Do you regret jailbreaking your iPad?

[SweetPoison]

Interesting. Exactly, what or can you list what you can now do?

 

[iPadCharlie]

J/b is a necessity for me.

I guess I am just not getting the "necessity" part either. That almost makes it sound like an iPad is a totally worthless piece of crap unless you jailbreak it. I understand it when the pro-jailbreakers say that you are not fully exploiting the capabilities of the hardware unless you jailbreak, but at the same time, I also believe that if Apple wanted to sell a truly "closed" device that would be (nearly) impossible to jailbreak, that would not have been a huge challenge for the folks at One Infinite Loop to design.

I am sure that none of the software engineers at Apple have ever said, "Gee, I didn't know an iPad could do that!" when they see what the jailbroken apps can do. They designed it and absolutely know what it is capable of.

I am also sure there are people at Apple who's job it is to apply the latest jailbreak to an iDevice as soon as it comes out. The only reason an "off-the-shelf" iPad can't do the things that a jailbroken iPad can is because Apple has decided not to include them... for some reason. And it is this decision that drives some people to make it their mission to push their iPad to the limit... Apple be damned!

But just because someone tells me that jailbreaking is the only way to go, it is still very subjective. Obviously they have something else in mind in terms of what they want out of their iPad than I do. For me, I am fortunate enough to have been able to spend $500 on a "consumption" device. I use it primarily to to read books, listen to music and play a video every now and then and do a little surfing when I am not at my desk. I have plenty of business productivity tools at my disposal so I really don't need my iPad to do anything else than what it was designed for.

I am also sure that this jailbreaking thing is more likely to be a generational thing. Maybe I'm too old, or just too old-fashioned to really care about jailbreaking. I remember the days before computers and cell phones and having to be "connected" 24/7/365. I remember the days of wearing a pager and then having to go find a customer's phone (or a pay phone if I was on the road) in order to respond to the page. Nowadays, I actually cherish those times when I can turn off my company-supplied BlackBerry and go incommunicado!

OK, getting off my soapbox... for now!

 

[Ipad Guy]

I had to jailbreak mine. Wouldn't have it any other way. I like having my own custom themes and have a more open source environment.

 

[Ripplinghurst]

Interesting. Exactly, what or can you list what you can now do?

No.1 reason to jailbreak an iPad is to be able to use background. It's fast enough to handle most tasks in the background and it's a shame Apple didn't allow it from start.

As soon as I get my 3G 64, I start Pandora, press and hold the home button and off I go browsing or playing with apps. If Apple blocks that, I'd feel bad enough to sell it. They're not bright enough to do it though, which is good.

J/b is a necessity for me.

I guess I am just not getting the "necessity" part either. That almost makes it sound like an iPad is a totally worthless piece of crap unless you jailbreak it. I understand it when the pro-jailbreakers say t and do a little surfing when I am not at my desk. I have plenty of business productivity tools at my disposal so I really don't need my iPad to do anything else than what it was designed for.

OK, getting off my soapbox... for now!

I don't think I take the iPad to the limits at all. There's lots of j/b apps that do not work yet for the iPad, things are just starting to happen now.

How can you miss apps like categories - if you have an iP4 you know how neat it is to organize apps into categories. I have 218 apps, and I'd hate not to be able to see them all, much less not to have it under categories like travel or games. Makes everything so much easier! I wonder how can you even consider NOT to j/b it because of that alone.

I do not consider myself a power user at all, and I can't tolerate buggy apps. But there's about 4 apps and capabilities of a j/b iPad I can't live without. And I'm sure there's more to come.

 

[iPadCharlie]

No.1 reason to jailbreak an iPad is to be able to use background. It's fast enough to handle most tasks in the background and it's a shame Apple didn't allow it from start.

As soon as I get my 3G 64, I start Pandora, press and hold the home button and off I go browsing or playing with apps. If Apple blocks that, I'd feel bad enough to sell it. They're not bright enough to do it though, which is good.

For most of my streaming audio I use Pocket Tunes and many of the sources can be played in the background using the Quick Time Player in Safari. I can do this right now, today, on my iPad and also on my 2nd generation iPod Touch that can not do multi-tasking, even with iOS4.

As far as multi-tasking on the iPad, that will come in the next few weeks when iOS4.? will be released. Definitely a nice feature, but not a deal breaker for me.

How can you miss apps like categories - if you have an iP4 you know how neat it is to organize apps into categories. I have 218 apps, and I'd hate not to be able to see them all, much less not to have it under categories like travel or games. Makes everything so much easier! I wonder how can you even consider NOT to j/b it because of that alone.

Well maybe because I have about less than 50 apps - including the ones that came with the iPad. Of those, I probably use less than 10 on a regular basis.

Its all a matter of perspective and priorities. There are no right or wrong answers. For me, I do not believe that I am missing anything with my off-the-shelf iPad just the way it is.