbreakable at the time. Users had to decide between getting an Apple Watch and losing their jailbreak, or giving up the Apple Watch and keeping their jailbreak.

6 Reasons Not to Jailbreak iOS 8.3 is a post by Craig Lloyd from Gotta Be Mobile.

6 Reasons Not to Jailbreak iOS 8.3