The iPhone Dev Team has released a new piece of software: Pwnage Tool — that will allow you to jailbreak your iPhone 3G so you can run official and unofficial third party apps side by side.
Apple has very strict restrictions on what makes a piece of software “official software” that is allowed to be sold in their new App Store. Some developers who choose to play by the rules have no issues with Apple’s harsh guidelines. And with 10,000,000 downloads during the App Store’s opening weekend, people clearly have been waiting for third party applications. Unfortunately, Apple has not treated the development community with the cushy warmness that it should. To circumvent this entire situation, the iPhone Dev Team has created what they affectionately call Pwnage Tool 2.0.
In an attempt to clarify “The iPhone Dev Team has announced that PwnageTool 2.0 will unfortunately not unlock the iPhone 3G. While progress has been made in this respect, they’re simply not quite there yet. The final edition will support activated, jailbroken and unlocked first edition iPhones, activated and jailbroken iPod Touch and activated and jailbroken iPhone 3G’s,” MacBlogz previously reported. You can still unlock earlier phones, this has not been affected. However, the cellular hardware used in the iPhone 3G puts a roadblock in the unlocking process that was successfuly used to unlock the first generation iPhone.
If you are thinking about downloading the Pwnage Tool, you can do so here. But you must be running version 2.0 firmware on all devices you plan on Pwning.
“Apple has historically been relatively passive in its responses to unlocking tools. While the company warned that its 1.1.1 firmware update risked rendering unlocked iPhones unusable, most other updates haven’t created a similar effect and the company has largely kept to thwarting unlocking efforts by patching against security exploits that would also compromise locked devices,” Apple Insider explains.
With the release of the iPhone 3G, Apple attempted to require handset activation at the time of purchase to discourage unlocked devices. Additionally, with the global availability of the new iPhone 3G as well as the supported, official App Store, Apple is taking all the necessary steps for a customer to never have to use unsupported unlocking tools such as Pwnage Tool 2.0.
But in the meantime… Here ya go.
