In the world of jailbreaking, Cydia’s pretty much been the only game in town for quite a while now. There have been a few rivals such as Rock Your Phone, but Cydia has out lasted them all. Now it seems that Lima is set to take on Cydia’s dominance. Lima is being developed by the Infini Dev Team as an alternative to the Cydia store. With Cydia, users must first jailbreak their iDevices in order to install it. Lima takes a different approach by using Safari to download software instead.

According to the Infini Dev Team website, “Lima is going to be a browser-based dpkg Installer. Meaning all you have to do is visit a website in safari and you have a fully fucntional (sic) package installer!” Users will then be able to download apps and themes, in much the same way they do now when using Cydia. Lima will also allow third party developers to sell software through the online store as well.

Lima is being designed as a browser based application in an effort to simplify the entire process of downloading unsanctioned apps to iOS devices. Infini Dev Team is building Lima with speed and reliability in mind. They also want to simplify the process of backing up downloaded software. Lima users won’t have to use any additional software to restore their iDevices whenever Apple issues an iOS update.

Browser based jailbreaking is nothing new as anyone who remembers Jailbreakme.com can attest to. For a time this website, developed by Comex, allowed users to jailbreak their iOS devices with a simple onscreen swipe. A slider with the words "slide to jailbreak" allowed users to jailbreak their devices in one easy step. Apple quickly patched the exploit, however, forever barring users from using this method to jailbreak their devices.

Infini Dev Team, not to be confused with Dev Team, says that Lima will be released “soon.” It remains to be seen if Lima will actually pose a threat to Cydia’s unofficial app store dominance, but one thing is certain, competition always leads to innovation. Hopefully, Lima will be able to stay a step ahead of Apple and not get shutdown before they even have a chance to get started. I look forward to testing Lima when it is released in the near future.

Source: MacStories