Jailbreaking the iPad: What You Need to Know

As reported earlier today by PCWorld, a jailbreak has recently occurred on the Apple iPad. For those who have yet to jailbreak your other iPhone OS devices, a substantially faster hardware and difficult-to-define "3rd device" role make the iPad the best case yet for jailbreaking. A user and developer updated compatibility list will help you see what's safe to install on your iPad.

Apple's App Store has become notorious for its restrictive and often arbitrary decisions about what does and doesn't make it into the store. Many pieces of quality software get denied or kicked out of the App Store, sometimes for unclear or unknown reasons.

However, many of these have subsequently made their way into Cydia, the jailbroken app installer (note that the App Store works just fine on jailbroken devices, too). GV Mobile, a great interface for Google Voice, Dashboard, a clone of Mac OS X's Dashboard for iPad, and Wifi Sync, a paid application for performing iTunes syncs over Wi-Fi, are just a few examples. And there are plenty more programs and extensions that are available in Cydia that have never even been submitted to the App Store.

Aside from these examples of nixed software, jailbreaking also offers a multitude of tweaks that aren't available to the user on a normal device. This includes changing system sounds or interface elements. While a much higher proportion of the software available through Cydia is free compared to what you'll find on the App Store, it does also contain paid software.

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