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iPhone 11 Emulated on QEMU

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Re: iPhone 11 Emulated on QEMU

#81
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting thought experiment though. Who is harming the purchasers? Apple, or the hacker copying down a publicly available piece of information?

Easy; it's the hacker. Whether the false information is publicly available is not a defense to fraud. Fraud is presenting false information (public or not) as true (in this case, that the serial number of the item belongs to you as a bona fide purchaser) and an innocent party (Apple + the consumer) relying on it to their detriment.

A serial number is not a password, it's a username, and copying it down isn't hacking.

Re: iPhone 11 Emulated on QEMU

#82
post #3

With this, would it finally be possible to test iOS apps without having to first buy into the Apple ecosystem? Seems super helpful for developers, security testing, etc.

I'm really not trying to be rude, but if you're a serious developer, 'security person' or otherwise, the cost of entry for apple is not a problem. I know I'll get abused probably for saying it, but I mean come on. An apple device is what, one days worth of consultancy time? For a security researcher maybe an hour? It's the cost of business. If you're priced out of getting into that particular game (I was too, once) t…

> I'm really not trying to be rude, but if you're a serious developer, 'security person' or otherwise, the cost of entry for apple is not a problem.

If the cost is so meaningless to you, you’re always invited to donate to the Patreon/ko-fi/GitHub Sponsors links of the projects that can’t afford an iPhone :)

Re: iPhone 11 Emulated on QEMU

#83
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the question is why would I as a consumer want to buy a least common denominator app using a cross platform framework that wasn’t actually tested on real hardware?

You can always uninstall it if it's crap right? It would be available to you as a choice, and now it's simply not available.

If the App Store becomes full of “checkbox ports” it’s going to be even more difficult to navigate than it already is.

Part of that is on Apple for not investing more in discovery, but copious numbers of low effort ports isn’t a good thing to have anyway. In the game world, bad ports of console games to PC and bad ports of games from any other platform to the Switch are one of the most consistent gripes — quite often the sentiment surrounding them is that they’d be better off not existing.

Re: iPhone 11 Emulated on QEMU

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an apple fanboy. I do have a M1, but I once spent 4 months porting KDE to solaris 10 x86 to run on a hp probook (and even got paid to do it)... I routinely try to exit the apple ecosystem but it always costs me pain and time, which hasn't been worth it for a number of years now. looks at drawer of ubuntu dell XPS's, ThinkPads running openbsd, etc etc . I've fucking TRIED ... :( It's been linux and bsd machine…

Then it's not for you. No shame in admitting that. For other people, though, Macbooks simply also don't make sense. Wanna run that 32-bit plugin you use in Photoshop? You're out of luck. How about some advanced Docker development? Hope you don't plan on doing it locally. Hunted by your government for whistleblowing? Probably shouldn't use a laptop that can automate the process of ratting you out. If you're a webdev o…

> If you're a webdev or hipster programmer chasing the most lucrative Web3 gigs, sure, buying a Macbook is probably the kind of status symbol your peers will respect you for. At the end of the day though, they're all just tools with different uses. If you can use an ARM laptop for day-to-day work, then don't let anyone stop you from doing it.

That’s a bit reductive. Macs are solid native mobile dev machines as well, with a good number of even Android-only devs using them. Lots of dev houses in the US use them for backend work (including Docker, despite the performance penalty), and the FreeBSD devs have been known to use them too.

Re: iPhone 11 Emulated on QEMU

#85
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An iPhone SE 1st Generation can be had for around $70. What phones are you buying?

OK, I was looking at iPhone 6S, a glance at eBay Australia suggests they’re starting somewhere around AUD150. iPhone SE 1st generation looks to be starting at more like AUD120. I spent around AUD150 on each of my first two phones. Last year I splurged on a PinePhone (around AUD300 including dock and shipping) which I hope will last me for the next decade.

> Last year I splurged on a PinePhone (around AUD300 including dock and shipping) which I hope will last me for the next decade.

I’m admittedly a pessimist but I’d personally be quite shocked if that happened. I simply lack faith that a small company can make a phone form factor device that can last / survive with that kind of lifetime.

Building devices of this complexity that can actually last seems quite hard.

Happy to be proven wrong!

Re: iPhone 11 Emulated on QEMU

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

buying an iphone means it's still in the apple ecosystem. the problem is not the money but the hassle of having to buy it

So you don’t want to be in the Apple ecosystem. But you want to develop for an Apple product? How will you support the product when users encounter bugs?

I have had to support clients iOS apps and absolutely want nothing to do with the Apple eco system. We created dev accounts and bought a physical iPhone for the devs which we shared amongst everyon. An emulator would have been perfect in fact.

Re: iPhone 11 Emulated on QEMU

#87
post #76
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy a used SE (2020) for only about $150 and that'll probably be supported for another 4 years. I've spent more than that from shopping at Costco on an empty stomach (rookie mistake).

For Canada, it looks to be hard to acquire a used one for less than $250-280 CAD. So about $200-$220 USD. Still a solid choice. I find it hard to imagine there's any android phone that can beat this phone for the same price (used or not!), OS support, camera quality, speaker quality, CPU speed & task switching speed, overall responsiveness, etc.

Ability to install a free software distribution, side-load software, run a plethora of Linux apps through Termux, fix the screen if you happen to break it without the thing complaining about "non-genuine parts", build, run and distribute software for the device without needing to pay a third party for the privilege of doing so, hook the thing up to a keyboard and display to use it for real work, install a full firewall blocking outgoing as well as incoming traffic...

Oh wait, those are all things you can not do with those iOS devices. Since these happen to be things I do it seems that iPhone won't be myPhone. Also, why don't these friggin' iOS devices support Ogg/Vorbis? I just added a transcoding option to Spodcast [1] to allow those poor souls using such devices to follow Spotify-hosted podcasts through RSS. None of my devices had any problems with Ogg/Vorbis but it turns out iOS simply does not support it. VLC on iOS does as do some other apps but those are not podcast players. Bad Apple.

[1] https://github.com/Yetangitu/Spodcast

Re: iPhone 11 Emulated on QEMU

#88
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's technically already possible by installing/virtualizing macOS and giving the SMC emulator a plausible serial number - it's tolerated by Apple for now, however they can trivially block this (both for Hackintosh as well as this iOS emulator) by requiring a real serial number.

I used a real serial number for this and still never had much success doing so, was a giant pain in the ass about a year ago.

Surprisingly, in my case it worked first try. It needed a compatible wireless card being present though - I think the Wi-Fi MAC is also used as some kind of identifier in addition to the serial number alone.

Re: iPhone 11 Emulated on QEMU

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, would this not apply to Macs and iPads as well? Can you access iMessage just through the Messages app on Mac?

Yes, you can, but only if you are signed into your Apple ID and connected to Wi-Fi. I believe Macs and non-cellular iPads send messages over Wi-Fi to the iMessage servers.

iMessage is entirely internet-based so cellular, if present, is only used as a data connection and otherwise plays no role.

Re: iPhone 11 Emulated on QEMU

#90
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cheapest second hand iPhones that run the current version of iOS (but are right at the tail of any support) are on the high side of the price range of what I’ve ever spent on a new, primary phone that I expect to last me at least several years. (And although it’s not as common as the alternative, I’m hardly alone in not spending much on phones; now laptops, on the other hand—.) I don’t want to spend more on a dev…

You can buy a used SE (2020) for only about $150 and that'll probably be supported for another 4 years. I've spent more than that from shopping at Costco on an empty stomach (rookie mistake).

Here in Japan, brand new iPhone SE (2020) is sold at $200 without contract. It seems that careers have too much stocks or quota so they need to sell them. I expect they are going to be exported.
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