I believe that the Jailbreaking community’s days are numbered. There are a few reasons for this opinion. First, with the introduction of iOS 7 comes many new features that are borrowed from the Jailbreak community. The new Control Center is Apple’s answer to the various tweaks that perform the same process. Many Siri tweaks that add functionality to Siri will be made officially system-wide by Apple, come iOS7, such as the Siri tweaks in Cydia that allow Siri to control brightness and other settings. Now that that is officially in iOS, it’s significance in Cydia is unimportant. LiveClock allowed the user to make the clock app be live but now that is iOS 7 supported. Auxo and Dash have met their match with iOS 7’s new multitasking. A popular Cydia tweak, SBSettings is under attack by Control Center. Infinifolders is sure to end with iOS’ new scrollable folders. vWallpaper has trouble from Apple’s new wallpaper settings. Deep End will go off the deep end since it’s 3d designs are now being adopted by Apple. Tabs+ is sure to take a hit with Apple’s unlimited tabs in Safari. The list goes on and on. Many people jailbreak to download the various tweaks on Cydia but iOS 7 will provide those integrated in the system better than a tweak from Cydia can provide. Therefore the incentive to jailbreak will be ever-lessened.

In addition to the fading necessity of the jailbreak, Apple will continue, as always, to keep the jailbreaking community at bay by releasing patches. These patches continue to thwart any exploits used by jailbreakers. The Jailbreaking Community is finding it harder and harder to find such exploits to get the devices jailbroken. For example, the jailbreak for the iPad 2 took several months, as did the iOS 6 jailbreak. Another difficulty they will face is Pod2G’s threat to leave the scene. His genius has been the brains behind many jailbreak utilities in the past. However, he has mentioned that he may end his jailbreaking career due to him not being a fan of iOS 7 (fortunately for Apple, he’s a needle in a haystack, iOS 7 has brought a positive uproar from most people). Anyways, if he leaves the community, I believe the community will be in shambles and may not recover. There are many brilliant minds in the JB community but not many that stand out as much as Pod2G does. Just the fact that he is leaving the JB community may spell the end of the jailbreak as we know it.

Finally, there has been an increasing trend of people who are unjailbreaking for different reasons. Many people, including myself, leave due to the jailbreak’s instability. Devices become unstable, battery life disappears and apps crash constantly. Plus, due to the pirates that plague Cydia, people who jailbreak are increasingly getting a bad rap even if they have not downloaded anything illegal. Plus, the people who have unjailbroken have something to look forward to, iOS 7. People who don’t have a jailbreak will be able to upgrade immediately while people who have a jailbreak and want to keep it will wait months before getting an iOS 7 jailbreak, if one will exist at all. People are unjailbreaking and the jailbreak community is lessening.

I, for one, still support the JB community. It is a group of people who can make tweaks that can improve the use of a device. It allows for great creativity that I am proud to support. However, when it gets to a point where when I have a jailbreak, it renders my phone to a sub-performing device, I don’t need it anymore. When my battery can’t last more than three hours on a 4S, there is a serious problem with the JB. I now have all day battery again and I am basking in the non-jailbreak glory.

Thanks for reading,

Joe