Cydia, despite being the go-to app and tweak store for several years in the jailbreaking community, has a number of shortcomings. It's slow to load and daftly unorganized, among other things.
And most people tend to blame Saurik for all of these issues. After all, he is the creator and 'grandmaster' of Cydia, right? Not so much, according to his latest comments in a Reddit thread...
The long-awaited iOS 6.x jailbreak, known as evasi0n, has been dubbed the most popular jailbreak ever. And rightly so. In its first 10 minutes, it was used by over 100,000 people. And 4 days later, that number grew to 7 million.
Today, nearly a month after evasi0n's release, there's a new statistic out. Evad3rs team member pod2g just passed along the news from Saurik that more than 14 million devices have now been seen running Cydia on iOS 6.x...
We're not sure if this is cool, or copyright infringement, but either way here you go. We've come across what appears to be a toy iPhone, that has seemingly been jailbroken. Notice the Cydia icon in the bottom row of icons?
Of course, it's not called an iPhone. The packaging reads 'Telephone Intelligent.' And instead of Cydia, the iconic brown icon is labeled 'Gift.' But either way, it sure looks like someone is selling toy jailbroken iPhones...
If you have used the new evasi0n tool to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad, you're among the millions of people that have done just that thus far. In fact, an unbelievable seven million devices have been set free in just four days following the release of the evasi0n jailbreak for iOS 6.1, making the free tool the most successful jailbreak ever, on any device, period...
It's the same story with almost every jailbreak. The new jailbreak is released, and folks rush to download all of their favorite jailbreak apps and tweaks. The result is a less than primed experience due to the stress that this places on Cydia and the repos hosting the various packages. After a new jailbreak is released, it usually takes a few days for everything to calm down to somewhat normal levels.
This time around, though, Saurik, and the repo managers appear to be taking preemptive actions to ensure a smoother experience immediately post jailbreak release. While nothing is assured until the inevitable deluge of user requests places stress on the system, you should look forward to a much better experience than in times past.
For most people, Jay Freeman isn't exactly a household name. Neither is Saurik, his online alias. That said, if you've used a jailbroken iPhone since 2008 then you've definitely seen both names frequently. Saurik is the developer behind Cydia, the package manager we use to easily install tweaks, themes, and other software that Apple won't allow developer to distribute through iTunes.
You might know his name, but would you recognize Jay Freeman if he was walking down the street? If you did, would you approach him? Would you ask him questions? Would you pose for a picture with him and post it on Reddit? Well, that's what the first stranger who recognized him did...
TechCrunch has published a lengthy article today entitled "Behind The Scenes of The iPhone 5 Jailbreak." The piece takes a look back at all of the jailbreaks that have been released over the years, as well as at the work being done on the current jailbreak.
While the report doesn't offer any new information regarding the progress of the iOS 6 JB, it does have a couple of interesting tidbits sprinkled throughout its contents. One of them, for example, is the number of devices that are currently running Cydia...
I went to JailbreakCon full of good intentions. I was going to live tweet the event, I was going to write posts about every speak, and I was going to interview as many speakers as I could. As it turned out, I did none of that. Instead, I soaked in as much as I could from everyone around me. I did what I hadn't done for a long time: I socialized!
When I say that I socialized, I'm not saying that I pretended to be friends with some people I mostly knew on Twitter. No, I actually lived with these people for three days, learned about their lives, their habits, and their personality. I learned about the real "them", not the image they sometimes give of them on Twitter or IRC.
This is the story of my three days at the epicenter of the jailbreak community. You won't learn anything here about the iOS 6 jailbreak, because what happens at JailbreakCon stays at JailbreakCon, but hopefully, you will get a glimpse a the other side of the jailbreak community...
Saurik undoubtedly had the most animated and original speak at JailbreakCon. Watch him talk about AT&T, a food court, and salt during this 45 minute presentation ran entirely on iPhoto.
Have you ever wondered how much money Saurik makes for running Cydia? Or whatever happened to Cydia for Mac? Good. We've just come across the answers to these questions, and more.
In a response to a recent forum tantrum, Saurik decided to address a number of misconceptions in the jailbreak community regarding him and his popular underground app store...
The App Store hasn't had any shortage of knockoff apps since its creation a few years ago. When popular games such as Angry Birds or Cut the Rope make their way up the charts, you can expect a few unscrupulous developers to rush and try to get their copycat app approved and available in the App Store in order to make a quick buck.
Surfing on the popularity of Cydia, the App Store for jailbreak apps and tweaks, one shady developer thought that releasing an app called Cydia and making it available to over 300 million iDevices (no jailbreak required, mind you) would be a good idea...
Late last month, Apple finally put the tickets for its highly-anticipated WWDC event up for sale. But within two hours, the tickets were gone, leaving hundreds of developers out to dry. Luckily, there's another option.
If you're going to be in the San Francisco area around June 11-14, you might want to check out Indiedevlab. No, Scott Forstall won't be there giving a rundown of iOS 6 features. But Saurik and others will be attending...