This Is Windows 11 Running on an iPad

summary

• A developer used a virtual machine (VM) to run the Windows 11 ARM version on iPad Air.
• The simulation runs slowly and is not a practical alternative.
• European Union regulations allow users to sideload applications, making this possible.

Thanks to the EU's increasingly strict regulations, Apple has been forced to significantly open to its hardware and software - Apple needs to comply with regulations or face the risk of being banned in one of its largest global markets. It is precisely because of the openness that these regulations allow, that someone seems to have successfully run a Windows 11 virtual machine on an iPad. This is really impressive.

A developer successfully ran a simulated version of Windows 11 ARM on Apple's M2 iPad Air. This is not to launch Windows 11 as a replacement for iPadOS – we may be a long way from that, and while people have launched alternative operating systems on Apple’s mobile devices in the past, this often requires jailbreaking and a lot of operations, and even so, it won’t work properly. So the method here is just a simple virtual machine.

What role does Europe play here? This is mainly reflected in the fact that you cannot do this on your iPad in the United States. EU regulations allow European users to install AltStore Classic, which has UTM, an emulator and virtual machine host, with instant compilation (JIT) enabled. UTM can emulate the hardware environment required for Windows 11 ARM and convert operating system code into instructions that can be understood and executed by an ARM-based M2 processor on iPad. Therefore, this is essentially the same as the virtual machine you can currently run on a Windows computer or a macOS device.

On iOS, JIT is especially tricky for third-party applications, and the trick here seems to be to use AltStore Classic through AltStore PAL to get the "unnotified" version of UTM and then run the persistent JIT in the background using StikDebug. Without JIT, you can still try simulations, but it will be much slower, which is why we haven't really seen modern console simulations - Delta is one of the only officially supported emulators, only supports retro and low-power consoles. The setup process is quite tedious, but the end result seems to be OK.

In order to improve Windows 11 performance under the simulation limitations of tablet hardware, the developer chose to use "Tiny11". This is a community-modified lightweight Windows 11 version that specifically streamlines non-essential applications and bloat software—more simply, a minimally-featured Windows 11 installation. By reducing the operating system footprint, "Tiny11" reduces the need for iPad RAM and storage, making the simulation process smoother than trying to run the full standard version of Windows 11.

Even so, you might be better off not trying it yourself—or at least, if you want to use it seriously. Although fully functional, the simulation environment cannot achieve the response or running speed required as a real alternative to a dedicated Windows computer, nor can it be comparable to the native iPadOS experience. Virtualization is always the case – you can't get the same performance as running software natively. But even so, it's still slower than the experience you get from your MacBook. It may also have some rough things to improve, and while I'm not sure if improving them is preferred, it's still a great technical demonstration. Maybe it can run better on an iPad with an M3 or M4 processor?

If you want to know how it works, be sure to watch the video. If you live in Europe, there is nothing technically stopping you from trying this on your own hardware, but if you live in the United States, you may have to give up on it and watch it from afar as enviously as the rest of us.

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