Dare to Hack an iPhone?

By Ted Landau
The Mac Observer
09/16/07 4:00 AM PT

Remember when the iPhone was first released? In those olden days of three months ago? There were all those lists, circulating on the Web, of features that people wished had been included in the iPhone. Those lists may not yet have shrunk to zero, but the currently available hacks have substantially shortened them. That's in less than 3 months from iPhone's release.

In the classic scene from "Marathon Man," an ex-Nazi dentist (played by Laurence Olivier) menacingly asks Dustin Hoffman (who is strapped to a chair): "Is it safe?"

It's the same question being asked these days by a growing number of iPhone users. Unlike Olivier, these users have no evil motive behind the question. Instead, they simply want to know: Is it safe to hack my iPhone? Do I need to worry about losing my data or damaging the phone so that it no longer works? Must I first take a course in programming or Unix before I can perform the necessary surgery?

Answering iPhone hacking questions is a bit like trying to take a photograph of a race car while it zooms by at 200 m.p.h. By the time you press the button to snap the shot, the car is gone. That's how fast the world of iPhone hacking is changing. Still, I can now offer a definitive answer to the "Is it safe?" question. The answer is "Yes."

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