iDrama: The Race to Jailbreaking iPhone 2.0
July 14, 2008
As iPhone 3G owners grow impatient waiting for a 2.0 unlock for their phones, the drama between iPhone Dev Team and geohot reaches new heights. After working together for about a month last year, geohot was booted from the Dev Team after "he couldn’t abide by rules" in regards to keeping specific information confidential, according to the iPhone Dev Team Blog.
Geohot (George Hotz) then went on to garner worldwide exposure for his (in)famous eBay auction in which he sold the world's first unlocked iPhone, using "some of [iPhone Dev Team's] techniques and tools (and some of his)," implying that geohot wanted the fame, the glory, and all the credit. Indeed, in the auction description geohot stated: "As a note, if you are only bidding on this to get an unlocked iPhone, don't. There are much cheaper and easier ways to get one. This is a piece of cell phone history."
Fast forward nearly 9 months to the 3G iPhone launch, the Dev Team blog states that an internal member of the team has leaked sensitive information to geohot about their 2.0 exploit. Using this knowledge, and with the Dev Team's Pwnage Tool 2.0 looming on the horizon, geohot posted a call-out of sorts on his own blog Saturday night. Threatening to release his own unlocking tool if the Dev Team didn't hurry up to release their own, geohot wrote: "Dev team, that [release date] date better be soon or I might just have to release yiPhone."
Now, yiPhone's site has a picture of geohot outfitted as Zorro (a reference to Zibri's release of ZiPhone) with a count-down clock that will expire at 9am PST tomorrow (Tuesday), presumably marking the launch of his (and the world's first?) 2.0 unlocking tool.
In response, the Dev Team has posted a website link on their blog, which also boasts a counter (though counting up from negative) of their own. People are speculating as to whether the counter is linked to the release time of Pwnage Tool 2.0, or just a mocking parody of geohot and his yiPhone page.
The site includes a rendition of the Last Supper with geohot as Judas (wearing a Google shirt) and performing lewd acts on Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak.
Though the race to unlock iPhone 2.0 has been ongoing, iPhone enthusiasts across the globe can only watch and hope for a quick finish.