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!
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/
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.
>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.
It’s about the line between what gets protected by patents and what gets protected by copyright. The rule is basically patents protect function, copyright doesn’t.
If the specific design of a windshield wiper blade was protected by copyright then its patent would be pointless. Therefore patents essentially invalidate copyright where they apply. People often hate software patents, but a 20 year window expires on anything built before 2004.
Copyright is about implementations, not architectural designs. That would be the domain of patents, and these have much stronger limits than copyright.
Most notably, you need to actively apply for them, and they expire much sooner than copyright. Besides that, software is not patentable in all jurisdictions.
Look into Bleem. It was sued, but it won. Though the legal costs did hurt the company， it reaffirmed that emulators are legal and you can sell them. In fact, there currently are nintendo emulators for sale to this day (3dSen)
No. See Sony v. Connectix or Google v. Oracle if you want to know more, but basically, it is fair use to copy interface features such as APIs for the purpose of interoperability or developer convenience.
Nintendo's counterargument to those cases has to do with DMCA 1201, an extremely broadly drafted law that has to do with copy protection. A lot of console emulators have to implement decryption functions in the emulator because people are bringing in ROM images or ISO dumps that are encrypted. Console emulation has a habit of just grabbing whatever format the piracy scene is using and going from there, which is a bad idea and what enables Nintendo to, say, sue the shit out of Yuzu.
At the same time, however, this isn't a critical flaw that makes all emulation illegal. Yuzu was also extremely sketchy in ways that let Nintendo connect the dots and say "this is infringement". There are plenty of emulators out there written by people who have good copyright hygiene that don't have this problem. e.g. WINE, Ruffle, PCem, DOSBox, etc. And none of this has to do with whether or not the emulator is being sold for money, is licensed as a Free Software project, developed by a community, etc.
This is also my understanding of the case. I'm not sure what I misunderstood? The ruling says it's fair use, whether or not the subject matter of the fair use is copyrightable.
The Supreme Court ruled the specific case of Google using Java APIs was fair use, but not any broad rules like "purpose of interoperability or developer convenience" are always fair use.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 85.4 ms ] threadhttps://www.theverge.com/2024/7/22/24200536/windows-xp-ipad-...
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/
Will anyone litigate you for a DOS emulator at this point? Likely not.
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.
> but if you mimic whole bunch of specific features, APIs or whatever, it is still tricky legally.
If you mimic an API, as long as you can prove you didn't copy any of the original code or engineering - you are in the clear.
> because Nintendo emulators are creating parallel market for Nintendo devices
No, they are not. The parallel market only pertains to games (or specifically, the creative work that covers the IP for the game).
If the specific design of a windshield wiper blade was protected by copyright then its patent would be pointless. Therefore patents essentially invalidate copyright where they apply. People often hate software patents, but a 20 year window expires on anything built before 2004.
Most notably, you need to actively apply for them, and they expire much sooner than copyright. Besides that, software is not patentable in all jurisdictions.
Nintendo's counterargument to those cases has to do with DMCA 1201, an extremely broadly drafted law that has to do with copy protection. A lot of console emulators have to implement decryption functions in the emulator because people are bringing in ROM images or ISO dumps that are encrypted. Console emulation has a habit of just grabbing whatever format the piracy scene is using and going from there, which is a bad idea and what enables Nintendo to, say, sue the shit out of Yuzu.
At the same time, however, this isn't a critical flaw that makes all emulation illegal. Yuzu was also extremely sketchy in ways that let Nintendo connect the dots and say "this is infringement". There are plenty of emulators out there written by people who have good copyright hygiene that don't have this problem. e.g. WINE, Ruffle, PCem, DOSBox, etc. And none of this has to do with whether or not the emulator is being sold for money, is licensed as a Free Software project, developed by a community, etc.
In reality, the Appeals Court ruled APIs are copyrightable and the Supreme Court declined to make a ruling on that aspect.
I tried using UTM on my iPad to emulate Ubuntu and Kali Linux and it was so slow and broken I gave up
https://worthdoingbadly.com/hv/
If I build the project from scratch in XCode and put it on my iPad from there will JIT work?
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
It is more than fast enough to emulate everything perfectly.
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.)
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.