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Comment by ls612 | Hacker News Reader

Yuzu has a similar feature on their android release. I bet that’s the big reason why these emulators are on android and not iOS, the graphics hardware on modern iPhones is certainly capable.

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I'd guess missing the ability to sideload is also a huge factor. If Google doesn't allow Dolphin, they can use a different store or distribute the apk themselves. If Apple doesn't allow Dolphin, all the effort is in vain.

Walled gardens, eh?

> If Apple doesn't allow Dolphin, all the effort is in vain.

With a jailbreaked iPhone device, you can possibly install Dolphin through a separate package manager (Cydia, Sileo, etc.)

Yes, but iPhones are not uniformly jailbreakable, and restricting yourself to a niche like that makes it harder to get people in (as users or as developers). You've essentially moved from a popular platform (iOS) to a very niche one (jailbroken iOS).

We should use a term like liberated rather than jailbroken. The phrasing leads to a conclusion about the behavior which isn't correct.

A Dolphin build for iOS exists and works well. You just have to jump through a bunch of hoops to sideload it. See https://altstore.io/

Does this not require a Jailbreak anymore? I thought you needed a kernel exploit in order to enable JIT (without which Dolphin would be terribly slow).

Correct. No jailbreak required!

The caveat for enabling JIT support is you have to “attach a debugger” first. AltServer automates this process…provided your iOS device can communicate with it when launching the app.

Ew, that sounds annoying, but also very clever, thanks for explaining!

Dolphin has had a native Metal renderer for a bit now, there’s no graphics driver issues conceptually.

DolphinIOS exists though it’s a fork and requires somewhat unfriendly steps to get installed just due to iOS as a platform.

Do they have an apple silicon build for Mac?

according to their download page, yes: https://dolphin-emu.org/download/?ref=btn

They've had one for awhile now, yeah. They were super quick to get things up and running for the platform back in 2021.

https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2021/05/24/temptation-of-the-ap...

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