Today is a good day for people with iOS devices, specifically people with older iOS devices. Not only did jailbreakers pod2g and the Chronic Dev team release an untethered jailbreak for A4-processor based iOS 5 devices, but there’s also a new jailbreak app called Spire, which brings Siri to all kinds of previously unsupported iDevice models, and to boot, it’s entirely legal. Like I said, today is a good day.
An untethered iOS 5 jailbreak has been a long time coming. The tethered solution has been around for a while, but apparently that just doesn’t cut it for a lot of would-be jailbreakers. That being the case, pod2g (who’s been plowing through the iDevice catalogue, jailbreaking things left and right) teamed up with the Chronic Dev to push out a release of the untethered jailbreak.
Now that that’s done, pod2g has been putting his energy into cracking open other devices. You see, this most recent jailbreak will only work on A4-proccessor based devices. What does that mean? It won’t do anything for your iPhone 4s or your iPad 2. Pod2g has been hammering away at those since before the release of this latest jailbreak though, so with any luck, iPhone 4s owners need not wait much longer.
In perfect concert with this jailbreak release, Grant Paul and Ryan Petrich have released an app called Spire on Cydia, which allows the use of Siri on non-iPhone 4s devices. The real feature though is that, for the first time, it’s actually legal. In the past, Siri ports have run into trouble because they all involve snagging copyright protected material and spreading it around all kinds of places it doesn’t belong. Spire is different however because it downloads Siri directly from Apple, cutting out the piracy and the middleman.
The downside is that in order to download Siri from Apple, you have to spoof an iPhone 4s. Apple has Siri locked down pretty tight, and apparently the only way to get Siri to actually respond to your query is to have the authentication data of a real iPhone 4s; as of yet, there’s no way to fake it, so if you want Siri on your iPhone 4, you’re going to have to go to one of your buddies who upgraded for help.
Not everybody has one of those friends though, which is why Paul is speculating that the app may give rise to a structure of iPhone 4s users who are interested in essentially renting out the Siri on their phones and users with other devices who are willing to pay a little bit for access to Siri. Things are kind of in a weird place at the moment, but Spire does suggest that there are ways to share the Siri-love without breaking the law. We’ll just have to wait and see what else comes along.
(via TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb)
- The first tethered iOS 5 jailbreak
- You can post to Twitter with Siri
- Siri competitors aren’t that great
