Mac OS X 10.5.6 pwns iPhone Pwnage

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 17 December 2008 02:24

IT Industry - Market

One unadvertised feature of Mac OS X 10.5.6 is that it interferes with tools used to jailbreak and unlock iPhones.

One of the criticisms of Apple's iPhone is that the company tried to make it impossible to install unauthorised software or to unofficially unlock the handset so that a different carrier's SIM could be used.

Enthusiasts responded by creating a series of tools that would do the job.

This led to a cat and mouse game in which Apple patches the bug or feature used to gain access to the iPhone's internals, and then the independent programmers find another loophole.

Apple's latest salvo came in the form of Mac OS X 10.5.6, which was released this week.

It seems Apple made an apparently deliberate change to Mac OS X's USB kernel extensions to block DFU (device firmware update) mode, something that had already been seen on the latest MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

But the iPhone Dev Team (a creator of jailbreaking/unlocking tools) believes "this behavior is due to a kernel bug not a specific countermeasure by Apple."

Some users have reported that Apple's booby trap or bug (take your pick) is easily avoided by connecting the iPhone to the computer via a USB hub.

According to other user reports, the change to Mac OS X does not interfere with the process of transferring an existing image from iTunes to the iPhone.