After jailbreaking my iPad 3G on first night Spirit was released, I’ve been testing my favorite jailbroken iPhone utilities to see what works.

Amazingly, many of the tools I use the most seem to work right out of the box, even without the apps being updated for the iPad. Here is the current state-of-the-art:

Cydia, which is installed by default by Spirit, runs fine. It is even built to run in fullscreen mode, iPad native. Despite numerous scary warnings on the front page, I have not experienced any issues with Cydia.

Backgrounder: Works just like the iPhone version. In fact, it runs at iPhone size. Amazingly, jailbreak apps behave just like any iPhone app, presenting a 2X option to fill the screen.

3G Unrestricter: This $2.99 app was one of the most important reasons to jailbreak my iPhone, as it allowed me to use Skype and other apps that would normally only work on wifi over the 3G network.

I didn’t expect that I would have much of a reason to use Unrestricter on my iPad. Well, that was before I saw YouTube on 3G. The quality was so degraded that i couldn’t read text, even big text, in a video. Unrestricter lets me watch YouTube, Netflix, and ABC in full quality (at the expense of loading time, of course). I also tested Skype, and successfully made a nice sounding phone call over 3G from my iPad. To the best of my knowledge Unrestricter has not been updated to be iPad specific (it runs like an iPhone app too), which really just adds to my amazement that it works. Best of all, if you have purchased it previously for the iPhone, you get to use it again, free of charge, on the iPad!

SbSettings: Works. Used it to change my screen brightness. Move along.

And Finally-

MyWi: Here is an app that I REALLY didn’t expect to work on the iPad. MyWi uses your mobile data plan, and rebroadcasts that connection as wifi, turning your device into a MiFi card style mobile hotspot which you can use to get your laptop online. To my surprise, MyWi works on the iPad and even carries benefits over using a dedicated device.

Consider the following: you could buy a MiFi from sprint or verizon for $199 and a $60 per month data plan which is limited to 5 gigs. The MiFi has a battery life of around 2 hours, and is limited to 5 users connected at a time. The MyWi app has no such limitation and will last as long as the iPad battery. I used the app for three strait hours on battery power, downloaded 150 megabytes, and only saw a 14% drop in battery, from 92% when i started to 78% when I stopped. That equals a 4.67 percent drop in battery per hour, or an estimated total of 21.4 hours! On top of that, the data plan costs half as much per month and has no limit to the amount you can download!

I used MyWi with the “Rock” management system so that I could take advantage of the 10 day free trial. There were some bugs while I tried to sign up for my (free) Rock account, but once i got past those everything was smooth sailing.

Final Verdict on jailbreaking the iPad-

While it would be great for these apps to be upgraded to an iPad specific interface, the functionality of my favorite jailbreak tools seem to be 100%. If you have been waiting for things to settle down before you jailbreak, I don’t think you have to wait any longer. Spirit works great and is even faster than blackra1n, and MyWi alone makes the whole process worthwhile.

Footnote: Tethering is against AT&T’s terms of service. Try not to ruin everything for the rest of us by bittorrenting Avatar over your 3G connection.