From 1.0.2 to 1.1.1
6 November 2007, early morning
With rumors of yet another iPhone Firmware Update in the works, I thought it was time to get going on upgrading my phone from 1.0.2 to 1.1.1. Now, as you may recall, doing so without putting any thought into the process would have left me with a brick of a phone. Thankfully, I’m not a sheep, and put off upgrading till people had figured out how to undo the unlock that caused the bricking, created a simple way to jailbreak and activate the phone (and install the Installer.app), and finally sorted out how to unlock the phone once again. In fact, if you were an idiot and upgraded despite all the warnings you would still be in good shape because hackers figured out how to undo the bricking. Yesterday I sat down and started going through all the steps required to upgrade. It was surprisingly stressful. Still, it was unlikely the whole process would get any simpler than it is right now: It’s actually easier to jailbreak, activate, and unlock a phone now than it was when I did so a month or so back. I’m curious as to what the landscape for this sort of hacking will be like when the official SDK is released. I don’t think this sort of activity will die down: I don’t think Apple will give people the access to the phone they get from a proper jailbreak, and they certainly won’t let people skirt activation with AT&T. I do wonder if the official SDK will make this sort of thing easier to accomplish. Proper documentation on the hardware might help move things along, though it seems the hacker community is doing just fine going it alone.