Lucky me.

I’ve been a happy owner of a hacked “Jailbroken” iPhone for a long time. My iPhone has been running perfectly well for me on version 1.1.1 for, well, since I bought it several months ago.

I also work with young people who live (and sometimes cut themselves) on the very bleeding and dripping edge of technology. One such “yoot” (taking a line from My Cousin Vinnie) told me the other day:

“Matt, I can upgrade you to 1.1.3 in about 30 seconds. It’s smooth, and easy, and risk free.”

So I caved. A day and a half later, my iPhone was running 1.1.3, and in my case, this carried both benefits and drawbacks.

Benefit: I can now manually reorganize the icons on the screen. If I don’t like the SMS icon at the top, I now have the power to do something about it. I can drag it to the bottom.

Drawback: The telephone ringing sound no longer works, so I now miss all calls. (Same with the alarm sound; so I now get up late and miss appointments.) According to the Apple Support website, “This is an issue with Jailbroken iPhones running 1.1.3.”

And, of course, there’s no way to go back. So, I now spend my days re-organizing icons, staring at the screen and waiting for phone calls to come in.

As my buddy Niall said, “Who needs a phone to do something as old fashioned as RING for goodness sake. I mean, you can drag your icons round.” Lucky me.