Apple has reportedly been blocking users from reading purchased books if their devices are jailbroken. Dev-Team members @comex and @pushfix have fixed this problem and now DRM-protected books should work just fine regardless of whether your iPhone is jailbroken. Also, Wi-Fi problems on jailbroken Apple TV 2 units have been fixed by developers @nitotv, @DHowett and @saurik. Both of these improvements are included in Pwnage Tool 4.2, but if you’re already jailbroken there’s no need to do it again. They will soon be available as patches on Cydia.

Intentional Hijacking

Apple’s intentional hijacking of iBooks is an interesting move, but given its less-than-amiable stance on jailbreaking it’s surprising that it’s taken this long to actually implement anti-jailbreak mechanisms.

DRM Protected ebooks

People are discovering that Apple has built a check into the latest iOS that prevents users from accessing DRM-protected ebooks in the company’s iBooks app. Ars Technica reports that attempts to access purchased content in iBooks on a jailbroken device results in an error message pop-up: “There is a problem with the configuration of your iPhone. Please restore with iTunes and reinstall iBooks.”

It Really Is Hacking

The process of jailbreaking refers to hacking the software of a device — in this case Apple’s current Apple TV — to remove any restrictions on access to that software. Apple locks its iOS devices in such a way that users can’t access the operating system or other software components, and jailbreaking removes that block.

Two Fixes

If you have a jailbroken iOS device (probably jailbroken via GreenPois0n) that shows this error, you have a choice of two fixes. The tedious fix is to rejailbreak your device. This requires that you first restore your device via iTunes to pre-jailbreak status (which eliminates the conflict). Next, rejailbreak it with Pwnage 4.2 (which avoids the conflict). The quicker fix is to launch Cydia on your jailbroken device and add the repo.insanelyi.com repository in the Sources section. Next, locate and install “iBooks Fix.” With this latter fix, you avoid the hassle of restoring.