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

3 months ago

UTM SE can run ‘run classic software and old-school games’ for Windows, Mac OS 9, and Linux on your iPhone.

By Wes Davis, a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.

Jul 14, 2024, 1:24 AM UTC

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Screenshots from the App Store showing a UTM SE menus and Windows emulation.

Apple has approved UTM SE, an app for emulating a computer to run classic software and games, weeks after the company rejected it and barred it from being notarized for third-party app stores in the European Union. The app is now available for free for iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS.

After Apple rejected the app in June, the developer said it wasn’t going to keep trying because the app was “a subpar experience.” Today, UTM thanked the AltStore team for helping it and credited another developer “whose QEMU TCTI implementation was pivotal for this JIT-less build.”

A screenshot showing options for creating a new virtual machine or downloading a prebuilt one.

UTM SE doesn’t include any virtual machines, but does help you find them.

Screenshot: UTM SE

As with other emulators on the App Store, you can’t do much with UTM SE out of the box. 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. Mac OS 9.2.1 and DOS are listed in one screenshot from the UTM SE App Store page.

Here’s the App Store description for UTM SE:

UTM SE is a PC emulator that allows you to run classic software and old-school games.

* Supports both VGA mode for graphics and terminal mode for text-only operating systems

* Emulates x86, PPC, and RISC-V architectures

* Run pre-built machines or create your own configuration from scratch

* Built from QEMU, a powerful and widely used emulator

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