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Today I found myself doing a favor for a friend of the family.

Her grandson (14 years old) had recently been given an iPod Touch for Christmas and I offered to jailreak it for him so he may customize it and mod it any way he would like.

After running blackra1n and restarting I ran the blackra1n app on his phone and sat staring at the two choices for installer, "Rock Your iPhone" and "Cydia."
I had to make a choice of one over the other. If it were me I would install both (I've had both installed before) but in this case I actually found myself installing the newer Rock Your iPhone over Cydia.

WHAT'S BEST FOR THE GOOSE NOT FOR THE GANDER

So why did I chose this. Why might you want to chose one over the other?
It came down to a few factors in this case:

INTERFACE

To be honest, Rock Your iPhone looks much more user friendly and similar to the native Apple Appstore. This may not be an issue for a seasoned and experienced iPhone jailbreaker, but in the past I found I would get calls from people who's phones I had worked on asking me how to work cydia and if a certain mod would be ok for their phone.

Rock Your iPhone:






The Rock Your iPhone
interface showing an install



Cydia:






The Cydia interface showing
an install




As you can see the interface of the two are similar in many respects, however the Rock app seems far more polished and fleshed out.
There are little nuances everywhere that make it easier to use (not necessarilly more powerful) and it helps new users feel more at home.

ACCESSABILITY:

This was also a factor.
It ties into the interface, however it is more than looks.
The Rock app has a feature which allows you to back up your list of installed apps. You do this by creating a free account on their servers which allows you to keep a list of installed packages.
This is useful later if you need to restore and rejailbreak your device. You can quickly recover where you left off.
Granted the power user likely has a mental checklist of all the mods and hacks they have done, and may never use this feature.

Cydia also has options for developers that Rock lacks. This is great for a developer who needs the terminal app installed, but can lead to problems for new users.
This is a good reason to leave out Cydia and go for Rock Your iPhone.
Less chance of mistakes made by the user installing something they should not install is worth the switch to Rock.

SPEED:

Speed is also a factor.
I have never had much luck getting Cydia to load in less than five seconds.
It has always been the manager to take the longest time to load and reload, and Rock wins the speed test hands down.
It is a matter of preference. Both will install your packages, but one will do it much faster.

CONCLUSION:

In the end Cydia is the winner for most folks.
I know that Rock Your iPhone had problems at launch with crashing iPhones however these issues are long gone and it seems to be a good solid piece of hardware for the new user and veteran jailbreaker.
It wins the newbie battle though based on its friendly graphical interface and easy to navigate menus.
Its speed also makes it easier to use and more convenient.

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