First iPhone 3GS do-it-yourself jailbreaking software now available

George Hotz, the 19-year old whiz kid who made headlines two years ago for being the first to successfully unlock Apple’s original iPhone all by himself, is again drawing the spotlight for creating and releasing the first-ever jailbreaking tool for the new iPhone 3GS.

purplera1n

Dubbed “purplera1n,” the software is currently in beta and available for Windows-only, but Hotz said a Mac version is next on his list. Those interested in using the tool should first backup their iPhone 3GS running iPhone Software 3.0 and make sure they have iTunes 8.2 installed.

Hotz boasts that the binary size of purplera1n is smaller than a C++ hello world application — essentially the most basic piece of software that can be written for modern day computer systems, which simply spits out the phrase “hello world” and terminates.

“No 20MB thing that needs to be torrented,” he wrote in a blog post. “And no IPSW to download. This is how jailbreak should be!” We agree.

After downloading purplera1n, jailbreaking takes just a few simple steps. “Connect your iPhone normally. Click ‘make it ra1n’. Wait. On bootup, run Freeze, the purplera1n installer app. Hopefully you’ll figure out what to do from there,” Hotz wrote.

The Glen Rock, New Jersey native said he doesn’t normally make tools for release to the general public, and prefers to wait for the unofficial iPhone dev team to tackle such matters, but has grown annoyed that they’re apparently waiting for version 3.1 before releasing a jailbreak.

The site is here: http://www.purplera1n.com/

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4 Comments to “First iPhone 3GS do-it-yourself jailbreaking software now available”

  1. on 03 Jul 2009 at 9:25 pmmouse01

    this doesn’t seem to work on vista either. i tried the different compatibility modes and nothing.

  2. on 04 Jul 2009 at 6:13 pmmouse01

    my first comment no longer applies. geohot made some changes to purplera1n and everything is fine now.

  3. on 06 Jul 2009 at 5:01 amDaniel

    This software is coming to mac very soon too.. Can’t wait for it!

  4. on 29 Aug 2010 at 11:09 pmFiOS

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