So far, the root access is just a hack, but within the next month iPad owners will likely be able to jailbreak their devices with a one-click app such as BlackRa1n, and install third-party apps through Cydia or Ice.
The iPad Guide site had this to say about the hack: "The video shows that the jailbreak provides a root shell with what appears to be full access to the iPad filesystem. The video walks shows connection to the iPad via ssh, exploration of the OS and kernel version information (uname), a view of running processes, moving applications out of the iPad's applications directory (and then restarting Springboard via the shell to show the results) and finally, rebooting the iPad via the jailbroken root shell.
Mind you, this isn't yet so functional a jailbreak that it is going to be of much interest to the average user, but as Musclenerd's latest Twitter update indicates, a joint effort by several members of the iPhone Dev Team is now underway to get 'everything working.'"
Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 4 Apr 2010 19:49
