Apple Approves iDOS Emulator

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/12/24218754/apple-idos-3-app-store-pc-emulator-rule-change

by gattilorenz • 2 years ago

67 28 2 years ago

accrual• 2 years ago

Given that another Verge article discusses running XP on an iPad using this tool, I wonder if it emulates enough PC hardware that one could run OpenBSD or Debian on it. That would be pretty cool paired with a Bluetooth keyboard!

https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/22/24200536/windows-xp-ipad-...

alargemoose• 2 years ago

The Emulator in that article, UTM SE, is a a GUI for QEMU. It’s also a MacOS app. I can confirm the “SE” version on iOS can run Linux, though I’ve not tried BSD.

UTM’s site also has a handful of pre-built images of various operating systems to make it easy to setup a VM to mess around with https://mac.getutm.app/gallery/

mrkramer2• 2 years ago

I thought emulator is free....but it costs $0.99. Is that even legal? Charging for emulating software that is not your.

deafpolygon2• 2 years ago

You can charge for an emulator as a service for building and packaging it on the App Store (assuming you have permission somehow) or as long as you can definitively prove that you built it via some "clean room design" - that will protect you from legal issues should anyone decide to litigate you for stealing copyrighted code. Backward engineering something (an emulator) to run software (a game) is not illegal, as long as said software doesn't run copyrighted code. This is how WINE exists, after all. Yes, I know WINE is not an emulator. It's a compatibility layer.

Will anyone litigate you for a DOS emulator at this point? Likely not.

mrkramer2• 2 years ago

You can charge for an emulator as a service for building and packaging it on the App Store (assuming you have permission somehow) or as long as you can definitively prove that you built it via some "clean room design" - that will protect you from legal issues should anyone decide to litigate you for stealing copyrighted code.

Yea, I get it....emulating is essentially mimicking but if you mimic whole bunch of specific features, APIs or whatever, it is still tricky legally. Because if you mimic the whole thing, then you somewhat copied the complete architectural design of hardware/software system that you are emulating.

For example I hear often about Nintendo emulators but if emulator devs decide to sell emulators, couldn't Nintendo sue emulator devs because Nintendo emulators are creating parallel market for Nintendo devices and therefore leaving Nintendo completely out of picture.

charliebwrites2• 2 years ago

How performant is this without JIT support?

I tried using UTM on my iPad to emulate Ubuntu and Kali Linux and it was so slow and broken I gave up

kjkjadksj• 2 years ago

You need to jailbreak the ipad and the path you will tread will be a bit unsupported, but its possible.

https://worthdoingbadly.com/hv/

charliebwrites2• 2 years ago

Unfortunately I’m not in a spot where it makes sense to Jailbreak my iPad

If I build the project from scratch in XCode and put it on my iPad from there will JIT work?

jamesy0ung• 2 years ago

I've got an M2 iPad Pro, running 16.3.1 and jailbroken with UTM HV. It's very fast, about 96% of the native speed, however you can only use up to 5 and a bit gigabytes of ram before getting terminated. The linux experience isn't too great either. It tends to be quite buggy and crashes a lot, I've tested Ubuntu 24.04 and Fedora 40. Overall, it's cool but too buggy for me to use daily.

jansommer• 2 years ago

You could consider zram and get 50%+ more ram by compressing it. I use it on a 4gb ram surface go 2 and it works wonders. Not even noticing it in games like Divinity: Original Sin that requires at least 4gb.

Firehawke• 2 years ago

It handled One Must Fall 2097, which needed a high-end 486 or low-end Pentium, just fine. Wing Commander 1 and 2 should be fine. WC3 I'm not entirely sure about, though.

odo12422• 2 years ago

Yeah, UTM on iOS without JIT (UTM SE) is about 2-3x slower.

You have to jailbreak for JIT though, which makes things fairly annoying for the actual version of UTM. At least the macOS app is actually quite good lol

bni• 2 years ago

I don have experience with emulation on iPad. But I have been using DosBox (don't have JIT) and FS-UAE (don't have JIT on Apple Silicon) on my M1 Mac mini for several years.

It is more than fast enough to emulate everything perfectly.

mezentius• 2 years ago

It’s great. I’ve been running iDOS regularly on a 3rd-gen iPad Pro, at 26800 cycles (roughly a 486DX4 100Mhz). I can run every DOS game well supported by DOSBox, write in WordPerfect 6.2, install and run Windows 3.1 at full speed, and compile and debug code via Borland C++ 3.1/4.6, or OpenWatcom 2.0. The file system is easily accessible through the Files app, so I can transfer files in and out without tedious mounting of images.

My only (and very minor) complaint is that it relies on the ancient DOSBox-0.74-3, rather than one of the forks with broader support and better emulation of exotic hardware, like DOSBox-X.

With regard to UTM SE, I’ve had mixed results as well. For best results, I recommend installing Windows 95, which was very performant. (Otherwise, keep in mind that the SE stands for ‘Slow Edition’ — really.)

crims0n• 2 years ago

Oh nice, the iPad Pro 12.9 inch has a 4:3 aspect ratio if I recall correctly, should make for a decent DOSBox screen.

klipklop• 2 years ago

Keep in mind with Retroarch on iOS you can use dosbox-pure which can even run windows 98 games. It’s still a work in progress though since retroarch does not yet have good mouse support. Also OpenGL ES acceleration of voodoo graphics is around the corner.

On my M4 iPad Pro I get around 266 mhz p2 performance. With openGL (not yet in the App Store version) you can get ~77fps in quake 1 in glide mode at 640x480.

Pretty much everything of the dos era is playable in dosbox on a m4.

paines• 2 years ago

This should be much higher up. Thanks! How about controllers? Playing Archimedean Dynasty with an 360 joypad would be pretty cool once Voodoo/GLIDE graphics is in.

halopelican007• 2 years ago

what are some good emulator for school

odo12422• 2 years ago

What do you need to emulate?

halopelican0071• 2 years ago

discord

Apple Approves iDOS Emulator

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