Is your iPhone jailbroken? Do you know anyone with a jailbroken iPhone? Have you ever considered jailbreaking your iPhone? Have you read how-to articles then chickened out at the last minute?

If so, why? If you are among the small group of iPhone owners who've decided to break out Apple's controlled environment sandbox, why did you do so, and what would make you come back?

Wayne Dixon over at Macgasm has just published his thoughts on the answers to that last set of questions above and it makes for an interesting read. In essence, Dixon breaks down jailbreakers into three handy categories.

The first group are your hard-core jailbreakers, those who work within the dev community, those who are insistently and defiantly against the limitations Apple places on the iPhone. This group, he concludes (and rightly in our estimation), are unreachable by any sticks or carrots. These people, while appreciating the additional functionalities, apps, and customizability jailbreaking brings with it, aren't in it solely for that. Their reasons go deeper.

Image Source: http://www.multifl0w.com

Then there is a second group, the curious. They just have to know what's on the other side of the fence. They may jailbreak their phones, try out the Cidia market, and discover they like it or they may come back within the folds of Apple's embrace. This group Dixon also rightly puts out of Apple's reach. Curiosity is a devil of an itch and if all it takes is a Restore in iTunes, then little will stop these people from seeing where all that horizon leads.

No, it's the last group that Dixon sees as the most persuadable to either come back to Cupertino's sandbox or never leave it in the first place. This group we'll call the "customizers." These people want home page wallpaper like the iPad has (or even different wallpapers for every page of apps they have), they want to change their iPhone's colors and personalize the appearance of their iPhone's software and put on as many sparkles and bangles and beads and shiny toys as they can.

But it is one feature Dixon doesn't talk about that PatrickJ at Just Another iPhone Blog nails that we think would be the big megillah of jailbreak-habit-breaking -- the elusive multitasking. Haven't you had that experience where you're listening to Pandora and you think, "Oh, right, I have to text my wife to pick up some beer on the way home," and you hit Home only to have your tunes die on you? Or maybe you need to look up something in the middle of an instant message chat, but you don't want to have to sign back in after you break your connection. There's an app for that, but it's only available on the iPhones of jailbreakers.

Either way, we think PatrickJ's on to something and even if multitasking is a big ol' drain on the battery, we're big kids here. We think we know how to use our own stuff. We can remember to pack a power cord.

What about you, readers? What about jailbreaking appeals to you?