MyGreatFest - Jay Freeman, Father Of Cydia, Takes The Stage
by Joe White
September 17, 2011
MyGreatFest is drawing to a close, and the last speaker - none other than Jay Freeman (@saurik) himself - has just taken to the stage.
After starting with a bit of social banter, Jay got onto a series note, answering his own present questions (which appeared on a projector behind him). Among these were "Has Apple ever contacted you?," and "Is jailbreaking legal?." Surprisingly, Jay Freeman explained that Apple has never contacted him, and that he suspects that the company instead wishes to pretend, quite simply, that he doesn't exist.
And in case you're wondering, jailbreaking is legal.
How many devices, in total, are jailbroken? Jay explained that it's between six and 12 percent - when Apple releases a new version of the iOS, the percentage drops to six, but it can climb as high as 12 percent.
Is Cydia the place for my rejected app? Jay notes that this question, which he is commonly asked, is ambiguous and depends entirely upon the application itself, as you might expect. Both the answers "yes" and "no" apply to the question - Cydia welcomes applications Apple might have rejected from the iOS App Store.
What happened to Cydia for OS X? Earlier today, when answering this question (which had been asked by a fan), Jay explained that there were still many bugs to work out with a Mac OS version of Cydia. Once these have been squashed, Cydia for Mac might just be released.
Jay Freeman once gave a four hour talk while suffering from pneumonia, and he's even coded on an iPhone keyboard before. But why did he develop Cydia?
It's clear that there are a lot of hacks for the iPhone, and with Cydia, they can all be housed in one place. The jailbreak application store also makes it incredibly easy to search for and download tweaks and apps. Just looking around the room here, at the countless people listening intently to Jay's every word, reminds you what a strong community the jailbreak community is. And Jay Freeman, the father of Cydia, is their king.
But I'm getting off topic - Jay is now talking about the build-up to the release of Cydia. It was a long, complicated process, and the application we now know and love took years to develop (sure, it was initially released a while back, but its current form is the produce of a lot of hard work). And it was a collaborative process, too - Jay's reminding us of the people, like Youssef Francis, who have had a major input in the development of Cydia and various jailbreak apps, too.
And now, it's come to an end: The projector suddenly displays </talk>, and instantly the eccentric Jay Freeman becomes silent, and asks for questions.
[Updating]
[Image credit: @True0mega]