Yesterday saw Apple release iOS 9.3 - the biggest release of iOS for a while and for jailbreakers it's also something of a renewed hope. The operating system last received a high-profile jailbreak back in October last year, when the Pangu Chinese team launched its popular tool for iOS 9.0-9.0.2.
Prior to the somewhat superficial jailbreak tool released recently for iOS 9.1, the last big tool... [+]
Since then, anyone that applied the jailbreak to their devices has had to stay on that version of iOS, missing out on the new features and fixes of later versions.The recent release of a jailbreak tool for iOS 9.1 recently was largely superficial; Apple has stopped signing that version and it's unlikely many people would have waited on iOS 9.1 when releases looked likely for iOS 9.2 or 9.2.1.
However, as I suspected a few months ago, neither iOS 9.2 or iOS 9.2.1 saw a jailbreak tool released and the release of iOS 9.3 yesterday confirmed what many had thought; the jailbreak teams were biding their time, and rightly so. Now, there are three possibilities for this.
Firstly, iOS 9.3 is widely regarded as the biggest shakeup to iOS since iOS 9 itself launched so it made sense to wait since October last year before revealing to Apple one of its valuable exploits to allow jailbreaking to continue.
We've waited much longer than this between jailbreaks in the past, and despite rumors and some evidence that several versions of iOS 9 had been privately jailbroken, no public tool was released because, to be honest, those currently sitting on the older iOS 9.0.2 jailbreak aren't missing much. However, that changed yesterday with the release of iOS 9.3, which is likely to be the final big launch before iOS 10, which is expected later this year.
The Cydia app is still bulging with jailbreak tools, apps and tweaks and the community is hopeful... [+]
In fact, my second point here is that I wouldn't put it past the jailbreaking teams to skip iOS 9.3 and wait for iOS 10. I think that's unlikely, though, as there is a fair amount of competition between jailbreaking teams and as it's now been six months since the last major tool release, now is a good time to launch the next one, assuming the final version of iOS 9.3 doesn't introduce any bugs.
That, incidentally, is a reason why we may not see a tool release for iOS 9.3 for at least a week or two - even if the jailbreaking teams plan to release one. As soon as they do, Apple will likely patch the exploit in the next iOS release, so if they release a tool for iOS 9.3 now, and it turns out to have a few bugs, Apple will likely release an update that could cut short the jailbreak tool's life as well.
That brings me on to the third possibility - there is no tool. A lot of the evidence so far has been sketchy at best, but the possibility does exist that iOS 9.3 is too tough to jailbreak, or at the very least, the available exploits for it are so few that the jailbreaking teams don't want to waste them on a public jailbreak.
All the rumors and other jailbreak scene commentators out there, though, point at a tool being made available for iOS 9.3 - that's what I'm betting on, and I'm hopeful we'll see it in the next 2-3 weeks.
