Truly, the only way to unleash the capabilities and customization abilities of iPhone are to jailbreak, it's not just for hackers anymore.

A few days ago someone by the named of "geohot" released a single click application called "purplera1n", which does the entire operation smoothly and seamlessly.

In our case, the first time it went as far as "done, wait for reboot" on our Windows machine and for minutes we waited and saw the pic on the iPhone with the boy holding his iPhone (presumably the author).  We tried again with iTunes open and it worked almost right away (although some say iTunes should not be open).

Here is the download link for the 3GS 3.0 firmware jailbreak

Once your iPhone reboots, you'll notice an App called "freeze", run it and install "Cydia", this is what allows you to install a lot of custom apps, and apps not sanction by the "iStore", meaning anyone can develop and release software and we can now download and install it without any restrictions.

It's important to remember this jailbreak is for firmware version 3.0, if you accidentally upgrade to 3.1 then you're out of luck.  We're new to the "iPhone dev team" found at http://blog.iphone-dev.org/

iPhonedev have become controversial because they say they won't release the jailbreak because they don't want Apple to patch things and possibly make jailbreaking impossible for the future.  Then geohot came along with his wonderful utility.  At first there were some issues, but within a day or two most of the reported issues were worked out.

Benefits of Jailbreaking

There are so many, and for an advanced user who is familiar with Unix systems the reasons keep adding up.  If Apple wouldn't do so many silly things that keep the iPhone crippled I doubt many people would continue to jailbreak.  I only did it because there are many features I need.

1. Ability to check e-mail every minute (you do need to edit a config file though).
2. Ability to install "Backgrounder", this basically enables true multi-tasking on the iPhone at least (it is annoying to have chat windows being closed or to close an SSH session just to check another APP)
3. Ability to install any software and even develop and distribute your own, in fact Cydia has their own App store of very useful applications, some free and some paid
4. Ability to install OpenSSH, so you can remote access your filesystem, it's great for wirelessly transfering songs, videos, pictures and any other files.  In fact this practically turns your iPhone into a Unix style fileserver!

Apple should not patch their phones or firmware to stop jailbreaking, in fact if jailbreak wasn't an option I wouldn't have gone for iPhone.  I would have gone for HTC Dream or waited for the Linux GNOME/KDE style HTC Hero with true widgets and true multi-tasking (I don't think Apple understands what a widget is!)