UTM SE: Retro PC emulator 4+

This app is incredible for emulating old PC games on visionOS, however it isn’t perfect.
1. No JIT support (thanks Apple restrictions).
2. Setting a machine to i386 will crash UTM when starting the machine.
3. It seems easy enough to migrate a machine from macOS to visionOS, but it does not appear possible to go the other way around. There doesn’t appear to be an easy way to export the current disk image to a Mac.
3. The app will randomly crash when selecting menu options. This is mostly seen when adjusting the virtual CD-ROM drive’s settings while a machine is running.

Overall, this is a fantastic app and is absolutely worth downloading. Hopefully it stays on the store to receive further updates in the future.

I am excited for this project, but it still has a ways to go. It does work, but very slowly, at least on an iPad Pro 12.9 Gen 4. Very slow to boot and it is so slow I can’t even boot into the pre-built Linux GUIs. I created a fresh Linux VM without a GUI and while slow, it was easy to setup (took over 9+ hours to install Ubuntu Server). But even in terminal, I cannot log in because of the slowness. As of this writing, I’m logging in and after entering the password, it just sits there. I’m 10 minutes in and still haven’t gotten a prompt. Just a blinking cursor. So while this is a very interesting project, it still needs some work in the speed department. This may be faster on the latest and greatest, but I do not have that (except for the iPhone 15 Pro, which has way too small of a screen for me to test out, but I may amend this review if I do.) Developers, do keep up the good work, though. This is a very useful project for someone who would like to learn Linux, but wants the portability of a tablet. I’m thinking like a student. Also I like to note it is a battery hog. Because it is so slow, I have to keep it plugged in or the iPad would be drained.

Don’t expect super great performance with modern operating systems. This isn’t UTM’s fault, this is due to Apple’s dumb policies on how third-party apps can run (yet conveniently not theirs, oops).

Long story short, I’d say Windows XP or a lightweight Linux distro is the upper limit of what you can do. That’s a ton of really fun possibilities!

That being said, it would be great if there could be more robust Magic Keyboard support for the iPad version. Currently, the trackpad cannot control the cursor. If it’s supported, it should be easier to configure. It tends to crash when trying to leave a VM as well, regardless of RAM allocation or complexity of the VM. For context, I’m using an M4 iPad with the official Magic Keyboard.

It’s so great to see this on the App Store. We’re another step closer to the iPad becoming a useful device because of this team!