It's easy for all of us to live here and now. Our daily routines generally consume us and spend a lot of our time, making it very difficult to take a step back and breathe in some history.
The jailbreak community is still expanding, but it does not take a tech historian to understand that it's not as free and powerful as it used to be, because a seven-year-old video interview with Jay "saurik" shows Freeman.
Newcomers into the jailbreak community can be forgiven for thinking that it's always the way it is now and this is the best they can hope for. The current security in place on Apple devices makes it very difficult, if not nearly impossible, for a jailbreak device with ease. However, back in the good old days, it was actually possible to have a functional jailbreak tool to a wider community just "a few days" after Apple created a new version of iOS. Sure, Apple firmware was more easily revived at that time, but we also have a significant talent pool of individuals who work tirelessly to free the device and make a public jailbreak. Unfortunately, those days are gone, but still full to remember.
In a special interview taken by MuscleNerd (from Redsn0w fame) iPhone Dev-Team in 2011, Jay Freeman, aka saurik took the opportunity to introduce himself as Cydia's creator - an App Store alternative to jailbroken devices - before giving a demonstration of a number of popular packages for the device at the time. The package is shown as the main reason why someone might really want to jailbreak Apple devices to customize and configure the experience as needed by using a previously unapproved third-party installation.
Some of the installation tweaks shown by Saurik in the video include Five Icon Dock, Barrel, SBSettings, Graviboard, CUPS HD WinterBoard, and Voicemail Forwarder which allows users to send voicemail messages as email attachments. Freeman also talks casually about the advice given to the user while delaying updating the new firmware just days before the new jailbreak comes out to support the new iOS version. Unfortunately, the iOS device owner of late has to wait more than a year for it to happen.
Finally, we can also see a conversation with Britta who used to work in Cydia from a community perspective until she resigned, which Freeman took the opportunity to highlight the main reason for last year.
If you're a jailbreaking lover, then you really need to spend five minutes and watch this explosion from the past.
