Well now that was quick.

MuscleNerd from the iPhone Dev-Team has officially jailbroken the iPad. How’d he do it? Turns out it’s a twist on the “Spirit” jailbreak that’s been used for the most recent version of the iPhone, 3.1.3. Now I don’t know much about the process of jailbreaking – I’m not a programmer, remember – but doing this to the iPad seems a little less important than it is for the iPhone.

With the iPhone, the jailbreak process frees you from the shackles of AT&T,and allows you to get out of Apple’s restricted system. With the iPad, well, it’s neat to do it because then you can claim firsties. But the only real tyrannical dictator that you’re avoiding here is Steve Jobs, in which case you have to wonder why you’d want an iPad in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for homebrew and hacking. And if it wasn’t for people like MuscleNerd, we wouldn’t have some of the advances in technology that we’ve got today. But this is one of those products that I just don’t see wanting broken. I just like enjoying it as is, and keeping that homegrown system as fresh as it was from the factory.

Then again, if you can put Super Mario 3 on it, I’ll be next in line to jailbreak one.

Via Macnn

Security firm Sophos has reacted negatively to the news, suggesting that it glamorises the writing of potentially malicious code (despite the fact that this worm, in particular, wasn’t malicious) and arguing that there are probably more talented, law-abiding coders who could have been given the job.

There are a number of issues here. Firstly, anyone who jailbreaks their iPhone is opening themselves up to a greater risk of malware and other undesired software, particularly if they don’t bother to do basic housekeeping tasks such as changing default passwords.

Secondly, many organisations already hire hackers, because (whatever you think of them) there’s no denying they have talents that perhaps standard programmers and security staff don’t have.

Towns may not be the most proficient programmer, but is it really surprising that he’s been hired? It’s all publicity for the developer, too.

If you were waiting for a reason to jailbreak your iPhone, this might be exactly that moment you have been waiting for. Mini vMac is a complete emulator of the classic Mac Plus for the iPhone, admitted rather useless but oh so nerdy!

Named Fork ported this originally Mac OS X app to the iPhone. Because of restrictions in the iPhone OS, the jailbreak is required. Mini vMac is free and available via Cydia.

The Mini vMac app emulates the Mac Plus hardware, but you will need to provide your own OS. Once the original OS is installed you can play classic games (which you also need to own or you could find them somewhere online)