Remember him? iPhone OS from iPod Touch is emulated on computer with QEMU

Mobile system emulation is already common practice in everyday life, but Apple systems, in general, are more difficult to translate to other platforms. Now, a developer has managed to successfully emulate the first version of the iPhone OS on a PC using the open source software QEMU.

For those who don’t remember, this is the system of the first iPod Touch. Developer Martijn de Vos, also known as devos50 , used a lot of reverse engineering to emulate the first version of the system from 2007. The project took over a year to work, as the developer had to figure out how to simulate elements like multitouch support and other components of hardware.

Given these difficulties, Vos opted to emulate the first version of the iPhone OS made for the iPod instead of the iPhone, as making the iPhone version work would require emulating even more components. At the same time, he also chose iPhone OS 1.0 due to the fact that this version has much less security mechanisms than the latest versions of the operating system.

The project still only came to fruition thanks to OpeniBoot —an open source implementation of Apple’s bootloader. Even though it was discontinued a long time ago, the system still allowed users to do things like install Android on the first generations of iPhone and iPod Touch.

Despite some bugs, the project looks quite functional, as you can see in the video above. The system is fully navigable using a mouse and keyboard, and most of the pre-installed apps work, although some functions cause the suite to crash.

Vos revealed all the details of the project on his blog. For his next project, de Vos wants to emulate a second-generation iPod Touch, which shipped with iPhone OS 2.1.