QEMU-iOS, an emulator for legacy Apple devices (opens in new tab)

That's partially because of web security, though, if I'm not mistaken. I have an old Windows PC and an old Mac mini that I use as servers and, outside of local stuff that's bridged to the outside network (and heavily crippled), I can't do much on them because of the changes to the TLS protocol for SSL certs. That means that the browsers won't connect to most modern servers, any apps that hardcoded instances of TSL can't connect to the internet, and, if I managed to get something to connect, it would be a huge security risk for anything on those machines.

So, if the connection is being shut down on the server side, it's likely because of the TLS version mismatch. I thought it would be a simple solution just via updated software but was told (by peeps on Reddit, so it's likely to be total nonsense) that, although it can be updated, it won't run reliably on older hardware unless that hardware can also support newer OSs. Win7 and below (?) don't support it and MS won't provide updates with it and MacOS versions before Lion don't have it. I've heard you can also update OpenSSL by breaking the symlinks to the OS's install and get it working again but that's more hassle than I cared to put in.

Also, most of those old iPads are able to be jailbroken. You can update OpenSSL on them and probably get Spotify working again.

You are probably not allowed to contribute to the open source private servers for Minecraft Earth and .ipa mods for people who still want to play?

https://github.com/Project-Earth-Team

ASA (which I worked on for Minecraft Earth) is also end of life in the next year, not sure how that will impact this.

> a whole codebase just go poof.

You didn't hold onto a copy?

As long as they're not distributing iOS or any proprietary ROMs with it then the emulator is perfectly legal.

Doing this is a huge amount of engineering work. Things like the usb controller, modem, audio, touch sensor, and many many more are often custom hardware without any specs available that you somehow need to simulate. That's not even getting into the display tech. And these things change with each new hardware iteration. In the OP repo, there appear to be 25 of these things that the author had to reverse engineer an emulate. And that's for 15 year old hardware. Things like usb controllers require thousands of lines of dense C code. Then you have all of the CPU extensions leveraged by iPhones that generally have poor/nonexistent emulation support. This type of emulation/rehosting is a notoriously hard problem even for simpler devices like routers. Modern game emulators typically move up the stack and intercept high-level graphics etc APIs because emulating all of the hardware would be a ton of work (and doing so in performantly would be impossible). The simulator that comes with xcode works in a similar way. But by doing this, you lose a lot of the capabilities that you might want from an emulated device (kernel/driver debugging, etc).

There is a reason that Corellium can charge so much for SASS access to recent-model emulated iPhones.

Point 2 is not remotely true. I’ve been doing iOS development for almost a decade and have only ever tested against my phone (which is usually not the latest model) and an iOS device that represents the oldest thing the app supports. For testing everything in between the excellent iOS Simulator (which is far more usable than the equivalent in Android Studio) is adequate.

For development these days you can find a used/refurb M1 Air or mini that will do the job just fine for less than half the stated price.

As for 2FA they support FIDO keys and passkeys just fine.

> Apple is so secure they only support their own proprietary second factor push messages to iDevices!

Don’t they support SMS 2FA as well? They do for my dev Apple ID that’s not logged in on any other device at least, and I see the option as a fallback on my personal ID too.

For point 5, I don't think it's true. We have team members that can login to app store connect without any iDevice. I also regularly login from non-macs.

I agree with your other points. The lock-in, especially for CI, is terrible.

How is this different to other commonly emulated devices?

> 1) Spend $100 a year for the privilege of being allowed to access their app store

Doesn't it require $100 a year to compile an app and install it on your own phone (because even hobby apps require signing)? I can't fathom why so-called "hackers" put up with this. I suspect because $

In the interest of balance, since it's pretty easy to pile on when you think you're punching up:

> 1) Spend $100 a year for the privilege of being allowed to access their app store

Comparable to all curated store fronts.

> 2) Buy several $1000 iPhones (you'll be expected to test on every model they currently support by app store reviewers)

Not different than supporting any commodity device. You should have target devices for every variation you intentionally support.

> 3) Buy one $2000 macbook per developer that needs to work on the iOS app (build tooling only runs on macos)

That's not true, both the macbook line but also in general. I have worked in places that use VM's on MacMinis for iOS development, but there's also AppCode from Jetbrains.

> 4) Good luck if you want to integrate this with your CI! Either another mac mini ($1000) or a subscription to some service that does it for you. Forget about using your linux boxes that you use for everything else. Apple says no!

Mac Mini for CI, yes, if you're doing it as above then it's an additional VM on your MacMini.

> 5) Everyone who needs to log in to the apple developer portal also needs an iDevice. Apple is so secure they only support their own proprietary second factor push messages to iDevices!

That's not true, I use Linux to log in to my developer portal with the root account.

> You can see why they don't allow emulators or virtual machines.

They allow VMs and Emulators, they just require that it's official hardware.

If you are categorically opposed to owning any apple devices then I can see why you would feel a certain way.

To put it in perspective: I genuinely despise Windows, yet I need to spend a lot of money because making Windows software on any other platform is practically impossible, and "running a VM" isn't going to help because you must still license that VM.

The major differentiator here of course is that the license cost for the OS is part of the hardware cost in the Apple ecosystem and not separated out.

But ultimately every company that has a platform for software development is going to charge you:

A) Access to that platform

B) For the tools required to build on that platform in addition.

I recommend everyone votes with their wallet. (and they do, just in favour of the App Store, because it is significantly more lucrative to lean in and buy a pile of mac minis and a developer license agreement than to lose sales by not being apart of it.)

You could look at this as Win/Win or Lose/Lose depending, almost entirely, on your willingness to let Apple also profit from your work. (again: likening it to my experience with Windows).

That list is a bit disingenuous as the mosts expensived points apply to every platforms: you'll need a PC to develop software for Windows, you'll need a computer too even for building Linux apps as manipulating bits using butterflies is quite inconvenient[1]. One might even use a Mac already, so it's not an additional cost in all situations. In the same vein physical devices are also mandatory for developing quality Android applications. Sure the 99$/year is annoying for hobbyists but it's not that of an expense for any business.

[1] xkcd.com/378