Notorious iOS Jailbreaker Hacks Web Browser Onto Apple Watch, Discovers iOS 8.2 Framework

To nobody's real surprise, the jailbreak community upon learning that the Apple Watch was freewheelin' it on wrists everywhere without a browser onboard set out to fill that gap. And in somewhat short order the celebrated Comex — the developer behind JailBreakMe, and a former Apple intern — has weighed in first, posting a video to Twitter over the weekend that features an Apple Watch running a Google web page via a web browser. 

Comex's video makes a good case for why Apple hasn't (yet) included a version of its Safari browser in Watch OS, illustrating the need to scroll over and across vast screen real estate — relatively speaking, of course — just to get to a point where he can think to enter test into the Google field on that most basic of web pages. With hacking, though, it is often not so much the having as it is the doing, and in finagling the Apple Watch into behaving in a way not intended by its maker Comex has shown that the device can be made to run code of a dubious nature. All of which, naturally, could be heralding an Apple Watch jailbreak movement in line with that its bigger sibling iPhone. 

A key revelation of Comex's breakthrough is the confirmation that Watch OS 1.0 is actually a version of iOS 8.2 that is running on a front-end layer put in place specifically for the purpose of displaying Carousel — the Apple Watch's device-specific UI — on Apple's new wrist warmer. To demonstrate this, Comex offered a photograph on his tweetstream that features the Apple Watch displaying the iOS dictionary view, super-condensed.


Comex sums up the rational for his endeavor by simply saying, "I always wanted a web browser on my wrist.", and he seems determined to keep it for himself, too, as for now he is making no noises about eventually releasing the details of his Apple Watch hack. And considering the utter useless of Comex's proof-of-concept, it seems quite unlikely that that a massive public outcry will well up to force his hand.