iOS 5 GM IPSW Release Close as Beta 5 Gets Jailbroken

The iPhone Dev Team is signaling that Apple is one step closer to releasing the iOS 5 GM (Golden Master), while confirming that their Redsn0w utility is capable of hacking the latest beta from Apple.

A tweet authored Musclenerd that hit the wires earlier today reads: “redsn0w 0.9.8b5 tethered JB released for iOS 5 beta5 (JB app devs only please) […] (GM is getting closer!).”

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Musclenerd is telling the jailbreak community (in fact, the entire iOS community) to expect the final iOS 5 build to arrive soon.

Golden Master builds, whether it’s Mac OS X or iOS, generally represent the final bits that make it to end customers once the formalities are over.

An update on the iPhone Dev Team blog also confirms the news:

“Redsn0w has been updated to 0.9.8b5, adding support for Apple’s new iOS5 beta5 (point it directly at the beta5 IPSW).”

The Team urges jailbreakers, “Please use this only if you’re a jailbreak app developer with a legit Apple dev account, and remember it’s a tethered jailbreak for now!”

For those who aren’t very familiar with the terminology, ‘tethered’ means that every time you reboot, you need to jailbreak again.

A tethered jailbreak is already a fuss, an considering the fact that iOS 5 is now in beta, it’s very likely that some users will end up bricking their devices, therefore the Team’s advice should really be taken into consideration.

According to Redmond Pie, Redsn0w is still capable to apply a standard tethered jailbreak on almost any iOS device, but not for the second-generation iPad.

The jailbreak-centric site notes that iOS hackers will likely avoid disclosing vulnerabilities for iPad 2 yet, since iOS 5 Beta 5 is an experimental build, which means even a tethered jailbreak is likely out of the question, not to mention an untethered one.