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Apple Approves First Retro PC Emulator for iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro

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Apple this weekend approved free PC emulator "UTM SE" for the App Store on iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro. The app allows users to emulate old versions of Windows OS, macOS, Linux, and more to fire up classic software and games on Apple devices.

utm-se-pc-emulator-ios.jpg

As the first of its kind to be allowed on the App Store, UTM SE offers several unique features like VGA mode support for graphics and terminal mode for text-only OSes, emulation of x86, PPC, and RISC-V architectures, support for pre-built machines, and the ability to create custom bootable machines.

Apple initially rejected the app in June, despite changing its global App Store policy in April regarding retro game emulators. According to the developers, Apple said the app violated rule 4.7 of its App Review Guidelines because "PC is not a console," regardless of the fact that there are retro Windows/DOS games for the PC that UTM SE can be useful in running.

Apple also deemed UTM SE unsuitable for third-party marketplaces in the European Union, because it violated rule 2.5.2 of its Notarization Review Guidelines. That rule states that apps have to be self-contained and can't execute code "which introduces or changes features or functionality of the app, including other apps."

After Apple's rejection, UTM's developer said they would not keep going back and forth because the app would become "a subpar experience." However, after help from the AltStore team and another developer to work on some changes, UTM SE was finally approved by Apple on Saturday.

As with other emulators, UTM SE requires that users supply the operating systems they want to emulate, but the UTM site includes guides for Windows XP through Windows 11 emulation, as well as downloads of pre-built virtual Linux machines. UTM SE can be downloaded from the App Store [Direct Link].

Article Link: Apple Approves First Retro PC Emulator for iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/07/15/apple-approves-first-retro-pc-emulator-ios/
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It's cool that this is a thing, but even on my new 13" iPad the prebuilt Ubuntu VM is so slow that it's completely unusable.

(I realise that this is due to unavoidable limitations surrounding virtualization on iOS devices and also that this app is mainly for emulating retro games).
 
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There's almost no GPU acceleration and no use case. You install it, see the ****** experience and then delete it to get your disk space back.

This type of thing is for social media nut jobs to post screenshots with caption 'LooK moM Iam sO amaZe I installED useLeSS Windows XP on iPad. PleaSe Follow mE to LeArn How I do it'
 
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This is extremely cool. UTM on macOS is great too, maybe the best way to virtualise Linux.

Note though that this:

* is pure emulation in software
* doesn’t support JIT (as Apple don’t allow that level of freedom for apps, so it’s slow)
* doesn’t support hardware virtualisation features (as unlikely macOS Apple also don’t allow them)

So it’s slow af.
 
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purplerainpurplerain said:
There's almost no GPU acceleration and no use case. You install it, see the ****** experience and then delete it to get your disk space back.

This type of thing is for social media nut jobs to post screenshots with caption 'LooK moM Iam sO amaZe I installED useLeSS Windows XP on iPad. PleaSe Follow mE to LeArn How I do it'
Click to expand...
It's a start. I'm sure somebody will eventually come up with a thing that will actually use the iPad/iPhone hardware and make thing usefull.
 
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The biggest way I see this being useful is if it can emulate 32-bit iOS (and run it at reasonable speed), which doesn't appear to be the case. There's a few old iPhone games I'd like to play again.
 
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Smartass said:
It's a start. I'm sure somebody will eventually come up with a thing that will actually use the iPad/iPhone hardware and make thing usefull.
Click to expand...
Not really possible unless Apple loosens restrictions.

There's a video somewhere of Windows 10 for ARM running on UTM on a hacked iPad at almost native speed. IIRC this was because the hacked iPad could make use of iPadOS's hypervisor, which is not available to app developers.
 
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johnalan said:
This is extremely cool. UTM on macOS is great too, maybe the best way to virtualise Linux.

Note though that this:

* is pure emulation in software
* doesn’t support JIT (as Apple don’t allow that level of freedom for apps, so it’s slow)
* doesn’t support hardware virtualisation features (as unlikely macOS Apple also don’t allow them)

So it’s slow af.
Click to expand...

I have a few questions. When running on an Apple M series processor on iPadOS:

There's no virtualization restriction so it's not just emulation, right? So it's not pure emulation but hardware virtualization too?

Does running it on an iPad with the specs mentioned above, does it have JIT support (not sure what that is or how it affects performance).

I'm having a hard time completing the install. It's kind of complicated (for me). Any tips that would help? Also, any recommendations for the easiest, most secure way to download Windows 11 for Arm? I'd rather not go the Windows Insider Preview route.

Any advice and knowledge on the matter is appreciated.

Thanks!
 
FRVRandAFTR said:
I have a few questions. When running on an Apple M series processor on iPadOS:

There's no virtualization restriction so it's not just emulation, right? So it's not pure emulation but hardware virtualization too?

Does running it on an iPad with the specs mentioned above, does it have JIT support (not sure what that is or how it affects performance).

I'm having a hard time completing the install. It's kind of complicated (for me). Any tips that would help? Also, any recommendations for the easiest, most secure way to download Windows 11 for Arm? I'd rather not go the Windows Insider Preview route.

Any advice and knowledge on the matter is appreciated.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Apple doesn't allow hardware virtualization, so no.

iPad does not have JIT support. JIT stands for Just In Time debugging. Which basically means your application can compile and run code while it is running. You basically offload a lot of the application into memory and compile it as needed. This is also why some webbrowsers seem to use a lot of memory ;)

(this explanation is oversimplyfied)
 
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