Update – For the latest firmware 3.1.2 see our step by step jailbreaking guide here.

OK, so a lot of you have asked me about jailbreaking and seem unsure about it. So I thought I’d put up a video here showing how it took less than a hour to jailbreak and unlock a new iPhone 3GS. This one is only for the iPhone 3GS for Mac Users. If you have a PC, iPhone 3G or iTouch the process is very similar, but you will need to download different files. The process is always about the same and fairly simple. Jailbreaking does void your warranty with Apple, but IMO that is worthless anyway. Remember, you can almost always restore your iPhone and start over. Let’s get started.

1: Create a folder on your Desktop and call it Jailbreak or whatever you want. Download redsn0w from here and put it in the folder you created.
2: Unzip the executable redsnow file that you download and leave it in the Jailbreak folder.
3: Download the iPhone OS 3.0 firmware from this linkand put in your Jailbreak folder.
4: Connect your iPhone 3GS to your Mac and open iTunes. Select your iPhone from the list of devices on the left hand side.
Click and hold down Option and click the Restore button.
5: Select the firmware from the Jailbreak folder with the extension .ipsw and click the Open button to continue. Because our iPhone was new in box we did not have to Restore it so steps 4 and 5 are not in video.
6: Open redsn0w.app from the Jailbreak folder on your desktop and click the Browse button and select the ipsw that you placed in the Jailbreak folder and click the Open button. This is where some people run into an issue with the file extension. If it won’t open try using Firefox to download Redsn0w. Don’t know why that works, it just seems to have helped many people.
7: Give redsnow a minute to verify and then click the Next button to continue. Make sure the box next to Cydia is checked as well as the one next to Icy and click Next button again.
8: Redsnow will give you instructions on how to put your device in DFU mode. It’s simple. Disconnect your iPhone from your Mac and power it OFF by holding the power button at the top down for a few seconds until the slider appears to turn it off. Slide your finger across and turn off the iPhone. Now wait a minute for it to be completely off, then hold the Home button down and reconnect your iPhone to your Mac while still holding down the Home button. Don’t let go of the Home button. Keep holding it down. Redsnow will detect you iPhone and begin the install. Once the install begins you can let go of the Home button. Don’t worry if you hold it down too long. It won’t hurt anything.
9: Redsnow takes a couple of minutes (5 to 10) to run and your screen does some crazy stuff while it is running. Don’t worry, just be patient. You iPhone will reboot. Don’t worry, just be patient. Redsnow will tell you its done. Click Finish but it may still be running and rebooting. Don’t worry, just be patient. When its done your iPhone will have Cydia and Icy icons!! Congrats, your iPhone just got a whole lot better.

Now the video below shows how easy this was to do with a new iPhone 3GS right out of the box. Your existing iPhone 3G or iTouch will be a little different, but basically works the same way. You just need to make sure you upgrade to OS 3.0 first and have the correct ipsw file and redsn0w. There are different files for PC versus Mac and different versions of the iPhone or iTouch.

To Unlock Your Jailbroken iPhone 3GS

1) Open Cydia and click on Manage tab at the bottom.
2) Click on the 2nd option Sources, then click Edit in the upper right corner and finally click Add in the upper left corner.
3) Enter http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com/ into the text box that is displayed and click Add Source.
4) Let it run for a minute then click Return to Cydia
5) Click Done in the upper right and then select repo666.ultrasn0w.com under Sources.
6) Click on ultrasn0w, click on install in the upper right and then click confirm in the upper right.
7) Click Return to Cydia. Power off your iPhone and when you power back on you should be able to use a paper clip to put in any GSM sim card (Verizon, T Mobile, etc.).

Again, there are many websites with better instructions than here. Search Google or post in Forum and I’ll point you to them. I just wanted to show how even an idiot can do this. The key point is patience and making sure you download the right files before you start.

Watch the video below as this took less than a hour to do. The video could be better, but this was only my second jailbreak and first with the 3GS. My wife won’t let me play with hers

3.0 Jailbreak Update

Hey thought I’d give a quick update on my 3.0 Jailbreak. After installing AppSync (just add source from Hackulous – ask questions in Forum if does not make sense) all my apps were added back
The only downside is that Spotlight (Apple’s launcher) sucks. Quickgold was way better. First, it doesn’t show the icons of most recently opened apps (why not apple??) and two it can’t see the apps if you hide them with poof so you have to have all the icons back on screen. I thing someone will fix this quickly with winterboard or something. I want my wallpaper back where I can see it!!!!!

3.0 Jailbreak is Here! Be Careful

So the iPhone Dev-Team (the super geeks that write the programs that allow you to jailbreak) have already released the jailbreak for 3.0. It’s called redsnow and you can download it here.

Redsnow:
For Mac
For Windows

Basically you just have to do two things. One, make sure you have have updated to 3.0 and have iTunes 8.2. Second, download the 3.0 firmware and point to it when you run redsnow. You can get the 3.0 firmware download here

3.0 Firmwares:
iPhone
iPhone 3G
iPod Touch
iPod Touch 2G

Now be careful. I’ve spent a couple of hours on updating my jailbreak from 2.2.1 to 3.0 and I still haven’t been able to get my cracked apps working again, but I don’t have all day to spend on it either. Also, I’m sure there will be some bugs that appear as more people do this, but the beauty is worst case you just restore and try again!

Why Jailbreak your Iphone

Well, there are lots of reasons.

1) Cycorder – I’m shooting tons more video now that my recorder is in my pocket at all times. The quality is pretty good as well!
2) Launchers – My personal favorite is QuickGold which I should put a review out on soon. Basically, you hit the home button and that launches QuickGold which makes navigation of your iphone a lot better. Trust me, check it out.
3) Personalization – Winterboard gives you lots of themes to choose from. Personally, I like poof the most as that hides all my icons and I can see my wallpaper. The app icons really aren’t fun to look at so why not hide them. Again with a launcher like QuickGold you can open these hidden apps as fast or faster than if you had three or four pages of icons.
4) Backgrounder This allows you to keep Pandora or chat running in the background even when you close them.
5) GV Mobile Combine this with Google Voice and its very powerful

There are lots of other reasons as well, but these are the biggest for me and the reason I jailbroke my iphone (best decision I made).

There are lots of tutorials on jailbreaking your iphone. My only tip is to be sure you not your firmware version before you jailbreak. Here is one of the the best tutorials IMO. Any questions just twitter or contact me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykFWDJPo_7E&feature=channel_page

How many Iphones are Jailbroken???

I found this article a couple of places yesterday originating from the Pinch Media site. The stats come from a small script that you get when you download an app from Apple’s app store. While the 6.9% seems low to me it is higher than the 2-3% that Jay Freeman (the creator of Cydia) claims to be jailbroken. This makes sense because I suspect anyone who jailbreaks their iphone is more geeky and tends to download and try more apps than the normal user. Will this percentage rise over time??? We shall see