Apple allows game emulators on App Store, finally

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/07/apple-allows-game-emulators-on-app-store-finally.html

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So, if you’re thinking “MAME for iOS” you’ll be disappointed

well @#$ i was thinking mame for apple

(welp back to trying to put linux on this old ipad…)
(the more ya know: MAME : Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator)

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I think the thing they really want to forbid are Apple II, C64, etc emulators, because that could lead to programming.

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anyone care to speculate when the first apps will start rolling in?

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You can do that?

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well, replacing “You” as in ‘me’ with ‘one’ as in ‘someone’, then, yes.
but it ain’t easy, and likely doesn’t come with the ultimate in functionality.
one link | another link

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There is an incredible C64 dev community on Itch.io. I’m a fan of Psytronik in particular. If they put out a white-labelled vice with a way to buy their games through it, I’d be all over it.

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Is it known what Apple’s position is on emulators that use the file interface to open ROMs in a user-provided location; rather than either bundling them or downloading them directly?

iOS certainly doesn’t provide wide-open filesystem access; but some level of ability to open files has been a thing since back when just about every app going had it’s own implementation of talking to dropbox; and more recently Apple conceded the inevitable and built a system interface(uidocumentpickerviewcontroller, I think?) for that stuff.

Is that double-hyper-forbidden because it would leave the way open to “emulators” that are basically just shims you get Apple to sign in order to launch whatever you feel like; or is that allowed at least in principle; but emulators will be scrutinized for evidence of being a little too convenient(so specific retro architectures will be fine; educational or deliberately perverse architectures will be OK; but if it looks like it’s actually intended to run contemporary apps it had better be HTML5)?

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So I can finally play Scrabble?

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The last thing I need is access to MAME again. :slight_smile:

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