Running Windows XP on an iPad is slow but fun

Apple’s u-turn on PC emulators has made a bunch of things possible, and even easy – like running Windows XP on an iPad.

One tech writer who tried it says that it runs very slowly (though possibly no slower than it did on PCs of that era), but he’s never used his iPad more frequently …

Apple’s u-turn on PC emulators

Apple revised its App Store guidelines back in April to allow game emulators, with the popular Nintendo emulator Delta one of the first to take advantage of this. While driven by European antitrust compliance, the company implemented the change worldwide.

However, Apple later rejected the PC emulator app UTM SE, stating that the exemption was for console game emulators only. That announcement didn’t go down well with either users or regulators, and the company later reversed course and approved the emulator.

Apple doesn’t allow apps to use a JIT compiler for security reasons, meaning that emulated operating systems can only run rather slowly, but some have been undeterred by this.

Windows XP on an iPad

The Verge’s Wes David was one of those, and says that the process of installing it was straightforward.

Making a virtual machine on which to run Windows is especially easy if you use one of UTM’s pre-built machines, which you can download and tweak. I grabbed this one and gave it more RAM and storage but otherwise used it the way it came. Then, I pointed it at a Windows XP .iso file from the IDE Drives option in that machine’s settings and booted it up. 

David says it’s slow, but then that was also true of the spinning metal PCs back in the XP days.

New windows took a few seconds to open; nested Start menu items did, too. None of it was outrageous, though, and I genuinely think it’s faster than the Compaq machine we had when I was a teen.

I suspect the novelty factor will quickly wear off, but for the moment, he says he’s never used his iPad more than he is now.

Image: Vitya_maly/CC4.0 (cropped)