The “new iPad” has been jailbroken, on the same day of its retail launch. Although only a preliminary jailbreak, with “lots more work to be done,” it opens the door to others like the iPhone Dev Team to come up with a polished version of the jailbreak for public distributed.
The jailbreak thus far comes via well-known iOS hacker MuscleNerd, who Tweeted two images of a jailbroken “new iPad” on Friday. He was quick to add, however, that there is no ETA for an official release of the jailbreak, though.
The complexity of hacking devices with A5 processors led to a long delay before an untethered jailbreak for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4s (both of which use A5 processors) was developed. That jailbreak tool, named Absinthe, was released in late January.
MuscleNerd was also among the first to jailbreak the iPhone 4S, about two weeks after it was first introduced, although that, like this one, was a preliminary jailbreak with no ETA and a caveat of “much work to be done” attached to it.
While this new preliminary jailbreak doesn’t mean a total solution yet, it does show that hackers will find a way into Apple’s iOS platform, no matter what Apple does.
It’s also clear, though, by looking at sites such as the iPhone Dev Team’s that there has been a slowdown in jailbreaking activities, as Apple has managed to make jailbreaking new hardware and new iOS versions more and more difficulty.