Every year, when the new iOS comes around, major Cydia tweak hosting provider BigBoss provides a severe warning to all its users. This message, carried across all of Cydia, is an important reminder to noobs that they shouldn’t upgrade to the latest iOS before it gets jailbroken in order to preserve their tweaks. However, this time around, it seems that the warning comes with added weight –
Jailbreakers: Do not upgrade to iOS6 until a jailbreak is released. You will lose all your jailbreak!
iOS 6 is a total dud. I think it’s by far the worst major upgrade Apple has ever provided. It’s more like a 5.1.2 than a 6.0. Let’s take a look at the major differences moving to iOS6 from iOS 5.
1) Removes youtube
2) Removes google maps.
3) Adds apple maps. No street view, no transit directions. Remember, google has been doing maps a long time. No way apple is doing it as well in a few months.
4) Adds what? Facebook integration, ViP mail, do not disturb? iOS 5 users, you can get “do not disturb” functionality with “ringerx vip” in cydia.
BigBoss has not only warned people against upgrading, they’ve also criticized Apple for removing some of the very features that people have come to identify iOS’s capabilities with. Not stopping at that, Big Boss went ahead and added a scathing review of the iPhone 5 –
Speaking of disappointments, the iPhone 5 seems equally disappointing. The screen is a little bigger – that’s great. The device is a little faster, also neat. But the change of the dock is huge. How many devices do you plug your iphones into? iHome, car, chargers. All this requires new cables and all these devices stop working. In my home I have 5 docks for charging in various rooms, a car deck with an iPod cable coming out of it. All this becomes useless if I buy an iPhone 5. I’ll stick with iPhone 4s another year.
Apparently, people out at the repo are disappointed at the iPhone 5’s major changes in the dock but the minor changes in design.
This doesn’t actually affect a lot of Apple users because very few people actually jailbreak with any seriousness (me included). However, for the jailbreak community, it’s a big thing. BigBoss is an important entity and their word is heard. Let’s see what the effect of this announcement is. You can read the full post here.
But the story doesn’t end here. John Gruber, the famous blogger who writers at DaringFireball has written a glorifying review of the iPhone 5, calling it the “flagship of Apple’s entire product line” and starting off the blog post with –
The iPhone 5 is really nice.
I actually agree with Gruber. He’s got all the fine points of why people will like the iPhone down and is making no bones about the fact that he is one of Apple’s elite bloggers. He’s even detailed why he likes the phone so much – the display, the camera, LTE, better battery life and performance. But I’ll wait. I’ll wait to actually hold one in my hands to review it or say anything about it.
In the mean time, we can all wonder if Apple will react to BigBoss’s comments. Not officially, of course, because Apple doesn’t like reacting to the jailbreak community directly, but through one of its beloved bloggers perhaps?