If you were hoping to ever use a PC emulator on iOS, we have some bad news for you. While Apple has started to allow emulators, it only wants “retro game console” emulators, so PC ones are out of the question.
This information has surfaced via two developers of such emulators, iDOS 3 (a new version of the popular DOS emulator) and UTM SE (which wanted to let you emulate Windows on iOS). Both of those have been shot down by Apple, however.
The developer of iDOS 3 got the following rejection notice from Apple: “The app provides emulator functionality but is not emulating a retro game console specifically”. This puts iDOS 3 in breach of Apple’s guideline 4.7.
Funnily enough, when the developer reached out to Apple to ask what changes should be made to get iDOS 3 to be compliant, the Apple reps had no idea. There was also no answer to the question “what is a retro game console?”. So it looks like Apple’s long-standing “we’ll know it when we see it” strategy lives on.
As for UTM SE, it got a similar rejection which stated that the App Store Review Board determined that “PC is not a console”, even though the developer mentioned that there are retro Windows and DOS games for the PC that UTM SE could be useful in running.
Apple went one step further in this case by preventing UTM SE from being notarized for listing in third-party app stores in the EU because the app apparently violates guideline 2.5.2, a rule which states apps have to be self-contained and can’t execute any code “which introduces or changes features or functionality of the app, including other apps”.
It’s all quite confusing, as dealing with Apple’s notorious Review Board has always been, but the point here is that you shouldn’t expect any PC emulators to be available on iOS, despite the fact that there may well be some for “retro game consoles”.
