I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned this yet and I’m certainly not condoning it but jailbreaking also allows you to pirate apps on your phone.
To add one more reason that hasn’t been mentioned yet:
Because it’s my iPhone and I’ll do whatever I want with it.
The idea of locking my TV so it can only use one channel or play one brand of DVD is outrageous, but the Apple douches think they can do the same with a phone I paid for. It pisses me off in principle. Even if there were no apps I wanted, I’d still jailbreak it just to send a hearty (if meaningless) “FUCK YOU” to the corporate greedheads at Apple.
Yes. I know. I sound like a pissed off 12 year old who’s raging against the machine and “sticking it to the man”. So what. I’m middle aged and I’ll take my small, pointless rebellions where I can get them at this stage of the game. 
The primary reason for jailbreaking your iPhone or iPod Touch is to pirate software, and anyone who says otherwise is lying through their teeth or woefully naive. For everyone 1 “honest, legit” homebrew-app-using jailbroken device users, there are nine and nine tenths more that use it specifically to pirate App Store software.
Cite: My long, tumultuous ride developing iTunes App Store applications and tracking software piracy trends. Please remember that breaking the security routines on your device may be saying “fuck you” to the faceless corporation that is Apple, but it’s also only a mere half step away from preventing people like me from paying rent and feeding our families.
I’m sure there are people who pirate software on their iphones, and I agree such people are jerks. But my iphone was jailbroken (until the latest update), and I never did anything the least bit unsavory with it. I installed Cycorder (which I never used), and backgrounder (which, as another poster mentioned, let me listen to pandora while checking email/browsing the web/etc). I suppose I could have pirated apps - but I didn’t feel any desire to. And most apps are so cheap, why would I bother?
So, tell me: Am I lying? Or merely naive?
A related question, is there a such thing as freeware apps in the Apple app store? Or do they all have a cost?
According to 148Apps » iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and iPod touch App Reviews and News | 148Apps 24.84% of apps in the App Store are free. Granted many of them are trial versions of pay apps, but yes, there are a ton of free apps in there.
So pirated apps… is that a pro or a con? 
If someone wants to pirate apps, they have to jailbreak their phones, therefore every pirate is also a jailbreaker, but the jailbreak community doesn’t support it much and you’ll find anyone asking questions about it on most forums will have their thread locked if not banned outright.
Some people probably jailbreak just to get cracked apps, but they would find another way if jailbreaking didn’t exist. Others aren’t into it. It took me 9 months to actually see a pirated app because I’ve never sought them out.
There are a lot of anti-piracy measures that can be written into apps, but few developers seem to do so. I’m not blaming the developer, but piracy is a fact of life for any computer, not just jailbroken iDevices. All computers are sold jailbroken by default. How do computer programmers survive?
Hmm, was never a pro for me. I started jailbreaking my iPod Touch about 4 days after I got it, and jailbroke my iPhone the first night I had it, and didn’t even realize people pirated appstore apps until I read this thread. The apps aren’t exactly expensive, I’ll gladly pay for one if the quality’s there. My main motivations to jailbreak initially were to get rid of the lock screen, and because I can’t stand to have a UNIX based device that I can’t get a shell prompt on.
That said, I’d wager that if you can pirate appstore apps on a jailbroken iPod Touch/iPhone, there would be significantly more people motivated by that than there would be folks motivated by having the freedom to do what they want with the gadget they paid for.
I disagree. I have already shown in this thread my reasons for, and the value to me of, jailbreaking my phone. I have spent more money overall on the Cydia hacked app store than on the iTunes App Store. Money that goes to the developers of these awesome apps that are not allowed in the iTunes AppStore. I paid $5 for BiteSMS, $5 for iTypeFastr, and $15 for iLocalis, and similarly many others. There are many valid reasons to jailbreak, and all my friends that I have helped jailbreak never once mentioned piracy as their motivation. The value from the apps in Cydia alone made it worth it for them.
That said, piracy is definitely a concern. I develop apps for the iPhone and am aware of the levels of piracy on the platform. For any software platform, piracy has always been, and will always be, an issue. This is not unique to the iPhone.
I jailbroke my iPhone so I can use internet tethering. That’s it. I downloaded Backgrounder and iBrowser (file browser for the iPhone file system) as icing on the cake, but I can easily go without either.
I’m soon going to jailbreak/unlock a pair of 3Gs phones because we’re moving to Guam from the mainland and want to hook them up over there (the wireless co there has just introduced the iPhone). I’m happy to do a report on this if anyone is interested (and more than happy to receive a PM from anyone familiar with it who can guide me through it)
The Cydia page says “Root Password How-To”. I know what “Root Password” means, and you know what it means, but does the average user know? All they know is they followed the directions to jailbreak their phone and it worked. What more do they have to do?
Much of the arguments that are being made to pooh-pooh the dangers of jailbreaking an iPhone are the same ones made by the Linux community on why Linux is so much safer than other operating systems. This mainly boils down to “I know where to find the information, and I follow it to keep my computer protected”. But, the problem is that most users don’t. When we make computers easy enough to use without fully understanding them, we get users on them who don’t fully understand them.
My wife doesn’t update her Mac OS even though there’s a giant window sitting there telling her there’s an update. She’s interested in email, and that’s it. As long as she can read her email, she’s happy. When that Update Your OS box pops open, she simply ignores it. If she isn’t aware enough to understand why she should update her OS, and press the big blue button to automatically do that, do you think she can understand about root password issues?
The point is quite simple: Jailbreaking your iPhone can lead to security issues. If you know how to handle them, and you think the benefit in jailbreaking your iPhone is there, fine. If you don’t understand the security issues, you should be way more careful. I simply don’t think Jailbreaking is the no-brainer decision that everyone makes it out to be.
But, what if I am now dependent upon the jailbroken apps on my iPhone.? Yes, I could upgrade to the new OS update, but then I lose the stuff I’ve grown to depend upon. Again, if you understand the security issues involved, fine. You can make an informed choice. Is the SMS bug that serious? If not, I’ll wait for the two teams to come up with a new jailbreak for the updated OS.
My main concern is people jailbreaking their iPhone because it can be done in a single click, but not understanding the underlying security issues. I’m not trying to say never jailbreak your iPhone. I’m just saying you need to understand the issues involved. Jailbreaking isn’t a no-brainer decision.
I jailbroke my ipod touch just to install the GBA emulator and then specifically to run a nethack like game GBA rom called POWDER. This is a free GBA rom, not a pirated rom.
http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=release
one of the best and deepest mobile games I’ve ever played. Since then several native roguelikes have come out so I didn’t need to jailbreak, see here:
supposedly an iphone / touch native version of powder is also coming
The interesting thing about this is how Apple & the cell phone companies make it seem natural that they can cripple your handsets so they only work with a single carrier. Even using terms like “jailbreak” to somehow imply that this is something wrong.
In the EU, and most of the world, companies are forbidden from putting such anti-competitive restrictions on their phones. But here in America, we don’t seem to believe in free enterprise competition. Apple certainly doesn’t.
Who are these wizards who are able to use ssh without knowing the name and password?
I assume we’re talking about ssh since that’s the only “vulnerability” (I use the term loosely) that the average jailbreak user may choose to install that changing the password would help with.
I’ve been using Linux for 10 years and have never heard that argument. Believe it or not, Linux actually is more secure. Microsoft may be doing better these days, I don’t know, but they spent many years making systems that only had root access, used poor memory protection and ran software that, by default, would bend over backwards for any malware that crossed it’s path.
Apple makes natively unlocked iPhones and it’s possible to buy them elsewhere in the world.
I do commend you all for being responsible jailbreakers… as many of you have claimed, there ARE people who jailbreak simply for the novelty of being able to try new, freely available software or get around restrictions they feel are unfair from the hardware provider. However I believe there’s a little bit of confirmation bias at work… most of the fine folks on the Straight Dope forums are indeed fine folks and (we hope!) don’t go in for the blatant software piracy thing.
However, the number of people who constantly have dozens of torrents downloading while slurping down yet more pirated software through sites like rapidshare and megaupload, and of course scouring usenet while trading information on new releases to be cracked and distributed vastly outnumbers us decent, moral chaps, which makes me stand by my conclusion that the majority (but not all) iDevice jailbreakers do so simply for piracy.
…as an aside, it really is quite amazing how many people will not pay 99 cents for a game for their multi-hundred-dollar phone.
heh 
Here’s some interesting analyses on sales/revenue on 99 cent apps vs. higher priced apps:
http://www.mobileorchard.com/99-cent-iphone-apps-not-significantly-more-popular/
(2008 data)
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=3002
ETA: And here’s a really interesting article on software pricing in general (unrelated to iPhone apps, but still extremely insightful for anyone who wants to understand software pricing):