My iPad now runs Windows XP, and that’s all I ever wanted.

Apple recently approved a new emulator app called UTM SE that lets your iPhone or iPad (or Vision Pro!) masquerade as PC hardware and run real desktop operating systems. Some of you asked in the comments section of my last post how it works—a legitimate question that I couldn’t answer at the time. But now that I’ve tried it out a bit, I have some answers, and I can say this: It’s better than I expected, but I wouldn’t count on it too much.

That’s because it doesn’t use a just-in-time (JIT) compiler, which translates software into code your device understands before it’s run. JIT compilers go against Apple’s software guidelines for the App Store, so you’ll have to jailbreak your phone to install a version of UTM that uses this technique.

UTM SE will generally be slow on an iPad for anything other than running old operating systems on old hardware, but XP runs surprisingly well – and UTM has plenty of documentation to get started.

I tried it out on my M1 iPad Pro, a device I’ve always wished could do more than it does. Creating a virtual machine to run Windows on is especially easy if you use one of UTM’s pre-built machines, which you can download and modify. I took this one and gave it more RAM and storage, but otherwise used it as is. Then I pointed it at a Windows XP .iso file from the IDE Drives option in that machine’s settings and booted it up. And I waited. For so long.

It took my iPad two and a half hours to install. But in the end, I was treated to the old “Bliss” wallpaper and the Windows XP startup sound (which I didn’t realize I was nostalgic for). Things were slow once it finished loading; new windows took a few seconds to open; nested Start menu items, too. None of it was outrageous, though, and I honestly think it’s faster than the Compaq machine we had when I was a teenager. (Those old spinning hard drives really took their toll.)

Performance and nostalgia aside, using Windows XP on an iPad really shows how far iPadOS has to go when it comes to multitasking. And despite some improvements to Home screen customization in iPadOS 18, it still lags far behind Windows XP when it comes to customization. XP doesn’t care at all whether 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 horrible oyster! I miss ruining my computer; that was the dream.

Apple allowing emulators on iPhones and iPads has made a big difference for my iPad Pro. I’ve always loved using my iPad, but rarely research to; now, I don’t think I’ve ever taken it back so much.