root98765 hours ago
> during iOS setup, don't pick Japan or the EU as your region (extra regulatory checks the VM can't satisfy)
I'm curious what are these checks
benoau4 hours ago
It will be to prevent access to third-party app stores as both the EU and Japan legislated they must be allowed.
> In a support document about alternative app marketplaces in the EU, Apple explained that “device eligibility for alternative app marketplaces is determined using on-device processing with only an indicator of eligibility sent to Apple.” In practice, iOS users in the EU who want to install alternative marketplaces will need to set the country or region of their Apple ID to an eligible country or region. Moreover, they will also need to be physically located in supported EU countries.
> In the case iOS users in the EU leave eligible regions, Apple will offer a “grace period” until apps downloaded from alternative app stores can no longer be updated. “If you’re gone for too long, you’ll lose access to some features, including installing new alternative app marketplaces. Apps you installed from alternative app marketplaces will continue to function, but they can’t be updated by the marketplace you downloaded it from,” the company explained.
https://www.thurrott.com/apple/298862/apple-adds-some-condit...
dingdongditchme3 hours ago
Wait so a third party app-store is allowed in the EU? I was not aware these even existed...
xkgt2 hours ago
It is wild that Apple finds it cheaper to build and maintain different App store behaviors than to simplify and make alt app stores available in all markets. Other governments/markets don't care?
benoauan hour ago
It's a very slow process, first there is investigations, then legislation, then enactment, then enforcement which is separately a very slow process. It requires a lot of willpower to get and keep the ball rolling and in fact nobody has even achieved the full extent of what they require yet! The EU may still be years away from meaningful compliance, Japan has only taken baby steps forming a new bureau just to enforce compliance of two companies widely accused of malicious compliance.
And then there is additional discouragement and pressure in the form of sanction and trade deal threats for regulating American tech platforms.
exe3427 minutes ago
> And then there is additional discouragement and pressure in the form of sanction and trade deal threats for regulating American tech platforms.
What people don't realise is that local companies aren't just competing with each other, they're competing against the US military.
surajrmal35 minutes ago
Who said it's cheaper?
tonyhart72 hours ago
"Other governments/markets don't care?"
its the least of their problems
grim_ioan hour ago
There's an endless supply of bodies of water to be renamed.
aaronbrethorst2 hours ago
DANmodean hour ago
Any working way to spoof your locale to trick this into any form of usability?
surajrmal31 minutes ago
You need to fake the cell towers and change your accounts billing address. It's not trivial.
aaronbrethorstan hour ago
I have never tried. I'm sure there are some reddit threads about this though.
astafrig3 hours ago
In addition to the third-party installation capability mentioned by siblings, Japan also has a regional capability for reassigning the side button to a third-party voice assistant (`com.apple.developer.side-button-access.allow`).
rootnod34 hours ago
For Japan it might be the Felica chip.
koito172 hours ago
That would surprise me. I don't recall having to change my iPhone's region after moving to Japan. Transport IC cards in Apple Pay have "just worked".
I am vaguely aware that some phone manufacturers silently remove certain NFC hardware (or disable some driver) in order to avoid paying Sony patent fees. Apple doesn't seem to do that, though.
pranav_tech2637 minutes ago
Finally, local iOS virtualization without third-party hacks. Huge win for CI pipelines, though macOS host dependencies still limit scale.
hamandcheese4 hours ago
This seams neat, but I'm not sure I understand the purpose/difference between this and using the iOS simulator.
dagmx11 minutes ago
The simulator is a different SDK target than iOS itself.
You have to compile completely independently for it, and depending on your dependencies they may not compile for the simulator.
Additionally the simulator runs a really ancient and feature restricted version of Metal. That means you can’t test a lot of graphical things that the hardware actually supports.
restes4 hours ago
The iOS Simulator consists of (some of) the userspace components of iOS compiled to run on macOS. This would be a full iPhone image running as-is via virtualization.
RussianCow4 hours ago
That explains the difference, but what's the purpose?
whynotmaybe3 hours ago
The simulator doesn't have a camera. The android emulator allows to configure the camera and use a picture, it's very handy to test your qr/barcode reader without needing to use a physical device. Maybe this also allows to use an image as camera?
gcampos3 hours ago
You cannot run Network Extensions on the simulator
a0124 hours ago
You can test your application, game, website without a physical phone?
leoh3 hours ago
Can do that with the simulator too
refulgentis3 hours ago
Running on ported userspace components, with a shim, isn't the same as running on the OS in itself.
That really matters, sometimes.
But not the vast majority of the time.
(source: been coding iOS since pre-SDK iPhone OS 1.0)
RussianCow3 hours ago
Can you give some examples of where it matters? I'm genuinely curious.
bradfitz2 hours ago
Last I checked, VPN network extensions wouldn't run in the simulator.
dingdongditchme2 hours ago
Is the simulator faster than this? I would suspect so.
VladVladikoff3 hours ago
Spam. Click farms. Etc.
trollbridge3 hours ago
It would also make testing far easier. I got bit with something that failed on real life iPhones with language set to es_US that worked fine on the simulator.
truenoan hour ago
oh. is this why icloud spam texts are running wild now
greggsy41 minutes ago
No, it’s just trivial to generate iCloud email addresses that won’t get picked up by spam filter.
leoh3 hours ago
If functional, you can download apps from the App Store, sign in to iCloud.. probably do a bunch of agentic stuff as if you had a real device
Sajarin3 hours ago
Looks like apple services compatibility is not currently supported for this [0]
rvz2 hours ago
Exactly. It means it cannot download apps from the App Store or use Apple services and Apple knows this deliberate limitation.
zffr41 minutes ago
Here are some reasons to use this instead of the simulator: security research, testing, automation
speedyapoc2 hours ago
Looks like this tool can provide a jailbroken environment for the latest iOS versions whereas one does not exist on iOS simulator or a real device
ChrisMarshallNY3 hours ago
The simulator is a completely different OS. It may even still be using Intel.
I always figured that Apple never set up a true emulator (like what Android does), because they didn't want people exploring their OS with a debugger.
kridsdale13 hours ago
Incorrect. The iOS simulator is and always has been, simply iOS frameworks running fully natively on macOS. It’s best to think of it as an alternative window managers but the apps are native Mac processes. They can be seen and debugged via the terminal using top and ps and lldb alongside all other processes. They just present gui via the Simulator Mac app container.
They do not live in a VM and are certainly not emulated at an instruction set level. They are Mac apps.
ChrisMarshallNY3 hours ago
Ah. That makes sense.
I would think that "Mac apps," means that they are, actually, a different OS (I actually already knew that, which was why I said what I said. The Intel thing was a spitball).
But one of the few joys geeks get, these days, is telling other geeks they are wrong, so I feel as if I’ve done my bit to make this a happier place.
catlifeonmarsan hour ago
Does this include a virtual baseband?
halfcat4 minutes ago
No, only virtual GarageBand
senor_digimonan hour ago
Can this be used for account recovery?
boredatoms6 hours ago
Is this what apple does in xcode?
vlovich1235 hours ago
If you’re talking about the simulator, no. That doesn’t virtualize - it literally just runs it locally on your machine. Less RAM overhead and CPU since it uses your normal instruction set and doesn’t run a separate kernel and userspace.
valleyer5 hours ago
At least historically, it actually did run its own entire userspace, including daemons (all the way to launchd, IIRC), etc. All compiled for Intel, back in the day. Shared the kernel though.
Many of the nominally shared system pieces between Mac and iPhone (like Foundation) actually had many subtle compile-time differences.
theflyestpilot5 hours ago
so can this receive web push notifications?
dvduval3 hours ago
Will there ever be a day where I could run this on a PC or something like it?
greggsy40 minutes ago
Probably not, but you can run it on a Mac today.
TylerJaacks5 hours ago
This project is really cool its a shame you have to disable or partial disable SIP which can break some things.
fishfasell3 hours ago
Yeah real shame that I know I could never run this on a corporate machine and only ever as a hobbyist.
userbinatoran hour ago
That means you're working for the wrong companies ;-)
sneakan hour ago
Have corporate buy you a research Air that isn’t on the MDM.
ironqcold6 hours ago
Interesting project. If it actually works it opens up a ton of possibilities for testing and reverse engineering.
chews5 hours ago
What a release! Congrats to the builder, lots of great work done here and in IOS profiling in general has been done here recently. Corellium went research only and I lost the ability to actually profile my applications the way I'd like. I've got a fun thing over coffee in the morning!
krackers4 hours ago
Feels weird that after their attempts to shut down corellium they themselves shipped the necessary bits to allow this
sumedh2 hours ago
Will this project make it easier to performance test Apps on the virtual iPhone?
orangea6 hours ago
what is "PCC"?
busymom06 hours ago
Private cloud compute I think. I learnt about it today too from this reddit post which mentions how:
> At WWDC, Apple announced that starting in the 27.x versions of iOS, macOS, etc., devs would be able to call Private Cloud Compute directly from Swift with no additional API configuration. Presently, the only way to get free cloud inference is by joining the App Store Small Business Program.
https://www.reddit.com/r/appledevelopers/comments/1vztibh/re...
leoh4 hours ago
Will Apple break this?
rvz2 hours ago
They will find a way to break it.