When you first hear someone talking about Jailbreaking an iPhone or an Android device, it sounds illicit, unethical or even illegal. But the fact is, it isn't any of those things. When you Jailbreak your iPhone you are simply untying yourself from Apple's restrictions which are designed to benefit Apple and not you. I figure I bought the phone from Apple. It belongs to me now, not them. Thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as of July 26, 2010, it is perfectly legal in the U.S. to jailbreak an iPhone or any smartphone or tablet device.

Of course Apple had rather that you didn't unthether your phone from them. They want you to buy all of the software you use on your phone from them so it is in their interest to make it as hard as possible for all of us to break free of our dependence on them. But once you've managed to jailbreak your iPhone you'll be allowed to access Cydia, an iTunes App Store alternative that offers an array of marvelous stuff that Apple doesn't want you to have access to because it doesn't make them any money when you shop somewhere other than the iTunes Store.

You can use either Absinthe or Cinject to jailbreak an iPhone 4s or an iPad2. For iPhone 4 and earlier iDevices that have been updated to iOS 5 you will need to use Red Snow or Pwnage to help with your jailbreak. After your iPhone or iPad has been jailbroken you will be able to use Cydia as well as Apple's iTune store to shop for apps and customizing software. Once you have access to Cydia you can start look around for all those apps that Apple doesn't want you to have.

Here are the answers to some questions I had when I first started investigating how to go about jail breaking my iPhone 4s. What is the difference between tethered and untethered jailbreaking? An "untethered" jailbreak means you don't need to plug into a computer and use third-party software every time you need to restart your iPhone or iPad. What is the worst thing that could happen to my phone during a jailbreak procedure and how do I recover from that? The worst thing that could happen is you could "brick" your phone, meaning render it un-usable. But that would be easily rectifiable by simply Restoring the iPhone. I very recently posted an article on this site on Restoring and Re-booting Your iPhone.

This post is about jailbreaking an iPhone 4s. If you have an iPhone 4s you want to jailbreak, I recommend you use Absinthe, code-named Green Poison rather than the other piece of software I mentioned above called Cinject because I've used Absinthe and I know it works and it is pretty simple to use. Look for a link to Absinthe at the top of this post.

Stop! Before you read any farther, be warned that the below instructions are for how to jailbreak an iPhone 4s running iOS 5.0 or iOS 5.0.1 and is NOT intended for iPhone 4 or earlier models of iPhones whose OS's have been updated to iOS 5.0 or 5.0.1.

Some final words before you get started. When you use the link above to download the Absinthe software, un-zip it onto your Desktop and when you're ready to start right-click absinthe.exe and choose to Run as administrator. Though there are different software versions of Absinthe depending on whither you're on a Mac or a PC, the procedures for running the software are the same for Mac or PC and I've described them below. You may want to make a hard-copy of these steps. Don't attempt to use your computer for any other purpose while the jailbreak is in progress. And finally, be patient. This is going to take close to 20 minutes to complete. And no matter what comes on your iPhone's screen, DO NOT untether your phone from your computer until the progress bar on Absinthe shows completely full.

Here is a video showing exactly the procedure I described above.

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