End-user-friendly iPhone 1.1.1 jailbreak likely today; most old apps will work

We've received word from reliable sources that an end-user-friendly jailbreak for iPhones running software/firmware revision 1.1.1 will be released in the near-term -- likely today. The solution will offer the ability to again install third-party native applications on the iPhone, and will be easy enough for novice users to implement, though not quite as simple as the one-step process offered by AppTapp for 1.0.2 iPhones.

Some salient information about the forthcoming jailbreak:

The solution won't be quite as clean and easy as Nullriver's AppTapp for 1.0.2 iPhones because the software/firmware revision 1.1.1 interacts with the host computer completely differently than revision 1.0.2. AppTapp worked so easily because it could tell the iPhone to enter recovery mode and send the appropriate commands directly. In analogous terms, where iPhone 1.0.2 had commands "pushed" from the computer, iPhone 1.1.1 "pulls" commands from the computer. As described by Nicholas "Drudge" Penree, a member of the iPhone dev team, "Basically, the 1.0.2 way is like this: Computer says: 'Hey iPhone, I see you, do this: (send instructions)', and the iPhone happily does what it's told. In 1.1.1, iPhone says: 'Hey computer, iIm here and I need you to do things to me.' This makes the process less automated initially, though the dev team has found some crafty means of making things easier for the end-user.

Contrary to some prior reports, most iPhone applications that ran under software/firmware revision 1.0.2 will also run under revision 1.1.1. These include Colloquy, MobileChat, Apollo, NES.app, VNsea and many others. Nullriver's Installer.app will work, meaning that installation of applications will be incredibly easy. Unfortunately, SummerBoard (a replacement for SpringBoard -- the iPhone's application launcher -- that allows for more than 16 app slots) will not work.

As reported yesterday, Apple built a hidden multi-page SpringBoard feature into iPhone software/firmware 1.1.1, which will be accessible once you've jailbroken the new revision.

Feedback? info@iphoneatlas.com.