14 DAY TRIAL // The untethered iOS 8 jailbreak for iPhones and iPads known as Pangu has finally reached a state where it is stable enough to make sense, according to Cydia owner Jay Freeman (aka Saurik).
Freeman made the news official, so to speak, on his Twitter account. There, he noted that “If you are waiting to jailbreak your iOS 8.0-8.1 device until things are ‘stable enough:’ we now seem to be ready!” and supplied a link to the Pangu site.
He later added, “Cydia vendors can now mark their products as iOS 8 compatible. (The jailbreak platform itself is now stable enough to make this reasonable).”
Tweaks, mods, themes, and perhaps some piracy
Cydia is sort of like an unofficial app store for jailbreakers. There, you can find anything that Apple won’t allow in its own store, and that includes system modifications, themes, and jailbreak tweaks that allow you to get more out of your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.
But Cydia isn’t the only thing that a jailbreak will open on your iDevice. Users who perform the hack also gain access to a plethora of pirated apps distributed freely on the Internet.
Piracy harms developers (and not only) because it circumvents the mechanisms through which these people get compensated for their work. Needless to point out, pirating apps is illegal and may even put you behind bars.
Pangu 1.2.1 available for download
The Chinese team of hackers who coded the Pangu jailbreak tool have yet another update ready for the masses. Pangu 1.2.1, released yesterday evening, supports Cydia 1.1.16 and addresses a boot issue involving the Restore from Backup feature.
Pangu is Windows-only for now and supports Chinese and English. Compatible devices include iPhone 4S and later, iPad 2 and newer, and iPod touch fifth-generation, all on iOS 8 and above. In version 1.2.0, released a few days ago, the team also noted that it had improved the jailbreak process and that the restore function was a go for iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 tablets.
Interested parties are urged to back up their iDevices before employing Pangu. There are some particularities associated with this tool that make it quite different from previous jailbreak utilities, like evasi0n.
For instance, the development team urges users not to delete a file designated as “com.apple.mobile.softwareupdated.plist,” nor should they disable the service. If the user does that, “It will cause your devices unable to reboot,” the team states.
Cydia vendors can now mark their products as iOS 8 compatible. (The jailbreak platform itself is now stable enough to make this reasonable.)
— Jay Freeman (saurik) (@saurik) November 6, 2014