14 DAY TRIAL // MuscleNerd, a member of the infamous iPhone Dev Team, has achieved what looks like a tethered jailbreak of a 3G Apple handset running iPhone OS 4.0, the beta software released to developers yesterday. Hours ago, 9to5Mac started to spread the word that the respective Dev Team member had posted a YouTube video standing as evidence of his feat. The footage is available for your viewing pleasure below.
Hours into the release of iPhone OS and SDK version 4.0 to developers, torrent sites were already listing the availability of the new software. The file “iPhone2,1_4.0_8A230m_Restore.ipsw” is now freely available for download via the likes of thepiratebay.org and torrenthound.com. Whether MuscleNerd got his hands on the IPSW file from a registered Apple developer or from the web is unknown, but his video contains clear evidence that the iPhone 3G jailbreak was performed on iPhone OS 4.0.
As shown in the screenshot above, Cydia (the “illegal” application installer) appears right next to an application folder, the latter being a unique feature to version 4.0 of the iPhone OS. Apple introduced the new feature yesterday, revealing that users must simply drag one app icon onto another, and a new folder is automatically created. The folder is automatically given a name based on the App Store category of the apps it contains. Alongside Folders and other new additions, Apple introduced multitasking, a highly anticipated function that was desperately needed by iPhone and iPod touch users.
Softpedia readers may remember that days into the iPad’s public debut, the device was hacked. The same MuscleNerd posted a similar video showing how he was able to log into the iPad “jailbreak style,” as he put it.
The iPhone Dev Team aren’t the only hackers actively searching for holes in the iPhone software. iPhone hacker geohot is also busy cooking up tools for the iPhone jailbreak community. His most recent achievements were shown in a video with the hacker demoing an untethered jailbreak for the latest iPod touch 3G and iPhone 3GS running iPhone OS 3.1.3, the current public version of the operating system.