Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Running Windows on your iPhone or iPad?
Believe it or not, it can be done with the help of a special emulator app called UTM.
But how does it work? And why the heck would you even want to run Windows
on a device that purports to be a highly optimized marriage between Apple hardware and Apple software,
other than simply because you can? It turns out that some users are actually getting more
out of the Apple Silicon processors inside newer iPads
by running Windows than they do running iPadOS.
The idea is that despite the fact the M series chips are quite powerful,
there aren't a whole lot of officially supported apps that push the processor to its limits.
However, it's easier to use the processor to its full potential when you can install Windows
and run whatever program you want. Think image editors or design software.
The possibilities for calculator apps alone are endless,
but prepare yourself for a shocker. Apple didn't want the original version of UTM on the App Store.
What? They were never super clear with the developer of UTM
as to why, but it's not exactly surprising
that Apple wouldn't want a competing operating system
running on their own hardware. This means there are currently three flavors of UTM.
The base version, which isn't available on the App Store and has to be side loaded.
UTM HV, which is for jailbroken devices
and is the most powerful option, and UTM SE,
which you can get through the App Store, but which has some significant limitations.
The good news, however, is that if you're interested in turning your Apple device into a Windows machine,
all three versions of UTM have interesting uses.
UTM SE, which as we mentioned, can be found on the App Store,
works like a normal app in that you just tap to open it, tell it to install a new virtual machine
and pick which operating system you'd like to emulate.
Pretty straightforward and it's fast enough to run retro games for platforms like DOS
and other older systems where the games didn't require a ton of hardware resources.
However, UTM SE is quite slow when trying to run anything
newer than Windows XP, meaning if you need higher performance,
you might instead consider the original version of UTM,
which supports something called just-in-time execution
or JIT, JIT. That isn't some kind of weird sore on your face,
but is instead a technique for compiling the process
of translating a program's human-readable source code into the machine code your CPU can understand.
Typically, compiling is done ahead of time, allowing your CPU to quickly execute a program
when you open it up. However, if you have a Windows program
that isn't written for the ARM architecture that those Apple M-series chips use,
it has to be interpreted in order to work, which can be a very slow process.
And a big part of the reason why UTM SE is limited in what it can do.
This is where JIT comes in. JIT works with certain programming languages
that can be pre-compiled into an intermediate code
called byte code. JIT can then compile this into the correct machine code
when you open the program. While JIT is slower than running native machine code,
it's fast enough to run game emulators. In fact, there's one called Dolphin
that can emulate Wii and GameCube titles that can run on this original version of UTM
thanks to JIT. As far as Windows goes,
UTM with JIT can run 64-bit versions of Windows
up through Windows 7. Pretty impressive for an emulator,
though newer versions of Windows are too graphically demanding to run well.
But if you want a current version of Windows on your device, UTM HV is the addition you want.
As we mentioned, you have to jailbreak your device first, but it allows you to run Windows 10 or 11 on ARM natively,
meaning there's no messy code interpretation required,
allowing you to run these newer Windows versions at full speed, whoa.
Regardless of which UTM version you're going with though, you'll want to keep two things in mind.
One, it can't support GPU virtualization, so you won't suddenly be able to play
current graphically intense titles on your iPad.
Two, you'll need to bring your own copy of Windows, which I know none of you would ever resort to piracy
to get your hands on. But even though we've spent this episode talking
about running Windows on an Apple device, what if you want to go the other direction
and run, I don't know, macOS on your PC?
If that sounds like you, then go watch this video next.
It's a good time, this is gonna be so great.