To break an iPhone out of Apple's restrictions so it can run software from outside the App Store — first done within days of the iPhone's July 2007 launch, industrialised by Cydia in 2008, and at its peak in 2011 a rite of passage that gave you a custom lock screen and a phone that occasionally restarted itself. Dying because Apple copied the good ideas one by one, and the record notes the word's later life describing AI models talked out of their rules.
The record notes that 'jailbroken' in 2011 meant a winking Batman logo on the home screen, and in 2023 meant a chatbot telling you how to hotwire a car after being asked to pretend it was your grandmother.
Overheard in a supermarket queue, Jan this year: a parent saying "Jailbreak" to a toddler, entirely straight-faced. The toddler understood. I did not, for a second.
What does it mean? Write it the way you would say it out loud.
