After initially rejecting it, Apple has approved the first PC emulator for iOS

I just ran genuine 64bit Linux on a non jailbroke iPhone! I have waited so so so long for this. Finally. Thank you EU regulators!!

Feels like this app alone make ipadOS more usable than all the past effort from Apple combined.

Some people think Apple's JIT restrictions standing up to the DMA is a given, but I heavily doubt that will be the case.

The DMA allows for security exceptions only when measures are "strictly necessary and proportionate", Article 6(4). Apple argues that this ban is crucial for security, yet Android permits JIT compilation and maintains robust security on that front for 99% of its user base without significant incidents.

Well, right now this technically works, but is unusable - melted off 15% of my iPad’s battery life just logging in to XFCE and doing an apt upgrade (Debian ARM64), and is very slow overall. I’m going to try turning off the GUI and decreasing the core count to 2, but I don’t expect this to beat a-Shell on practicality or even iSH on usability.

In short, I’m going to keep using an ARM sidecar: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/10/07/1830

Apple doesn’t let us JIT nice things, and it’s just sad.

How about we ban Apple from imposing arbitrary rules to cripple what is just a general computing device? They are too big and too monopolistic to be allowed this degree of control.

Isn’t this kind of a huge deal? You can literally install and run Flash on an iPhone, at last.

My tinfoil is that Apple banned this specifically because you can use it to get a desktop on iPadOS, which offends their "fingers can't touch mouse apps" sensibilites.

“It doesn’t come with any operating systems, though the app does link to UTM’s site, which has guides for Windows XP through Windows 11 emulation, as well as downloads of pre-built virtual Linux machines.”

Huh… so I could run Linux on my phone!

Does anyone know what this is: “QEMU TCTI implementation was pivotal for this JIT-less build.”

I wonder why the prebuilt Mac OS 9.2.1 VM has disappeared from the UTM gallery

From X:

> Also shoutout to @ktemkin whose QEMU TCTI implementation was pivotal for this JIT-less build.

Does this mean that it is just a JIT-less build? How is the performance for Linux emulation compared to the previous UTM SE build?

Do things like the internet connection and access to peripherals pass through? Could I use this to have better ssh access to some capabilities of an iphone, for example?

I use UTM on Mac, it's a great experience. Donated a little to them using github sponsors because of how useful the tool is, and how easy it is to obtain and install unlike VMware Player (see: https://matduggan.com/the-worst-website-in-the-entire-world/ ).

The AltStore team helped them but it’s not on AltStore? I’d really like to see a nice strong offering there, more pro and privacy/foss oriented perhaps, similar to F-Droid.

Unfortunate that we're not affected here in Switzerland.

Although I do expect it soon, since especially opening up NFC could benefit the nationwide contactless payment solution (twint).

I kind of wonder what the performance impact of Apple's ban on JIT would be. How does iOS without JIT compare to Android with JIT?

This is fantastic. Does anyone know how to run Alpine Linux on it?

Last time I tried through AltStore, I couldn't get it working.

I misinterpreted the title as Apple approving development of iOS apps on PC. That would’ve been an exciting development.

With mouse support coming in visionOS 2, this could be an interesting experience on the Apple Vision Pro.

1.66GB!

Great.

Now Apple just needs to support JIT

This is cool.. Mac OS can of course access the iPad App Store so … we can run this on MacBook Pro :)