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Apple recently approved a new emulator app called UTM SE<\/a> that enables your iPhone or iPad (or Vision Pro!) to masquerade as PC hardware and run honest-to-goodness computer desktop operating systems. Some of you asked in the comments section of my last story how it runs \u2014 a fair question that I couldn\u2019t answer at the time. But now that I\u2019ve tried it a little, I have answers, and I can say this much: it\u2019s better than I expected, but I wouldn\u2019t count on it for too much.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s because it doesn\u2019t use a just-in-time (JIT) compiler, which translates software into code that your device understands before it\u2019s executed. JIT compilers go against Apple\u2019s software guidelines<\/a> for the App Store, so you\u2019d have to jailbreak your phone to install a version of UTM<\/a> that uses the technique. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n UTM SE will be generally slow on an iPad for anything besides running old OSes on old hardware, but XP runs surprisingly well \u2014 and UTM offers plenty of documentation<\/a> for getting started.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I tried it out on my M1 iPad Pro, a device I\u2019ve always wished could do more than it does<\/a>. Making a virtual machine on which to run Windows is especially easy if you use one of UTM\u2019s pre-built machines<\/a>, which you can download and tweak. I grabbed this one<\/a> 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\u2019s settings and booted it up. And waited. For so long.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It took two and a half hours for my iPad to crawl through installation. But at the end of it all, I was treated to the old \u201cbliss\u201d desktop background and the Windows XP startup sound (which I didn\u2019t realize I\u2019m nostalgic for). Things were slow after everything finished loading; 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\u2019s faster than the Compaq machine we had when I was a teen. (Those old spinning disk hard drives really took a toll.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Putting aside performance and nostalgia, using Windows XP on an iPad really highlights how much farther iPadOS has to go when it comes to multitasking. And despite some improvements to homescreen customization in iPadOS 18, it\u2019s still far behind Windows XP when it comes to personalizing things. XP doesn\u2019t mind at all if I want my title bar pink and the text inside neon green or different fonts for every button, menu, or window. The world is my terrible oyster! I miss ruining my computer; that was the dream. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n