It’s no secret that Apple’s a bit of a prude when it comes to most adult-related content. And that doesn’t just mean just porn – gambling apps that offer in-app purchases also aren’t allowed on its multi-billion dollar App Store.
For years now, that’s meant one thing: Apple iPhone and iPad owners being left the choice of fending for themselves or living within the confines of what Apple deems allowed for adults.
The fending for themselves option means jailbreaking your device, thereby exposing it to potential threat of malicious software finding its way on there – and scammers certainly know that a traditionally lucrative place to hide malware is in porn apps and sites.
Side-stepping Apple’s moral ring-fencing around the App Store means missing out on essential security upgrades, as well as those run-of-the-mill updates that fix the Wi-Fi connectivity the company seems to break with every. damn. update.
A slow death
As Adrian Kingsley-Hughes muses for ZDNet however, the clock seems to be ticking for jailbreaking.
A community that once saw frequent and dependable updates each time Apple made a change to iOS is now left to wait months between iterative releases, let alone a whole new version.
The latest widespread jailbreak was iOS 9.1 in March, and version 9.3.2 is now the current (non-jailbroken) stable version of iOS. An iOS 9.3.3 beta is also available, and as Kingsley-Hughes suggests, perhaps a cracking group is just waiting for 9.3.3 to go mainstream before releasing a newer version. Perhaps.
Even if it is, it won’t last long – and it’s this circle of diminishing returns that will eventually lead to the end of jailbreaking, at least on any mass scale.
Apple’s recent statements about privacy and security regarding its battle with the FBI over access to an iPhone shows that it isn’t messing around when it comes to locking down its upcoming flagship, and it might not be ready yet, but the company was also said to be working on a totally uncrackable device that not even it could access or build unlock software for.
Being able to find a weakness in the software that allows for jailbreaking just might not be an option, though crackers have historically always found a way so far.
For adult content (or indeed, non-adult) on iOS, everything will have to be HTML5/browser based.
Expect to see a whole lot more security and privacy features coming to iOS and iPhone 7. And expect to see jailbreaking totally dead by the time the iPhone 8 or 9 is rolling off the production lines.
The iPhone 7 won’t be the end of porn or jailbreaking on either, but it’ll make life even more difficult for companies still trying to eke business out of the unofficial version of the platform.
