It’s official, the developer behind the popular JailbreakMe tool that allows you to install officially unsupported apps on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch has taken an internship with Apple, as we’d previously reported. Also official? He’s leaving the jailbreak scene.
Comex has taken to reddit to answer some questions, and while he can’t say much about what he’ll be doing at Apple, he has posted a few other interesting details.
The first is that even after his internship is done, he won’t be producing any more jailbreak tools. He didn’t elaborate, but that’s likely due to an agreement signed with Apple which would prevent him from legally using any information obtained while working at the company to create exploits. Comex does say he’d like to be able to continue jailbreaking his devices, so he hopes others will continue to find exploits… and they probably will. While it’s not clear whether his work at Apple will involve identifying exploits and closing them, he says it’s unlikely anyone could catch them all before hackers find them.
Th JailbreakMe website will likely be turned over to another member of the iPhone Dev Team.
Comex says he doesn’t plan to take a job with Apple after his internship ends — at least not immediately. Instead he wants to return to college. He’s been taking some time off.
When asked if he’s made any money off of his jailbreak utilities, Comex revealed that he received at least $55,000 in donations after releasing JailbreakMe 2.0 and JailbreakMe 3.0, most of which he’s using to help pay for college.
…This is fantastically interesting, good for him and better for Apple.