There was a time when power users simply had to jailbreak their iPhone as a matter of necessity. If you wanted to get any serious work done with iOS, you had to jailbreak. If you wanted apps, if you wanted copy and paste, if you wanted multitasking, if you wanted proper notifications and Lock screen info, if you wanted Wi-Fi sync, if you wanted any number of features users of other platforms took for granted, you had to jailbreak.

But iOS has evolved. Year after year, Apple has added features, sometimes copied them directly from jailbreak. And each time, the functionality gap closes, the reasons to jailbreak become fewer, and the number of users who jailbreak become fewer along with it.

iOS 5 was the turning point for many. Could iOS 6 be the final straw? Could we be approaching a future where Jailbreak has little or no legitimate place in most iPhone and iPad users lives?

The good of the many vs the good of the few -- or the you

Almost all the big ticket innovations that Apple has brought to iOS, jailbreak brought first. Prior to iOS 5, to pick but one recent example, if you wanted real, unobtrusive, notifications, you had to jailbreak and install apps like IntelliscreenX and LockInfo. MobileNotifier had a strong influence on the way that Notification Center handles notifications today.

With iOS 5 Apple introduced Notification Center. And they did them in a way that catered to the mainstream. There are no difficult settings to weed through or overwhelming menus and options like you find in LockInfo or IntelliscreenX. Is Notification Center perfect? Certainly not. But it's easy. And that's what matters to the majority of consumers.

IntelliscreenX and LockInfo do far more, far better than Notification Center, but to many former jailbreakers, Notification Center does enough, good enough, that they'll stop jailbreaking and just make do.

Not everyone, but a significant number of people.

Innovation at the speed of freedom

Apple only releases one new version of iOS a year (or 16 months last year). While they have interim updates in between, those are adding increasingly fewer new features, and never add major, system-level changes. Jailbreak, by contrast, never stops. New tweaks and new utilities are always being developed and released.

That means jailbreak is typically faster at discovering and delivering new features. While the masses may not know they need a feature or function until Apple gives it to them, power users typically want it before Apple can or is willing to give it to them. To keep to the same example, jailbreak users had LockInfo and IntelliscreenX and Mobile Notifier long before Notification Center shipped.

Whether this year will bring with it a newly designed Home screen or other major new feature, odds are it really won't be that ground breaking to jailbreak users.

In this aspect, jailbreak will continue to be a breeding ground for many developers that want to push the limits of what the iPhone and iPad are capable of. They'll bring the future to us today.

But again, the amount of users who need a cutting edge level of functionality is less now than it used to be. Apple has taken care of the low hanging fruit and for the most part, only niche-needs remain to be filled. That means less people will go through the trouble to jailbreak because it's increasingly not worth it for them. Good enough is good enough and perfect isn't worth the trouble it takes to get it.

The rejection objection

Many developers that find themselves rejected by Apple for one reason or another have used Cydia, the jailbreak app store, as a way to distribute their apps. Whether Apple rejected an app because they manipulated the iOS file system, or because it duplicated -- and sometimes improved! -- the functionality of a built in app, or because it hooked into and changed a part of the system Apple simply doesn't want changed, Cydia (or another jailbreak app store) remains the only way to get certain apps.

However, while there are apps that Apple will never let onto the App Store under current policies, Apple is rejecting less apps than they used to. Often there will be some neutered version of an app that does something similar, and unless a user really needs a specific prohibited feature, they'll increasingly suck it up and make do with the App Store. Again, good enough.

Themes and toggles and tweaks, oh my

Even though Apple adds more and more native functionality with each major revision of iOS, there will always be a niche group of advanced users that want to customize and fine tune their experience beyond what Apple allows. This holds true for rooting and homebrew communities on other, more "open" platforms as well. For some of us, there's just never enough. We'll customize and flash down to the ROM level if we can.

For the iPhone and iPad, whether it's a new look for the Home screen and icons, fast access to Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or other Settings, or system extensions for Notification Center, folders, Siri, or more, there's almost no chance Apple can will meet these needs, especially not any time soon.

These jailbreakers are still jailbreaking, and likely will for a longtime to come.

Illegitimate interests

While we have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to app theft here on iMore, we simply can't talk jailbreak without facing the reality that some segment of the user base jailbreaks simply to steal apps. Those are the users that will probably continue to jailbreak regardless of how much functionality Apple adds. They could care less. It doesn't matter how nice Starbucks is inside if all someone wants to do is steal coffee.

It's a sad reality but one that exists on almost every platforms, mobile or otherwise.

Those who jailbreak to steal aren't the ones that keep Cydia going. If they're stealing App Store apps, they're most likely not paying for jailbreak apps. The users who support jailbreak open their wallets to support the jailbreak community -- they like paying for apps and themes and tweaks because they know that's how they'll get more of them. Same for app store apps (and coffee!)

Some users will continue to jailbreak to steal apps, but if that's ever the only reason left to jailbreak, the community would likely stop looking for exploits, creating tools, and making great jailbreak software. It's a dead end.

(Considering Cydia is still chugging along, arguably better than ever, it's a good sign that there are still many users out there who jailbreak for legitimate reasons.)

A tale of two systems

As iOS becomes more refined and functional, certain users who used to jailbreak find it no longer worth their effort, and they either settle into, or settle for, stock. However, Apple will never be able to please everyone. In fact, pleasing everyone is the opposite of Apple's philosophy. Apple will continue to make the iPhone that Tim Cook and Jony Ive and Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall want to own and use. That will suit the mainstream just fine, but it will continue to leave many other users wanting more or different.

There may be less casual jailbreakers now than there were before, and there may be less reason for average users to jailbreak now than before. Good enough may be good enough for many.

But not for everyone, and not for those for whom better or perfect is a very personal, sometimes changing target.

iOS may make more and more users happy, but jailbreak will remain, giving advanced levels of control and customization, and allowing users to "beta test" the future. The users that will be interested in doing that are the tinkerers, hackers, and mobile enthusiasts. These are the users that see a new piece of tech and have to have it or want to find a way to get their current device to duplicate another platform's functionality before Apple decides they can have it. While this will always be the case for some, it isn't the case for many.

You can never predict the future. Apple or the carriers could crack down on something that drives more users to jailbreak again. A breakthrough new feature could appear on a competing platform and jailbreak could once again offer it well in advance of Apple. But it will never be the same as the heady days when you had to jailbreak just to run apps, or just to use an iPhone outside the U.S.

Jailbreak under iOS 5 is not what it was under iOS 4 and the same will most likely hold true with every iteration of iOS to come. As more features are added and the needs of many would-be jailbreakers are met, the numbers will continue to dwindle and users that once swore by jailbreak will find themselves weighing out whether or not jailbreak holds value for them anymore. At some point, iOS will cross the threshold of being good enough for some jailbreakers to being good enough for many.

And that's okay. Because the jailbreakers who are left will be just as passionate and just as needy as always. There may be less as a percentage of the total user base, but those who remain, who still want jailbreak, will really want it. They'll need it.

And that -- sense of shared purpose more than any number of people -- is what makes a community.

Sir Jonathan Ive has won the British Visionary Innovator 2012 award organised by the Intellectual Property Office. The award comes after the competition was open for seven days and allowed the public to vote for their most innovative person of 2012.

After a week of voting, you have chosen Sir Jonathan Ive as your favourite British Visionary Innovator for 2012. He received 46.6% of your votes, making him the clear favourite amongst a list of other hugely talented, creative and innovative people.

Source: Intellectual Property Office

Former Apple engineer Bret Victor over at Worry Dream has an interesting article up about the future of touch technology. The main focus of the article is how we interact with with devices like the iPhone and iPad using our hands. His main point is that our hands are meant to interact with objects and feel things in a more "tactile" way than simply "photos under glass".

While companies like Apple have made great strides with devices like the iPhone and iPad, he believes that using our physical hands are the future. That's how we should interact. He argues that using your hands to touch and feel things is not the same experience as using devices such as the iPad where everything you are "touching" is under glass. And that the sooner we get away from this mindset and move forward, the better.

This technology is a long way off but given how far Apple has always brought us, I can't help but agree. We're at the very beginning of a really exciting future.

Source: Worry Dream

Lately we've been seeing a lot of rumors about iOS 5 and whether over-the-air updates will affect the ability to jailbreak. Regardless, I think there are some misconceptions about the Jailbreak community being spread around the blogsphere lately, even as link-bait or and well-intentioned rebuttals that take the bait and provide the links.

This isn't that. I'm not going to reward negative attention seeking. I'm just going to reiterate why I think jailbreak greatly benefits all iOS users, Jailbreak and otherwise, and trust people are smart enough and critical enough to read all the opinions and decide for themselves.

Innovation

First off, the jailbreak community is extremely innovative. I'll go out on a limb here as I have many times before and insist that there are Apple employees walking around Cupertino with jailbroken iPhones in hand. Why you ask? Because they'd be stupid not to keep up with all the bright minds and ideas floating around the jailbreak community.

We already know Apple hired Peter Hajas, the creator of MobileNotifier, right before the announcement of iOS 5.

We can debate all day why Apple made that move but I personally see a striking similarity between the new iOS 5 notification system and Peter Hajas' design for MobileNotifier. Notification Center gestures are also quite similar to the InfoShade feature of the popular jailbreak app, LockInfo.

Free R&D

Let's face it, the jailbreak community has had a lot of great ideas. A lot of these same ideas end up trickling down into later iterations of iOS. Sometimes Apple manages to make them their own. Other times, they are blatantly copied, like Wifi Sync. Greg Hughes, the creator of the jailbreak version of Wifi Sync, had submitted his version of the app to the official App Store well over a year ago. It was rejected and then quickly found its way into Cydia. A year later, we see Apple unveil their version of wireless syncing. This time, they didn't even bother to change the icon. What you see on the left is Greg Hughes' Wifi Sync icon compared to Apple's. See any similarity?

Apple is a secretive company. They can't and won't publicly test future versions of iOS years in advance. With Jailbreak, they get hundreds of thousands of people testing all sorts of apps, interfaces, and experiences, and Apple can see which ones work, and cherry pick all the best and brightest and most successful ideas.

Warranty out

It has been implied on several occasions that jailbreaking will completely screw up your device and Apple will be stuck eating the cost when you bring it in for warranty repair.

I really can't begin to point out how many things are wrong with that statement. Let's start with the obvious.... Apple will not service a jailbroken iPhone. They will simply turn you away. I do not know many jailbreakers that aren't aware of this fact. That is their right and jailbreakers understand this.

Next, there is nothing a simple restore won't wipe away. I have never seen an iPhone, iPad, or iPod rendered useless from a jailbreak gone wrong. I've seen some that get stuck in a recovery loop but sticking it into DFU mode and doing a stock restore always fixes the issue. I run a small tech company locally and we offer jailbreak and unlock services. We also troubleshoot tons of devices a week. We actually receive just as many users with stock issues as we do with jailbreak issues if we want to be honest here.

Freedom of choice

I can't speak for the entire jailbreak community but I can speak for myself and those I know that jailbreak. I do not pressure others into jailbreaking. I don't want to and frankly I don't need to. We may joke about it around the forums and have #TeamJailbreak and #TeamPure battles during podcasts but that's as far as it goes. In fact, I am always hesitant when someone asks me to help them jailbreak due to the amount of questions I'll probably get for the next several weeks. I know many others who sometimes feel the same. I'm not saying I'm never willing to help but I do believe users who want to attempt jailbreaking should at least have some basic knowledge or technical understanding of iOS.

Bottom line, if someone sees Jailbreak, they know if it interests them and if they want to try it, and they know if it looks difficult or stressful and want no part of it. To think otherwise gives them far too little credit.

Jailbreakers buy software too

Sadly, I can't say piracy doesn't happen. It does. On iOS. With music and movies. It happens. But it doesn't mean all jail breakers steal any more than it means all PC users steal (PCs come already jailbroken, that makes it even easier, right?).

Most of the Jailbreak users purchase apps just like stock users do. They not only purchase applications from the App Store like the rest of the population, but from Cydia as well.

There are tons of developers that will tell you that jailbreakers that steal apps make up a very tiny portion of their user base. Ironically, a lot of the jailbreakers I know end up being some of the biggest sticklers about not stealing applications and money out of developers' pockets.

Why? Because most of them are developers as well.

Apple benefits in the end

Not only does Apple get a pretty large user base to test on, they have an extremely talented group of developers to keep their eye on. I don't think Peter Hajas will be the last jailbreak developer to join Apple. Nor will iOS 5 be the last iteration of Apple's latest and greatest to "borrow" ideas from the jailbreak community.

I do not see Apple going out of their way to block out jailbreakers in future iterations of iOS. Will they close exploits? Sure they will. For the safety and privacy of their users in general. The jailbreak community will always find a way in. If it's coded by a person, it can be cracked by a person. And the game will continue. Until people grow bored or Apple gives us all the functionality we desire.

The main goal of the jailbreak community has always been to provide more options to power users who would like more control than Apple would like to give us. In return, we may deal with a little bug here and there or a few resprings. If you choose not to deal with that, that's okay too.

But going against the grain doesn't make this community evil or snide. It just makes us different. We are aware that we make up a very small portion of iOS users. We're okay with that and never pretend to be the majority.

We don't need to use link bait in order for Apple to pay attention to us. You can safely bet they already are.

Pop quiz, hotshot:

You're the top dog in smart phones with "push" email technology so killer people have likened it to crack. But last year a new kid showed up with a glitzy multi-touch interface and media to die for, and sucked all the buzz out of your room. What do you do? What. Do. You. Do?

If you answered, out innovate them, come up with next year's "it" device, you're correct. You're also clearly (and unfortunately) not the brain-trust at RIM.

We've already talked about Apple licensing Microsoft's ActiveSync, looking to eat into RIM's Blackberry business dominance. We've even made fun of the new old-look Blackberry 9000 (yep, that's the new BB pictures above. What, you thought it was the Meizu?). But this cuts deeper into the industry.

For years Palm pushed out tepid evolutionary designs. RIM, while having copied a little Palm look-and-feel at times, has made tentative flirtations, for good or for ill, with innovation in devices like the Pearl. For the most part, however, everyone has been content to regurgitate and duplicate. Everyone but the iPhone.

When Steve Jobs pulled the iPhone from his pocket at Macworld 2007 it was unlike anything we'd seen in smart phones before, but also instantly Apple. It was a revolution.

Palm needs to do this so badly the company hinges on it.

RIM does as well. Sure, they're in great shape. They move tons of units to an enormous, addicted user base. They own the market. But they no longer lead it.

Copying Apple's design is superficial but it's a sign that RIM is following. They are going where Apple has been. They are surrendering mindshare and, in doing so, surrendering leadership of the market.

Sure, Apple competes with Apple. They cancelled the mega-popular iPod Mini only to release the super-mega-popular Nano. And they'll push themselves on smart phones all alone if they have to. But every industry needs competition.

WinMob 7 is still vaporware and is also targeting where the iPhone was. That's Microsoft's MO. Palm's Nova needed to be out 2 years ago, if not earlier. They've long ago lost the drive that made them the original innovator. That leaves RIM (and perhaps Nokia).

Hotshots, you need to do better.