Hello Rob,
While I've been using apple products for a couple of years now - I'm not sure I understand what tethering, unlocking & jail breaking is. Would you please explain this on your show when you get a chance & why people do these things.
Laurie B in Frisco, TX
Hi Laurie here is a quick primer on those terms.
Tethering is a phrase we use in two scenarios - one is when talking about accessing your iPhones internet connection on your Laptop. So if you are traveling and want to get internet access on your laptop - you can tether a wifi or usb connection from your iPhone to laptop - and the laptop uses your iPhone for connecting to the internet.
Recently you have heard me talking about tethered vs untethered jailbreaks - What this means is if you jailbreak and it is a tethered jailbreak - if your iOS device reboots - you need to connect it back to your computer to get it up and running again. Clearly a tethered jailbreak would be a major issue if you travel without your computer and your iPhone was to reboot. The phone is useless until you get back to the computer. Untethered jailbreak means well you don't need to worry about that. Which is why I only recommend an untethered jailbreak and do not do my tutorials until one was available.
Jailbreaking means you free up your iOS device to load up apps that are not authorized and in the iTunes App store. This is important if you want apps that will do things Apple will not allow. Adding a 5th iCon in the dock on your iPhone for example. Or say an app that lets you trick web servers into thinking you are not on a mobile device. There are many many other good jailbreak apps that make jailbreaking worth while.
Unlocking is when you free your iPhone from your current carrier and allow you to connect to another carrier. In the US this is most common with people unlocking their GSM iPhone purchased for use on AT&T and then being able to use that phone on T-Mobile. It is also nice to unlock if you travel internationally. Most roaming fees for Data are down right criminal. Being able to unlock and then buy a local data plan when you get to a new country is usually going to be a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper.
Laurie I hope that helped.
Regards,
Rob W
